I'm sure this could just be part of the intro, you know, how we do organic, have a black, have a new African. You know what I'm saying? We in this thing, man. We got my boy Q with us.  Tapping with all the episodes we've had them on with before, you know, it's a, it's our brother right here. So we got a good episode in store, make sure y'all go to our SoundCloud, Apple podcast, Spotify, patreon.com slash hell black pie.  Patreon.com slash hell black pie, but we got a good, good episodes in store for, for all our listeners. I thought every time we all, all three of us link up. Some heat is produced. Some heat is produced. And we ain't just theorizing either. Q has, as if you listened to the previous episodes, someone who's been on the ground with us multiple times. This is someone who's come and helped develop our cadres. And so, yeah, this is as much as we theorize, we also put boost to the ground, boost to the ground. That's the ultimate goal. Nation building. Because we need a nation. We need a nation. We already is a nation. So we got a free to nation from these Euro Americans, right? Thought question. How you doing, brother? Man, really, all praise is due to Allah, man. At the end of the day, this is what it is. I've just been maintaining, still studying, still striving, bro, still struggling out here, but I'm making it, bro. And every day is just another day to get better. And I'm definitely blessed to be here with my brother. So, yeah. A lot of work for my brother. Absolutely. The same before we got on, you know, it is our goal on this podcast, on this episode specifically to do right by the martyr Tupac Shakur, right? There's been a lot of propaganda, reductions, nasty work being spread on the good brother's name. And so what we're going to do is give some objective facts, but also speak to the very positive impact he's had on us as individuals, but also the new African independence movement because something that gets erased or reduced is the fact that Tupac Shakur wasn't the fact that an organizer in every sense of the word, whether you're talking about him being the vice president or the, was it the vice president or the chair, vice president? The chairman of the new African Panthers. Yeah, chairman of the new African Panthers, right? Or also what he was doing to organize gangs across the so-called United States. Like, Brogwele had his boots on the ground and did real work and for some, not for some reason, for all the reasons they tend to leave those facts out about.   Well, I mean, where was his work being done or how was his work being done? What was his practice? Man, Tupac was a new African, you know what I'm saying? So it is our attempt to spread the truths about Tupac, to give a holistic look at his life and his contributions that he has made to the new African independence movement, to the communal, egalitarian, revolutionary, humanist conditions of new Africans. That's what we're going to try to do on this pod. So I really wanted to start with asking him, what does Tupac mean to y'all as individuals? What influence has he had on y'all as new African men navigating, you know, this expanded plantation here in 2023? We can start with you, Q. Man, what does Tupac represent? Tupac represents to me, if we're talking from every facet, from musical to economic game to the cultural game, everything that he exemplifies. One thing is just the voice, a voice, a real voice of clarity, a voice where no matter what he was speaking on, the ability to tap into the new African spirit, the spirit of our people, the ability to relay and articulate our actual way to navigate this condition as being subjugated people, as being colonized people, as being internally colonized people, as being identified as black males in this society, racialized as black people in this society, the ability for us to group up together, the ability for us to create art that is long lasting, the ability for us to speak on the wrongs, to do wrong, to learn from doing wrong. He was a living example and a living voice of kind of in the same way of how they spoke on Malcolm X, being our living black manhood, quote unquote. I feel as though Tupac follows in that lineage of being our living black manhood in our example for the 90s. And I always couch pockets being the last example within mainstream media that has a direct connection to the new African movement, the African independence movement, more articulate and also just the black power movement as a whole. He's the last living testament that we have because beyond them you can't really name me a celebrity who has that direct lineage, that direct line. And that's why Fini Shakur called him the black prince of the revolution, because I think she knew what she was gearing him up to be. And I think all of us feel that as we progress through these years, we realize how much we've lost with just that living example no longer being here. Yeah, I think there's two people who are the most impactful to the youth and the nation that are martyrs. I would say it's El Haj Malik El Shabazz and then Tupac Shakur.  You don't say you go see someone wearing a Tupac shirt. I'm saying you might hear someone playing a Malcolm speech. Two different generations and of course, Tupac being inspired by El Haj Malik El Shabazz, right? But when I think about Tupac, I think about someone who was strategizing. I think someone who was also a product of the new African nation. You know what I'm saying? I'm a Tulu, a Fini, a Sada. You know what I'm saying? One but like a product of the new African nation. And it just shows you how strong, like if you have a strong tribe, you have a strong family, you have that root as your foundation, especially coming from the Shakur household. Like that example that he said was what he was taught, you know what I'm saying? So I think it gives a great example of the family dynamic, you know? I think the left sometimes I don't want to talk about family and the importance of building a family and having that household. You know what I'm saying? He's also a strategist, a tactician, you know what I'm saying? The way he was making music and then pulling up in different neighborhoods with the program. I'm saying, hey, let's get together, man. All right, we're going to make this music and then we're going to have a program. We're going to do something for the kids. We're going to do something for the youth. We're going to do something for the people. And he was a master of language. You know what I'm saying? He was a master of language and a master of being able to control the media, I would say too, right? Because he put on what someone would say, oh man, he was faking this. Now he was doing certain things for a very strategic reason so that the masses of people can resonate with his spirit and resonate with his music and be able to make positive change. You know what I'm saying? So I think that that tactical strategy and then just the spirit you get from his music. You know what I'm saying? That you feel in your soul when you hear Pox music. And they just, even in the gym today, it's going on.  So I'd say the tactics, the strategy, and then the impact that he's had is a very long lasting pocket. And Malcolm was two of the people that was up there for me. Without question. Some people might take a problem with those statements. But I mean, for one, we speak in subjectively. I asked y'all individually, but I believe that y'all subjective opinions are based on objective facts. Yeah. I feel like you go places outside of this country and you see statues of Poc. You see people wearing that bandana. You see people with the tats across the stomach. I'm saying like. And it really made me think about, especially when you start with the martyrdom part, right? Like in Islam, martyrs don't die. Like they still with us. And you think about the spirit of Malcolm still being with us within our organizing work. You know what I'm saying? You can say also like the way we approach how we work with artists is also like the spirit of Poc. Oh, without question. So like do like the work, the material programs that build in the nation, and they still with us. Speaking about it right now, we will say so. That's also the martyrdom is a lesson for us as well. You know what I'm saying?  You know what I'm saying? They didn't fear it. They didn't fear it. Like they knew what they was up against and they still chose to take that path. So that's a lesson for me. Poc represent absolutely like calculated courage. A lot of people try to act like it was sporadic. And that's I know he was definitely a victim of a psychological warfare in every sense of the word. But he was very calculated and courageous. This is someone who, as they might say, understood the dialectic and it shows in the way that he organized, it shows in the way that he moved through the world. And so he, when I listen to Poc, I can tell it's like when I'm trying to get something I bought him. I'm trying to dig deep. You feel me? I was listening to we're going to talk about these songs later for show. But I was listening to ambitions as a writer with those lyrics due to me realizing how young he was. Like we watching someone who was 24, 25 years old and now I'm 31. About to be 31 and I'm using his his words as a guidance for my day to day life. Come on. And that's that's speaking to the power. That's that's speaking to the power of times. Yeah, without question. Thomas and the conditions are still, you know, obviously that would that change. You could say they got worse. But you feel me when he's spending still something you could party with day to day life. It makes us a reality. Very rarely do you see an artist that has a street named after them Middle East somewhere in Afghanistan. You got a statue in Germany. You got child soldiers listening to your music in Africa.  You have all across the world to colonize people. The spirit of the colonized world understands Poc. We understand Malcolm. They understand our martyrs. They understand that they were an organized force because they were able to fold us all into a coherent body politic of recognizing that we are residents of this country, but we ain't citizens. And yet we built this mug, but we don't get none of the benefits for him to say all this and for Malcolm to organize the way that he did. Like I say, it's a cultural arm of revolution that is sometimes the most potent. And I feel like Poc represented that he was like a very spiritual. Like when he talks about his music being spiritual, that's the influence from Islam, that's the influence from revolution and Christians around him. So for him to be martyred in this way for us, it doesn't surprise me at all. When you have 12 year olds talking about I want to make music like Poc and you got 30 year olds that like, oh, I want to, you know, live my life in this way, it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody because when you live for the people, when you do for the people, when you're willing to die for the people, you are with the people forever. So I feel like Poc is definitely like that spiritual arm for us, man, that cultural arm of revolution. Bro, you had the former Iranian president, Mahmoud. He said he was quoting Tupac, like on Twitter. Like you say it's time to fight back. That's what he, we said two shots in the dark. Now he was dead. Like you got presidents of nations quoting Tupac Shakur. Come on, like come on, bro. Like that's why the government has done everything and anything to prevent the rise of anyone, anyone like Tupac Shakur to wrap it again. U.S. government and of course, the the wretched Israelis designed it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Poc said he didn't have a record until he made a record until his his music video for Trapped. But also to go back to your point of his age, for people to not understand that from 91 to 96, we're talking about really a five year span. And one of those years was in jail, clean correctional to my right cause island, you know what I mean? So for one year to be in jail, if I think it was for eight months, people don't understand the gravity of the situation. You have poetic justice in 93. You got juice in 92. You got apocalypse now in 91, if I'm not mistaken, y'all. And then you got McAvelli and All Eyes on Me in 96. The man died September 13th. He got out of jail, I believe, in November of 95. So we're talking about from November till September, not even a year. Tell me about six million records sold in six months out of jail. The biggest rapper in the world is Afini Shakur's son has ties to Geronimo Pratt, has ties to Asada Shakur. And people want to tell me that this is not a targeted assassination and removal, not just a pock, but of the community politic that is at the center of everything he's talking about. For people who say a pock lost his way towards the end of his life, we can get more into that. But if you even if you listen to McAvelli in the unreleased records that were not put on albums or remastered remix, he still kept his politic. He still shouted out Matulu, still shout out Geronimo, still shout out all of his members. It's Seku, like, you know what I mean? And Seku's son was in the outlaws. So Yaqui Kedafi as well. So he was assassinated as well. Exactly. Not only a couple months after the Vegas cover up, in my personal opinion, we can get more into that. Yaqui was killed in New Jersey if I'm not mistaken. And it's a complete removal of the only eyewitness who says that Orlando Anderson did not shoot him. That was not him. That was not him. I seen it. Yeah. Yeah. So and then also there is about a page and a half in the LAPD in the Vegas documents. There's only about a page and a half of police misconduct that was recorded in Vegas. People who moved evidence, people who let people go through barricades that should have been checked, people who identified vehicles that were allegedly around the shooting, didn't question anybody, didn't get names, numbers, coroner reports, botching reports, the hospital conduct, letting people in and out of his floor without getting checked for ID. For all we know, Tupac's court could have been alive in that hospital alive and well, but somebody could have did something else to him to ease the transition along. So for all we know, everything is on the table because how does the once again, how does the biggest rapper in the world selling six million records, movies on the way, soundtracks on the way by the thought his own production company, how does the biggest rapper on the face of the planet die in one of the most heavily populated, surveilled streets in America, so-called America. Yet we have no record of it. We have we have video of the president getting popped in the sixties, but no one has any footage, any traffic lights, no traffic camera footage of the biggest rapper on the face of the planet getting popped. It don't make sense at all. And so just miraculously unscathed, didn't know where to go, just drove the other way. You know, even though, even though Shugnai recorded according to John Potash and all the FBI documents that we've exoned, Shugnai played football for UNLV. So he knows exactly where the hospital is. I don't really care how rattled you are. You know- You know not to drive in the opposite way. You know not to drive. Maybe you don't know to go directly there, panicking, but you know not to drive the opposite direction. Exactly. And we're talking about 1996 in Vegas. So we're saying things like this are a very common knowledge to people who understood the information, but people don't know that, you know, Pac had blown up on Shugnai on the phone, asking him for his money, where's my money, where's my royalties from death row? I'm about to get out of here. And he's screaming on the phone, even in the dear mama documentary, where I know we're going to talk about that mess, but even in the dear mama documentary, Tupac's sister says that a couple of days before they went to Vegas, they were court ordered to go to Vegas because Pac had charges. They said, if you do a benefit concert at club 66, I'll let it go. The charges that he was on for, like gun possession or something. So he goes to Vegas after telling Shugnai, well, after I do this shit, I'm out. After I do this concert, I want my money. I want everything.  And that's what all of his intimate family members say from the aunt to the sister, but the only people who say he wasn't leaving is people like Reggie Wright, who are LAPD, who was the head of death row security, who told all the other bodyguards to turn there, walkie talkies off and to leave their weapons in the hotel room.  All the people who pass in this whole case, it's really just like appalling. How many deaths are linked to people who have intimate information about Pac? The only people who seem to be left are those who are his enemies or people he dissed or people who had things to say disparaging about him. But even people like Michael Moore, who are FBI, I believe he's deceased, who said that he told Pac, I'm working for the FBI and I'm supposed to surveil you. And he's no longer here. So everybody who has said exactly what's going on in Vegas, who had intimate knowledge, we don't know. That's just the markings of an intelligence operation. So you're talking about all these people. Exactly. After this assassination happened and all these other people were just killed randomly. And once the signature of the CIA, signature of the FBI, they're covering up every track possible. We don't have to have conspiracies. Look how many agents were actually involved. We don't have to. Any conspiracy when the objective reacts in the, literally the paperwork shows this, that you put the paperwork in Bible history, you have an analysis, you put all the steps together. It's clear as day. It's clear as day. Absolutely. The one thing that I always say about federal conspiracy is a sure sign of federal conspiracy is when there's too many narratives. When there's decease witnesses for key parts of information, you have a federal conspiracy that as a likelihood, when you have somebody of high reputation of high political importance, who is just miraculously disappeared or miraculously assassinated out of nowhere. And no one has a clear narrative. Everyone will say, oh, no, Paco was staying with death row. No, Paco was leaving death row. Oh, no. Paco was claiming blood. How did he even sign with death row? He did what I'm saying. The manor scope would not put up the money. Shug was the only one who put up the money for him to leave out of Clinton Correctional. And Pac told his lawyer at the time who was in the new African independence movement with Tiny Tai Hemba, he told him this is my only chance to get out of here. If I get out of here, it's my only shot. I know I can get some money up. We can do this. We can do the community centers. We can get the money back to the people. We can do this. But I can't do it from inside. And even on the inside, he had converted Latin Kings members and the Latin Kings members began to adopt the code of thug life that he drew up with Matulah Shakur. And the code of thug life was everything from we need to stop dealing at these hours. We need to stop dealing in our neighborhoods near playgrounds, shooting near playgrounds.  We don't do these things. Like just trying to be a code of ethics. And for Pac to instill this in Latin Kings members who were high ranking, they then called the homies in the streets in New York City. And they converted hundreds of members to stop dealing. And this is actually documented within people who are academics in New York at the time about what happened to the Latin Kings dealing on these blocks. Now they went from dealing there to dispersing and actually doing things for the community, having more events, cookouts, things like that. So we see Pac's influence even from inside the jail, he was organizing to outside. Prior to his prison stints doing things like performing for AP, APRP, African Liberation Day. And it's actually a fact that until he got his first record deal, he was very close to giving up music to go and to be full-time as the chairman of New African Panthers. He was miraculously a young Euro-American girl who was the daughter of an executive at the record label that distributed to Boggles Now. She heard his demo and said, we have to sign this guy there. This guy is great. And it was only because of that that we don't know Tupac as the chairman of New African Panthers. We know him as the biggest rap star. Hey Anas, the history they don't want to tell you, the history they don't want to show you. You know what I'm saying? I know they mentioned it briefly. Exactly. I don't even know if you want to call that a documentary. But... Monumentary, it's a mockery. You know, so the history is there. Because we need to be media literate as New Africans, as revolutionaries, as would-be revolutionaries and organizers. You need to always be media literate. You need to strive for clarity of what is this image I'm seeing? Who produces it? Who's funding it? Who is the target audience? Why are they showing me this now? What is this supposed to be in conversation with? What is this supposed to induce in my emotional state? Is this supposed to attach to me psychologically? Am I supposed to carry this into the real world and replicate this behavior? That what they want me to do? Media literacy is about that. Identifying the image in the actual subtext. So the terrain of counterinsurgency that we have been inundated within this country, you see that everything about Tupac has to just relegate him to being either the misguided young panther who fell into gang life or they call him just a thug madman who met his own demise because he couldn't control his own anger. And no one sees the legacy of the quote unquote anti-blackness of that. The more so the specificity of it is anti-black male of we can't control our emotions or animalistic or we're looking to pounce on anybody who disrespects us. When no one talks about the fact that Tupac even jumped on Orlando Anderson is because the beef that they were having with Puffy who all indications of the East Coast, West Coast beef being a central intelligence concoction and a media concoction. And even Afini was able to identify that for Pac and say, look, we need to rectify this. All evidence points to Orlando Anderson and that jumping being in a more so retaliatory of like you're coming from my life. There was downies on death row chains but the rumor behind the curtain is it was downies on death row artist life. So Pac has just the homie that he was, the loyal man that he was, I have to attack all threats head on. He met a threat and dealt with his issue like a man. It wasn't until everyone else jumped on him that it looked like, oh wait, gang violence. That is a federal tactic called entrapment. Why is Orlando Anderson in the middle of the MGM? No one talks about that. No one ever questions how does he just sit right there waiting for Tupac to come at him? You're this big bad quote unquote gang member like they always say in the TV, just notice once again the media literacy side. How are they framing this? Gang member punched by a rapper and then retaliation. That's the entrapment part. Whereas no one frames it from the perspective of death row chains have a bounty on them. Potentially death row artists like Tupac have a bounty on them from bad boy camp and the people who puffy hires in Compton, the crypts that puffy hired in Compton to go after the bloods that Shug had on his payroll. They don't look at it as entrapment of using the cover of gang warfare to execute the Panther son. No one looks at it from that perspective because the terrain of counterinsurgency has to keep our minds only stuck on the images of, oh, well, Pahk had thug life and, you know, Pahk, you know what I'm saying?  Even though all of the indications in all the police reports show that this woman and no judgment performed a sexual act on him on the dance floor in public.  And the police officers who were present when you got shot were the police officers. The arresting officers. The lawyer was who? The lawyer for Haitian Jack was a police lawyer. You feel me?  This don't fit the lawyers though. And it's just for me, I feel as though that the reason why they don't talk about this history for Pahk is because it gives a direct line to show where we lost, in my opinion, all control of hip hop as a cultural arm. In my opinion, I believe that there are traditions that African people within this country do have within our own lexicon.  We have, you know, drums. We have the spoken word. We have the word. The word is very powerful for us. But when you try to say that hip hop post, I would say 2000, is anything of an independent culture, a legitimate culture, that's where media literacy just shows to me that it can't be. Because where do we have the ability to create our own institutions? Where is the ability for us to create our own institutions within this music and use this music to deliver tangibles, qualitative things to our people, quantitative things to our people, beds, housing, plumbing, food, water, shelter, clothing. If it was possible, if hip hop started in the park in the Bronx, how come the Bronx don't look like Wakanda? You know what I mean? But yet, in the end of the day, we sit around and I think to lure ourselves with a level of perceived sovereignty and perceived control that I just don't see present since 96. And in the 90s and before, I would argue that from its inception, hip hop has always been incubated within Zionist hands personally, I would say that. But there's still a level of wrestle for power. There's still a vacuum of power that I think the 90s represented and there was not the complete overturn of things like the Telecommunications Act of 94 where they consolidated all these media companies down to just six. And how Time Warner by the 90s had purchased all the labels in America damn near, like the Vivendi from France, owning Sony, the Japanese coming in and getting all of these colonial puppets and these colonizers coming in to dominate what was already, I would say a byproduct of European colonization. I just can't at this stage of my life, I can't give hip hop the culture word because I think that culture has to be for our people. I think that each tradition in each region of the so-called United States has a specialized way of formatting these traditions to our condition. But in terms of us having this body politic of hip hop, I don't see that because we don't deliver tangibles across the board that we all agree on to our people using these cultures. Where are the labels that pull up to the Bronx? Like I say, and hand out food every week, you're producing billions of dollars for European corporations. You are a European corporation, but that within itself shows that they will never pull up to the neighborhoods where these geniuses, where these African literary geniuses, these orators are organizing their people or relaying the news to what's happening in their section. They're not gonna let you turn the tangible side to it has to just be the menstrual side.  But ultimately, where is the power base? Where's the economics? Where's the tangibles that come from us saying that we have a hip hop culture? And I believe the death of Tupac Shakur is the death knell in that argument personally. Because if we weren't able to protect the one who's like, we need to get all the rappers together and deliver tangibles, look at what we have now.  Everyone wants to give an advertisement in their raps. Everything is a Audemars, a Patek, it's Pugets in the, you know what I mean? It stars in the ceiling. It's all these things that are meant to put these parasites of the mind into the youth of us, into the minds of our children and it's steering us towards a consumerist mentality. They want militant consumers. They don't want militant producers. And I feel like that's what Tupac also represents to me is he was a militant producer, a thought militant producer of the seeds of a culture and the militant producer of actual ideology for people to follow. I blame the cadres for the state of things, period. It's, if you look at Tupac being a byproduct of the Black Panther Party, of the BLA, of the new African Panthers, there was a vanguard element helping shape him, right? And so any problems, any contradictions that we see that exists in the new African community, it is the role of the cadre to course correct and to resolve that contradiction. And it's a result of cadres not being cemented in these communities. That's why design is so able to take hold of them. Yeah, that's why I was on this panel and I said, they said, well, he's the two biggest factors. You know what I'm saying? I said, hey, we up against neo-colonialism. Like, who do we blame? I said, okay, it's neo-colonialism. We interest ourselves. You know what I'm saying? We gotta blame our neo-colonialism, but it's ourselves, because we haven't done anything to change it. George Jackson says, stop letting the enemy raise your babies. We haven't made sacrifices needed. We haven't had the high levels of organization. We haven't developed the cadre to where art is shifting and where we actually have culture, actually have control, because what is culture if you have no control? What is culture if you have no land? What is culture if you have no housing? What is culture if you have no water? What is culture if you have no dignity as a human being? What is it? And who's deciding what culture actually is since we always use this word? And when you follow the money, like you say, be media, whether you follow the money, all right? Who's making it all? These European transnational corporations and these Zionists, and they telling us, all right, what to think? They telling us what to listen to. You feel me? Like the algorithm of the Spotify playlist, man. Do you even know what music you like? Or was it the culture tell you? Or was it actually the algorithm tell you? You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's not to approach it from a, from a purity, right? Because I work in music and a lot of the things that we have produced are a byproduct of this capitalist individualist, a reactionary humanist society, right? But it's also constantly trying to get into the ear of the artists I work with. Like, bro, we got to do something for the community. Like we got to do something as a means to hopefully get them to see what this is actually all about. All right, like, okay, as you're throwing these shows, now what can you do to actually give something to these people? What can we actually give to the people versus always trying to sell them some?  You know what I'm saying? That is getting closer to, that is culture. You know what I'm saying? Cause he actually is producing something like you were saying, right? It's producing meals. It's producing money for the breakfast program. You know what I'm saying? It's giving those grocery boxes and turkey boxes on Thanksgiving. Like it's having an actual impact in the community. And hopefully using that as a starting block to get them to decolonize their own mind. Like, bro, we got to stop talking about this. Like, why do you, you know, like, why, what is the cause of all this pain? Like, why do you really want these things? Why do you want the chain? Why do you want the car? Where is this chain and car coming from? What led to you having to live this very reactionary, violent life? Like, I understand you don't, you just responding to the conditions, but like, bro, we got to start thinking about what's going on. We got to start being what Yaqui says, urging people for everyone to be a critical thinker. Like really start analyzing what's going on around us. And it's the cadre's role to step up and to provide that structure in that analysis. That's why I always appreciate from Fred Hampton Jr. where he was like, organization needed Tupac and Tupac needed organization. And that's the reason why I always believe in if not everything the European does in terms of warfare, do we need to meet with an equal force? But there's certain things just within strategy that if your enemy has it and you don't have it, you're not having a fair fight. So we think about the terrain of counterinsurgency, Hollywood, we think about the music industry, how it operates in New York, LA.  People who are knowing and not knowing unconscious and conscious of their role to organization, to organized power, to soft power, whereas people look at like a Jay-Z sitting with an Obama, the unconscious African looks at that and says, oh, that's power for us. Even though you can't tell me who us is, it's power for this black community where we don't commune with each other, where we don't vote as a block, where we don't say we need this for this region, we need this for this region, the South black nation needs this, the Western black nation needs this and they correspond and we cooperate. We don't have that, but yet people will see and a representative of an African with an imperialist stooge and say, that's power for us. Whereas, in my opinion, my hypothesis is, as an encroommage of course, I believe we need assets within the media sphere. We need people who are aware and unaware that their role is delivering tangibles for people. It's all about a need to know basis. Some people not gonna be down with the mission and that's fine, but some people are down for just immutable facts of life that children do need food. Can you do that for us? Bet, can you cut that check for 25K? We need that. Some people are willing to be more need to know basis where I represent people's programs. I'm rocking with people's programs. I wrap all across the United States.   That's the way that the CIA operates. That's the way the FBI operates from the activist field to the acting field to the sports industrial complex all over. And we are the only ones, and in my opinion, those who are conscious Africans, we are the only ones who are not equipped with a media literacy mindset to say, we also have to have the two parks around us. We also have to have the folks who are willing to say, you know what, bro, I was going about this chain, but this gonna feed 300 kids. This gonna feed a whole encampment of people. We need new tents. All right, bro, I'm not gonna pay for this new car. I'm not gonna buy the Airbnb for the next two months cause I was trying to chill after tour. I'm gonna just give it to the people. And then sometimes that needs to know basis of, hey, bro, you know what I mean? Big mama needs to pay her bills, bro. Can you help out? Sometimes it's that simple. Sometimes it's as sophisticated as a pock strategy of, I'm gonna get all the rappers together in a van.  And we gonna say, like, bro, we need you to not serve from this hour to this hour. Just let the kids have it. Then we gonna get sports teams. We gonna have a community spirit. We're gonna have the fathers and gonna have the nation. We gonna have all these different groups come in, like the Christian churches. If y'all wanna all be about the spirit of Malcolm and Martin, let's come together and let's actually do something for our community. And then let's actually, you know, build out free concerts for the people so we can all have something to do every weekend, no alcohol, no drugs. We just gonna do it clean. We gonna do it sober for the people and we not gonna cuss on stage. It's like these ideas are revolutionary because that's culture. That's how you democratically build a response to normalize your survival.  Like, no, bro, that's a tradition. That's not a culture. You're doing the tradition. You're engaging in a tradition. African's been rapping. Ask the Somalis, you know what I mean? African's been doing poetry. Ask the Somalis, ask these Africans where we migrate from to become West Africans and you understand African history. That's what, man, drums, so we've been doing. That's why we had drums and one word. We had Hashem on an episode. We was talking about pot. He said, man, you either agreeot or you were gesturing. And we need more griots. We need no more griots because that's the African tradition. You know what I'm saying? Just roses born in New York. You know what I mean? Different mutations from our African superstructure, brother. It's the African superstructure and where we are, depending on our regions, our locales, all we're doing is responding to our condition using the knowledge of that superstructure. It's embedded in our cultural memory. It's embedded in our cultural DNA. The understanding of we have to make food for the entire village to survive. We have to eat what we kill, use every part of the animal. We have to create stories and folklore to understand our reality. We have to submit ourselves to a higher power depending on where you are. If some people refer to Islam, some people refer to the Orthodox Christianity of the East. Some people refer to, you know, the more traditional African spiritual systems, whatever it is, no matter if you are playing to a altar or if you want to get a prayer mat or if you're praying in the pews. And honestly, Judaism is ours too as Kwame Turet tells us. It's the incubator of what is known as Afrabia, it gives us all of this culture. So for us to understand this, of course Tupac follows in that line of griots who speaks to the condition of the village. He speaks to the condition of what the tribe is going through. And for people to try to demean his memory, demean his legacy by leaving him out of top five, they leave him out of top 10 conversations, they leave him out of rap conversations. And they'll talk about Jay-Z being a billionaire. That if you're media literate, you know that that is either a reaction to propaganda or a person to propaganda. Yeah, that's a fact. So what does Tupac meets the new African independence movement? And why is he one of the greatest organizers to ever leave?   He's the blueprint of it, especially as I feel like I've really grown into, stepping into manhood, like 30 now about to be 31 next month. It's just changed the way I try to engage with my family. You see it, like we just haven't, we always got family over here. And so I think it's the very small tribal things that Poc did all the way to the very grandos gestures of trying to galvanize the folks around him with a platform and capital to be centered in the community. Like yesterday with our community pop of market, that was all for the people by the people. We didn't have a single corporate sponsor. Now that's not to say I wouldn't reject corporate dollars if we can get him, right? Cause that would have led to more programming, right? But yeah, I think from the small, the way he engaged with family, right? Like Poc was known for buying these cribs and having hella people living with him. Like he was essentially recreating Panther houses. That's how the Panthers organized you.  And then I think about what he was able to do with Q was referring to earlier, where trying to start this league, right? But then bringing in like Sonika Shakur, who folks need to get familiar with, formerly known as Monster Cody and like, bro, I need you to play a big role in this and understanding the role that the ghetto was gonna play. The ghetto masters is gonna play in the ultimate liberation of the people. And then just always keeping boots on the ground, bro. Just really staying tapped in with the community. That's not normal. And it's not what they, one of the reasons why, you know, led to his assassination, essentially, right? Like he was still very much tapped in what Malcolm would call the grassroots. And so I think from the everyday way that he lived his life will be in courageous, will be in constantly rooted in his people, showing the first people from the very small gestures of letting his family come live with him. Shit, busting at pigs when it was assaulting a fellow, a new African. And then so much in music or just in any form of entertainment or any element where people are having success, they always use that as a means as to why they can't actually organize. Right? Like not so much be a doner. Like Pac was also a donor with money, but he actually organized. Bro, you're talking about a Platinum, the biggest artist in the world still organizing. Like community organizing. And we're about to do this leave. We got these youth centers. We're about to get this money from going on this tour. I'm speaking out at conferences. Bro, he was a grassroots organizer while simultaneously being the biggest artist in the world at a time where now people are the biggest stars in the world. Come on. He a blueprint. He a blueprint. Yeah. Man, people don't talk about like a resonate with y'all brothers because I see a lot of the spirit of like Oakland and Pac as well. We also need to speak about like Pac being incubated in Oakland, like not only just his voice as a hip hop artist, but his politics stem from Oakland. If we understand the Black Panther Party and where it originates as I call it all the new West Africans personally.  Pac was able to get a little bit of that urgency that Oakland instills in you in my opinion. Like I have a lot of people I correspond with. A lot of orgs I correspond with. A lot of orgs I've done PE work with on the side, shadow working with and whatnot. But people's programs is the only one that I've been blessed enough to actually be on the forefront with and be invited out to actually do on the ground work with myself. And the urgency that I see within the Boston, let's see in the people that work in Oakland period, the working class of Oakland, it's the urgency that's instilled within Pac's form of how he wraps. It's the urgency of how he lived. The, you know, the understanding of being in Marin City, being in Oakland.  He used to have an apartment right outside of Lake Merritt. Right outside. That's where he actually did the interview with Angie Martinez. If you go back in and look at the lost interview and he talks about it, hip hop needs to be about more money for the people. Needs to be about be about different beats. Needs to be about, you know what I'm saying, community spirit. Like every time I go platinum, somebody's gonna get a big check. That's out of his mouth. Every time I go platinum, somebody's getting a big check. And I see the urgency of how y'all brothers move. And I see the urgency of Pac going from a movie set to the studio to record six songs. Then going back to the movie set to finish his lines. And then going to do, you know, press conference with Snoop about fighting the Three Strikes Law in LA. Then going hopping out in, you know, Nickerson Garden Projects to go talk to some Bloods or some Crips that took somebody's chain and say, yo, brother, we want to be stealing from each other. Can we at least do this and that? Matter of fact, I pay y'all to do this and that. Let's all sit down together, organizing actual truces amongst gang leaders, amongst tribal leaders. And this is the urgency. So in my opinion, it also dispels more of that counter terrain, that counterinsurgency to a terrain that he was involved in and we're involved in now and we're subjected to. Because how do you have all this time to be a gangbanger and then involved in so much violence if you're an actor in the studio, organizing truces, going to do club appearances, doing shows to get money up, fighting court cases?  Like that's the narrative that they want you to think. So how can a man as busy as that? We see that you brothers barely have time to do this, but by the grace of God, y'all find a way with your urgency. So they want you to deny logic. That's what colonialism is. It's the capturing of land, of time, reality, the distortion of logic, the replacement of actual immutable facts of life, immutable sciences, the replacement of that with mythology, fantasy, fantastical, sensational, versus the sober, the calculated, the pragmatic, the urgent. That's what to me represents to the new African movement is we have to be all of these things. There ain't no excuse. Hey, if you want to make that movie, go make it, but you gotta be on the block at this time. You know what I mean? Like, hey, if you want to make that album, make that album. But like, yo, you're gonna have to go and do this free concert for these kids too. It was a sense of urgency and responsibility. You know, and I think that only comes from him being from who he was from in terms of family, but also just believing in the higher power. And you hear that entrenched in his music, you know, he's like, no, I got a responsibility. I got a responsibility to the nation. I got a responsibility to the people and I got a responsibility to God. You know what I'm saying? So day in and day out is all right. Yeah, I'm gonna do this movie, I'm gonna do this song, but yeah, I'm gonna be in the community. I'm gonna be running around, but I'm gonna still make a shake. You know, Poc wasn't talking about capacity. Poc wasn't talking about self-care. Poc was talking about community by any means necessary, by any and all means necessary. He was talking about community. Wasn't just talking about, he was living it from the way he lived day to day in his house with his family and partners to being on him stages with his people to then taking the money and then providing it to the people and then developing a certain principles amongst gangs. What are we really talking about here? Bro was an organizer. What are we really talking about here? He was a revolutionary nationalist. He was a new African. He was a revolutionary organizer. And that's why they do everything and anything to spit on his legacy. When you take that approach of understanding that everything he did was for a political purpose, then you should understand why he was dealt with by the state in a very political way. It's very simple. That's why they don't talk about him being an activist. And then you have the organizer. Gestures who claim they, you know, for the people making podcasts and making media spit on Poc's legacy, trying to spit on Poc's legacy. Like what type of buffoonery is that? Under the guise of pan-Africanism. Under the guise of black power? What are we talking about? Straight up, man. Criminal. Man. Nasty work. Y'all know what I'm talking about. And then they can know too. Listen. Exactly. Exactly. Because people would rather, and I also want to speak to this, is that although, you know what I mean, the urgency and the lessons that we learned from Poc, the mistakes, the mistakes, the messing up, those are valuable lessons for people. It's the human aspect. So even though we talk about it as well, yeah, we understand his humanity. We learn from his humanity. Exactly. Exactly. Insha'Allah, everyone does as well. Understand that what Poc said, I'm not a role model. I'm a real model. That encapsulates the entire thing. It's like, look, I may mess up. I may, you know what I'm saying? Hit my head on the door, but next time I'm gonna make sure I duck. And it's like for him to understand this and to put this into the self-esteem of our people, for him to speak on that, Afani herself being an organizer of, you know, a master of law, self-taught, to defend herself in the Panther 21, to be raised by that, for her to lose her way and to battle addiction, but come out of it, it shows the Shakur spirit in the self-esteem, self-esteem that is instilled within our children that we need to instill in the children around us and instill in our brothers and sisters around us. And it's, you know, you may make a mistake. You may have to do that bid, but I promise you Yasmin Fula and Afani were there. And that's the community that you needed to do. That's the community that you need to do for, in my opinion. And I feel like that's what POP represents as well, is like for every single mistake, there was a lesson that we can learn, not just as human beings individually, but within organization of, you need to know how to spot these agents. These agents like, you know, Haitian Jack in New York City, who will give you everything. They'll introduce you to Madonna.  You can stay there. But hey, when we come, we bring in this girl around. And when we get there, now you in court and we gone. All the homies, all the guns that we had, we're putting them in your room. Now you're getting charges.  And that's one immutable fact of organization is that the people are going to take their resources from who is offering, whether it is behind a paywall, whether it is behind the barrel of a gun, whether it is given to them freely, whether it's given to them in the handbasket. It don't matter. If whoever has the tangibles, I'm gonna go get it. So if I gotta sit in a workplace for eight hours and get my tangibles for my physiological needs, my housing, clothing, shelter, all these things that the peppers talk about, I'm gonna do that. If it's gonna come in my community, I'm gonna do that. But it's the example and that's why media is so powerful. It's an organizing force. It organizes the minds, it curates the minds, it curates temperament, it curates behavior. And that's what people don't want to see is the spiritual power, the psychological warfare aspect and for a park to be an example in that terrain and be so powerful to have so much real estate within this terrain of counterinsurgency, they had to remove it. No more thug life, no more community mind, no more military minds like Pac talked about, no more against all odds, no more, no. No self-esteem for the people, no real positive manhood. No, no, no. We're gonna give you more money, more problems. We're gonna give you all about the Benjamin's. We're gonna give you a pass to Kovace. We're gonna give you the onslaught for the next 10 years is gonna be money, money, money, cash, money, H-O-E. Yeah, just drugs. We want you high. And Pac was a victim of counterinsurgency as well at 24 and 25. People don't wanna look at him as that as well as a victim of counterinsurgency. Somebody who was given all the alcohol, all the alize, all the thug passion, all the weed that he needed to own the plane from Clinton Correctional when they got him. They gave him all that stuff. They gave him all the alcohol, all the marijuana, all the drugs that he wanted. And when he got off the plane, he literally collapsed because he had never had that much and just induced in him at one time. He was exhausted from getting high and drunk on the plane to L.A. Man, I'm tired of this anger. I'm tired of this tendency, man. I need to put this bottle down. And it's one of his last, and the interview he did in prison. He's talking about getting clean. And this has always been a tactic by the state. Always been a tactic, right? The psychological warfare and then, you know, putting substances as a form of chemical warfare onto the people. You know, that's what's happening. We've seen it from crack. So alcohol, do you feel me? It's a reason. It's a reason that was doing that to him. So dear mama, the documentary. I like how we ain't really talked about it yet and we really grounded in like some of the historical facts about Pac before even speaking on the documentary really. But I think it's important that niggas do some course correction and setting the record straight about it. You know, I only watched maybe the first episode and then you came down to use, I don't watch the rest, but just... I mean, yeah, I try, I have mixed emotions just because, you know, what people gonna say is that his family put it out. How can you three niggas who never known him who never met him? How can y'all speak on it when his family, his godfather, his mom, his cousins, his sister was all involved, his auntie was all involved. Who do y'all three niggas? And I'm just gonna say, this is my subjective opinion based on objective facts. This is how I reached my conclusion. For one, if I go and y'all let a nigger who's testimony led to me doing two weeks in prison, two weeks in jail, direct a life story about me, I'm just wondering like what is really going on here?  That's objectively in one of Poc's last phone calls and interviews with Sanyika. Says the Hughes brothers are cowards. I don't know if he went back and took those where it'd be maybe people again, maybe these folks know something I don't know. So I'm just going off again. My objective understanding called them hot cowards. I know that he did two weeks in jail for assaults for a fight with the Hughes brothers.   I called him a coward and he's producing this film on me. That's my problem. Another is that the point that Q made where all these counter-insurgent tactics that were used just do not come up. Why don't, if we're gonna talk about the case in Haitian Jack, it's mentioned that Jack was bailed out or got it, but it's like, we don't know why though. You do know why. It should be mentioned that Haitian Jack's lawyer was the lawyer that was on retainer for the NYPD. That is something that should be mentioned. If I'm trying to give y'all the story on Tupac Shakur and how he went to jail. And from the music, from the pox on words, he a snitch, he a rat. So what are we talking about? It should also be mentioned. And a few researcher is looking at the paperwork. What's the paperwork say? Go ahead. Why am I in Las Vegas? I had a court order. It was either go to Las Vegas or go to jail. I had a court order.  I had to go, I was ordered to Las Vegas. By the judge. These are very crucial facts. It should be mentioned that I stopped watching with like 30 minutes left in episode four. I stopped watching, it's four episodes. I stopped watching. I'm like, I just cannot stomach any more of this. And so that's where I stopped. But I don't know if it's mentioned that was it legs who worked for the, who, which one of Afini's boyfriends worked with the feds that got her hooked on dope and shit. I think it was legs. It could have been legs. It could have been legs. Yeah. That's what Pater said in the book. Yeah. This is just a lot of, it's not mentioned how many people were working, how many LAPD, FBI were on death rows, payroll. Like actual, like worked. How many undercovers, undercovers? Like Russell Poole exposed in LAPD documents that like there were mad undercover police officers who were on duty at death row at Can-Am Studios where Pac was recording. And they only got put on payroll when he got out. And Russell Poole when asked them why do we have all these undercover officers? And one officer said, oh, we're surveilling the, the, the, the Shakur. They don't even talk about how in Vegas, the FBI documents revealed that they were on the scene in his caravan when he was being shot.  No medical, you know. But we telling a story about this man's life and death. And these are things that we just omit. So you got to get after the war. Absolutely. I watched the entire thing of their mama. And they don't talk to you about how the Hughes brothers disrespected Pac, because Pac wanted clarity on the role of Sharif with the menace to society. Those are the directors of menace society, the Hughes brothers. They directed that, in my opinion, a minstrel film about life in the hood where they just make these animalistic caricatures of old dog who just shoots a man for no reason because he disrespects his mama and keeps watching the videotape and it's very sadistic and it's very just reactionary. And Pac was supposed to play a Muslim. He's supposed to play Sharif. And Sharif was written to be also a part of these crimes and things that they were doing within, you know, the South Central neighborhood that they were, you know, doing these carjackings and, you know, robberies and sticking people up at gunpoint. And Pac was wondering, when he was in reading for the role, he was like, why is a Muslim, would he be doing this? He wanted clarity on why Sharif doing it as a Muslim, why would he do this? Because Pac clearly had respect for Islam and raised within the tradition himself as a youth with a feigning and he has been full of.  I'm not gonna think that that's a contradiction of being for me to be killing people as a Muslim, like that doesn't make any sense.  And Pac is like, hold on, man, you ain't gonna disrespect me like this, man. We just talking about the role. And he kept interrupting because he's like, yo, this line don't make sense. Why would he do this?  And Pac was like, you matter of fact, leave me outside. So then they get to squabbling and whatnot and his friends jump in after he gets the one-on-one. But the narrative is that Tupac got his friends to jump on Alan Hughes because Alan Hughes was scared and that's the counter-inserting narrative. But everyone in the clique say, we weren't jumping on bro, Pac wanted his fate, head up one-on-one with dude. Dude was scared, ran behind his limo, his brother got in the limo and drove off and Pac chased after him and his homies was behind Pac. But they was just making sure that, like all homies do, that he ain't gonna try and try and no BS with him. But the fight didn't happen one-on-one. So Pac just had to get his licks in real quick and the rest of the homies did what they did. So then they call that a jumping. But media literacy reveals to us that you're supposed to code that as, oh, he been had a Bob mentality. He been had a gang mentality. He's always wanted to jump on people. So of course it makes sense that he jumped on Orlando Anderson, exactly. Even though people like corrupt and MCA say they seen Pac in LA clubs, getting it all and squabbling with dudes who had issues with him. They've also seen him get jewelry back for rappers who got jacked in LA. Like Method Man and Wu-Tang, they got jacked for some of their chains. They found the dudes who did it, asked them to kindly give it back.  And they don't tell you that around this time when these East Coast rappers are coming to the West, Pac is putting together an outfit known as One Nation, where he's trying to get rappers from all over the so-called United States to join in the fold from boot camp clip. He was trying to get an outcast. Him and Nas met up in New York City at a park to squash their beef. Pac was like, yo, you got an issue with me, bro? And he's like, yo, matter of fact, Nas said to him, he was like, yo, man, dude, I love you, bro. I don't want no issues, but I'm hearing that you dissing me behind the scenes and you got all these tapes and he's like, I don't got an issue unless you got an issue. Because on the message from It Was Written, it's a Nas album, he was talking about fake love.  And he thought he was dissing him. Pac was listening to It Was Written all the way to Vegas because he was thinking, yo, how am I going to respond to this dude because he respected Nas's pen. But when they met up at the VMAs, I mean, the MTV Music Awards, they squashed it. And he said, yo, come to Vegas in a week. I'm gonna be shooting the Street Dreams video for It Was Written, you gonna be out there, let's get together. And Pac was super juiced up, super excited. He was telling his people, he was like, yo, I want to do an album with Nas. This is all facts, but they don't tell you that.  Why is that not mentioned? Why is that not mentioned? They don't want that information. That one of his last creative endeavors.  Gridlocked, gridlocked, they mentioned all these things. Gridlocked, chord adjusted. They mentioned all these albums. Oh, yeah, they don't mention One Nation. Why? Because they want you to have a very reduced understanding of who Tupac Shakur is to fit the narrative of the young nigga who can't control himself, the young assaulter, the fake gangbanger. Bro, the nigga grew up in projects. What is fake about that? Marin City. Projects across the country. Not just the ball to board. New York, the nigga was broke. No, because he grew up in Marin. Like, nigga, what you talking about? Like, come on. But he faking. You on the phone with one of the most notorious gangbangers of all time and said, you can say like now you've been like, yeah, you got introduced to this side, this form of gangbanging late, the same way I got introduced to the movement late, but we authentic on both sides of it.  I don't want to make sure you keep good people around you. Because if not, then I'm gonna come out there. What? I mean, that's why we got to be at the state. Absolutely. Not to move. Not only assassinated him, but they still fear him and his death. You know what I'm saying? Again, is the Poc being a martyr because they fear Poc even in his martyrdom. His spirit is so strong to this day and his spirit resonates with someone to the new African nation that they still have to kill his character, even in death, which shows you how that Poc had. There's been no truth. The action he was taking, which shows you exactly what he was standing on day in and day out. And if people really uncover the truth about Poc, you know what I'm saying? What are they gonna do? They're gonna be inspired to live like Poc was. They're gonna take what Poc was doing about, okay, how do we stretch it to our situation right now? I got a question. How do you feel me pick up that torch that Poc left off? You feel me in 2023? If the masses of rappers actually had a good understanding of Poc?  Which is why they have to assassinate him. His character is still assassinated to this day. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.  Poc was, you know, he was getting a little misguided and he was juicing up the whole East Coast, West Coast, it's like Snoop, you literally dissed New York in one of your songs, New York, New York. You were knocking over the Empire State Building in the video, like, you know what I mean?  But you wouldn't act like it was just Poc who was acting out. It was like, no, bro, you were inciting some things as well. So every, and I don't know if that's due to the fact that Snoop is always high, he don't remember what's going on, but every time he talk about Poc, he always tries to get the backhand. He always throw one of the bus, throw one of the bus. All these channels, always. All these YouTube channels are popping up now to get people's take on, oh yeah, Poc was in the bloods. Poc was claiming blood, you know? He put MOB on his, he tatted MOB on him and it's like, y'all don't understand how that pays credence to the fact that Poc was trying to find a tribe to ride with him. He needed to politicize a gang. He needed to politicize a my personal conjecture. This is where conjecture comes in, where if we take the testimony of QD3 of Quincy Jones III, who was in those McAvelli sessions, who was talking to Poc and he was like, yo, now that I got the people paying attention to me, I wanna give him some of the lessons that my mother told me when I was young. What are those lead lessons? Those are lessons of Panthers. Those are lessons of new African independence movement. So for him to say this in the McAvelli sessions, the last music that he was recording, and then for him to be around these members of the Ma'apai Rouge, to me, it only gives credence to the fact that he was trying to find, in my opinion, an army to add on to the outlaws who were also his family. No one talks about how the outlaws were his family. There were family members, cousins, first cousins and second cousins, Napoleon, all of them, were family friends and family blood. So people don't understand. He was trying to mold that street, that lumping mentality, that lumping organization with actual revolutionary organization. And I feel as though that as QD3 says, as Quincy Jones III said, he felt like Poc had to dumb down, quote unquote, to get to a core audience of people and speak to their heart and he was gonna take them somewhere else. And I feel as though that we see a renaissance within hip hop has been denied with the assassination of Tupac Shakur because it is only until after death do we see just unrepentant, unabashed spectacles of wealth and greed and gluttony and hyper sexualization and hyper, you know what I'm saying, violence, where no one's saying that Poc did not speak about violence, but if there's a difference to report on violence, there's a difference to display violence within your lyrics. And then there's also the praising of violence. There's the spectacle of violence. There's the sensationalism of violence. And I feel as though that's where the menstrual economy that we are in now, known as this hip hop culture has taken us to in terms of the mainstream. You can always find traditionalist within the undergrounds and within the more outlaw cultures, which is why also Poc was a threat too. He was telling us to be outlaws. If you look at everything he was trying to preach to us, Thug life, the hate you give little infants fucks everybody, outlaws, the outlaw culture of, we don't need the institutions, let's do it ourselves. We don't need their banks, let's get the money ourselves. We don't need their food, let's feed ourselves. That outlaw culture, that was being established and bridging the gap from the lump into the revolutionary organization. It was potent. And as John Patash talks about in the book, FBI War on Tupac's Core, that cuts into the profits of drug trafficking when you turn street lumping, street tribes, when you turn them away from the self-annihilation and the drug dealing, when you turn them away from that, you turn them into revolutionaries. Now the drug trade is done in certain areas. Now how are these capital is gonna keep their front companies open? If they don't use us as the stocks and bonds to lock up in the system and get more money for us, how are they gonna fund their front companies to boost their Fortune 500 company? Cause that's all that America is, ain't nothing but ghettos and concentration camps mixed in with front companies for these intelligence-backed corporations. And that's where we're at now. And I feel as O'Pak represented a person who had so much real estate within the minds of our people that if you take away that example, if you take away the ability to participate in that example, and you only give them, you know what I'm saying, champagne and dollars and, you know what I'm saying, G-strings and marijuana and, you know what I'm saying, Potex and Audemars and diamonds, when you just give people the shiny things, you just give them sugar, but no nutrients, you get sick. And that's what hip-hop is. It's all sugar, it's all icing. And it tastes good for a second, but when you really peel back now, in my personal opinion, this is all just my conjecture. When you peel it back, it's a lot of poison. I mean, look what it does to our people. That's being given to our people. To the young people, bro.  Y'all seen that? No. It's evil, man, but look at what it does to him.  Even the niggas who was getting money, it chews you up and spits you out. It's like a level of poisoning, but it's the psychological operation to get you to poison yourself.  Well, you're making billions and billions and billions of dollars black at the expense of who? At the expense of who? The New African nation. You get yourself. But on average, man, like what is doing to the average person who was out here making that music, that drill music, that music that's pushing drugs and alcohol, that shit is leading niggas to being dared or in jail, on average. On average, bro, you got a lot of people that's dying, or that's rotting in prison, over this music that they're making.  They're gonna push it all the time. They're gonna push it. It's gonna sell. It's a two-fold.  It's gonna contribute to genocide. Whether that's by death or going to jail, and we gonna make money off of it. Who cut the chicks?  It's all for a long time. I miss all about design, especially if we know MK Retro in the design of all this and the repetition. You know what I'm saying? You listen to certain music all day, you're gonna feel certain type of way. It took me like taking, like, Dan Ramadan, not really listening to music. Like, I mean, I gotta be a little more intentional with what I'm putting in my ears day in and day out. You know what I'm saying? Like what I'm putting in my spirit, you know?  You know what I'm saying? I'm listening to the beat up and just being on my man. You know what I'm saying? Bro, I'm listening to this young boy the other day and I'm like, I'm riding, I'm listening to it.  Or put your dirty clothes in a pillowcase? Like this is like his bars and I'm round listening to this. I'm like, bro, but like this is somebody reality. And we know what produced this reality. Colonialism, imperialism.  He's like, bruh, have you come on? I wouldn't. That's why I say, that's why I say brother that like hip hop culture is a misnomer when really what we're talking about within the mainstream context. I always say that hip hop culture is really a subsidiary menstrual economy of European corporations where they allow the colonized subjects to meet gatekeepers when the favor of the gatekeepers who've been appointed by these corporations and through this menstrual economy, if you sell death, if you sell drugs, if you sell hyper sexualization, if you sell reactionary behavior destructive to the community, if you sell that enough, if you have enough of a market share doing that, then you can become a star. Then you can become a bigger artist. Then you can get all these millions. Then you have your lifestyle funded by you being connected to the feeding tube of a Zionist or some Japanese billionaire or some French billionaire.  Why isn't there if like, if it put rid me out the plastic is like going crazy. And I'm not even shitting on people who dance to that because I do think that there's still some level of tactician of tactics that we can use to turn, in my opinion, reactionary organized cultural events, like going to the club and spending money on their alcohol and doing these things, we can still turn these people, turn our people away from this reaction organization to saying, you know what, if we're gonna listen to this music, can we at least like pull some so like we can have a community carpool fund for the folks who are trying to get to the club? And then maybe that'll spur something more where, yo, maybe we don't need to drink, but maybe we can just come here and dance again. Maybe, yo, everybody leave the guns at home. Maybe we can get to that. And then that says, you know, let's transcend out the club and let's take this type of mentality into our neighborhoods where why don't we have a carpool for the neighborhood? Why don't we leave our guns at home from this time to this time? Why don't we do this before and after school event for our kids? But that's where you have actual culture because you have the ability to democratically come up with ways to survive, to make sense of your reality. And there's no way for us to do that if we're on stolen land, if we're a stolen people, if our time is being stolen, if our labor is being stolen, if our labor means nothing. We can't be victims of perpetual theft and then claim sovereignty. We can only claim we want sovereignty as stolen people and all these things are being stolen from us. And that's where culture has to be made. So when people think that I'm being anti-black or anti, you know, new African, I'm not when I say that hip hop culture is not a thing. I think it's a misnomer that we use to talk about our regional traditions and how we use the African superstructure to use our traditions to respond to our condition. And that's where we are. We're using our traditions that we have within our cultural memory and our cultural DNA to respond to the domination that we're under. Produced nearly 20 albums, EPs, has had artists signed deals for nearly close to a million dollars. I can tell you right now that the culture that we are perpetuating is a culture that is ran and orchestrated by the capitalist period. We don't have no power in the industry. None. We have zero power, bro. Zero, whatsoever.  Go look at who's really running these labels, bro. At the BET Weekend. Go look who will be running these labels. What they gonna put Tyler Perry in there?  Where Spotify get their money from. Where Apple get their money from. TikTok, go look who really make the money. Who really getting the concentration of it. Yeah, we give these millionaires that sprout up every, but who, where's the money concentrated? It's not what New Africans. It's not what Black folks. We getting crumbs and that's how they get us. If the crumb is two million, that's better than that.  You got two million, you got two hundred. Two and a billion. I can tell you. I mean, it's sharecropping. In the day, it's sharecropping. Because the field, you don't own the land, but somebody who's laying on the platform. Your labor. You don't own the microphone. You don't own the laptop. We clearly don't want to live like this. But yet we're forced to. I can guarantee you, young boy, don't want to have to make songs about niggas beating his mama. The niggas I work with, they don't want to live like this no more.  It's the only way I can make a bag.  To want to live this way. Revolutionary organizing. Come on. That's why we got to build the cadre. You feel me? And build a material force to be able to challenge us to offer a different way. That's why I like what you say. I'm going to blame the cadre. Blame ourselves. Take a certain personal responsibility for the condition of ourselves and the condition of our people. Anyone that's claiming a consciousness, you got to, it's your own song. We have to say, all right, now we got to do better. We got to build. We got to organize. And of course, we up against the state, up against neocolonialism, but we have to be able to shoot. For lack of better words, manifest our own destiny as a new African nation. We have to be able to create the world that we want to live in. We have to be able to move the nation in the way we want to move the nation. We got to move, you know, this physical world in a way that's beneficial to the masses of our people. That's communal. That's egalitarian. We only do that by building the cadre. We only change and, you know, Q talk about culture. We only develop culture through revolution and organizing through the power actually being in the hands of the people. For the people being able to control all these instruments that they use in day in and day out to benefit not only they self, but they brother, they sister, they sibling, they family, they cousins, and the rest of the people. So that's why we got to figure it out. All right, bro. You've, uh, hiped us to a few times is the Encruma Shakuris framework. Can you elaborate on that for the listeners for us? And why do you think it's, uh, pivotal for what we're trying to do? Absolutely. In terms of fully fleshed out specifics, I'm still formulating the actual pamphlet something that's going to be like pretty quick and easy. The same way like Coda Thug life is, but it's just my, it's my concoction that I've been planning on for probably about three years now, because when I first started to delve into the quality, the politics of Kwame Encruma and the politics and the legacy of two parts core respectively, I saw a lot of symmetry. I saw a lot of, um, alignment and how they would think about the world in my personal opinion. And even from the lyrics to Encruma speeches to things like classical in Africa, uh, neoclonalism, last Asian imperialism to albums like McAvelli and Tupacalypse Now and the interviews do with Sway and the interviews with Angie Martinez and the last interview that he did. I don't remember the gentleman he did it with, but, um, I saw a lot of symmetry and first point of symmetry is one nation. We need one nation. Both Pac and Kwame Encruma understood we need one nation. If we don't have one nation, we don't have cooperation. We don't have community without one nation. We can build micro communities, but in terms of us being an international community entity, no, we don't have that yet as new African people. And honestly, I would argue that as African people, we don't have that still even after the, the full independence period or more so the toppled independence period, I would like to say. So we need one nation. Kwame Encruma, most people understand to be the godfather of revolutionary pan-Africanism arguing that we need one army, one currency, one state, and then we can still respect our sovereignty within culture and within ethnicity, quote unquote, and still can cohere around this, you know, one politic to rock on the same accord that we need one nation within this cultural framework of hip hop. We need the South, the so-called South, the so-called Midwest, the West, and the so-called Northeast, you know, and I would take it to a different articulation of the West Coast, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Midwest, the South, and the Northeast. To me, these are the nations waiting to be made by new African people. These are the regions that new African people need to clarify ourselves within. We need to close ranks in these regions to then understand what we need. The West Coast, what they need in Oakland is not gonna be everything that they need in LA. Then the way that it looks is what I'm more so saying. The articulation of how we express our, you know, survival, how we actually articulate our survival through program work is not gonna look the same. So what someone needs in Atlanta, Georgia is not gonna be what they need in Louisiana. They have different climate. So they have different colloquial understandings. They have different folklore. The Gulligichi people don't need the same thing as folk in Bronx, New York City. They need the same physiological needs met, but how that's expressed through program work is gonna look formatted to their region, formatted to their locale. So we're talking about all these little microcosms that need to clarify. So if we're talking about just one state, like California, Oakland, LA, San Diego, these are just three hub cities that already within themselves need to clarify neighborhoods for what do we need? Then those neighborhoods cooperate with each other. Then from the neighborhood, you become an actual city itself. Then you become a representative nation of California. Then all the nations that come together and say, what have you been doing in your nation? What have you been doing in your nation? All right, it's time to click up. Now we're the West African block. Now we're the new African block here. Now we're new African block in the Northwest. This goes all across the so-called United States. And I think that's how we have to do it. So one nation, capital. Capital predates capitalism. That's one thing that we are struggling with still in our countries within our organization is that we think that commerce and money and mercantilism, trade is an icky word because we see Jeff Bezos, we see these capitalists organize labor to reap from them. And the hierarchy is we get all the labor and all the money that's produced by this labor. All your surplus value, we take it and we live our lifestyles at the behest of the ecology, at the behest of humanity, whereas as African peoples, as folks who understand the transition stage from a mixed economy to a socialist economy to a communist world, you have to have capital. And you have to use capital to liberate parts of yourself into organized institutions that you can't do just with ideas and bodies. You need physical raw materials. You need iron ore. You need oil. You need lead piping. These are things you can't just say, all right, y'all, we can get this from reading a book in a circle. No, that's gonna make us understand we have to have an ideology around how we use it, is the reading part, is the cadre part. But ultimately, how do we trade internationally with people if we don't have a land mass that represents ourselves? No one has to respect us on the international stage if we don't have land that represents and actually produces tangibles in capital. Capital is not just money. Capital is, I have 50,000 fields across the United States that produce apples. Now I can trade apples to this country and get money from it to buy the bridges I need so that grandmas don't have to walk in the mud to get to work. Or, you know what I mean, these are just the ways in which we have to understand capital that sometimes we have to acquire and use the things that are disposed of and produce and be producers to get the money that we need or the other tangibles that we need by trade and that only comes from one nation. So, PAC understood this and INCREMA understood this. And INCREMA said that in class struggle in Africa that we need to use the mixed economy to transition towards where we have private industry and public industry that is responsive to the needs of the people. And we use that to build our base of capital and our economic base to build power and respect on international stage. PAC understood this as well and he's like, hip hop needs to be about more money, needs to be about the community, needs to be about us getting our dollars up, getting our papers up and actually building physical community centers so people can get their needs met.  That's capital as well. We have this many positions to fill and we can pay people 15 bucks an hour, 20 bucks an hour and you're gonna live in our community and we make it for ourselves.  So physical institutions, which I'm a code of identification, PAC understood himself as a new African, you know what I'm saying? Kwame Krumah understood himself as an African. If we don't understand ourselves as people stemming from the same superstructure, from the same cultural history, from the same cultural DNA, from the same cultural memory, then we've already lost because you can't go into battle wearing different uniforms against the people who are organized around one uniform. NATO was a pan-European object. It's a pan-European entity. That's what NATO is. They represent the interests of Europe. So when they bomb a pipeline, it's because they need to do what's best to keep control for the West. So Western entity, we as African people have to be on the same understanding of identification because if everyone's wearing different jerseys, we think the scoreboard is the different too. When the fact is, there's only one scoreboard, Europe up 300 right now. You know what I'm saying? The people in the East right now, they're starting to fight back with this multi-polarity, but that's because they understand identification. No matter where you are in the world, the Chinese man has an opinion on China because he understands his national identification, his duty. It doesn't matter if he's in LA, it don't matter if he's in Beijing, he has an opinion about Xi Jinping. He knows who Xi Jinping is by and large. So that's where we have to have the code of identification. Our code of ethics, thug life, Kwame Krumas code of ethics as well when talking about how to engage within cadre. We have to have code of ethics. You have to know how to deal with each other, how to resolve conflict, how to resolve things like betrayal, how to deal with the actual everyday dealings within our neighborhoods, everyday dealings within our party. It's a code of ethics. It has to be decorum. People think that hierarchy and decorum are these colonial things like you're policing people's behaviors and wanna know we're not policing our behaviors. We're having a baseline to where we know what is appropriate and what is not for producing positive action. And I feel as though that's what code of thug life represents and that's what Kwame Krumas code represents as well. And the last tenant is to just organize. To organize all of these things, to suit our locales so that we can feed our superstructure, feed our people and feed our future. So I've had people take shots on other podcasts and there ain't no such thing as an Krumas record or whatever. And that's cool because I'm not a person who's gonna be accepted by everybody. Not everybody's gonna accept everyone's calculations, formations and hypothesis about the world. But one thing you damn sure want disrespect is the fact that I have done the intellectual rigor to posits this as a legitimate idea. And you can't just dismiss these facts. You can't just dismiss my rigor. So as a Krumas chakras, I believe that the one nation coherent ideology is the only way for us to go. And that's where the family of the chakras and Kwame Krumas represents so much. Pac is the cultural spiritual arm of revolution where you have Asada as the revolutionary in the field taking out law culture to its highest expression of actually going against the state where you have Afani, the legal side, the understanding of law, the understanding of how to use law. You have Mutulu, the medicinal side, the acupuncture, you have Lumumba Shakur, the oration of it, the actual organization of the lumpen around it. And Pac has a little bit of all these because clearly he's the child of the revolution. But the Shakur family to me is who I'm talking about when I say in Krumas Shakur is that is to me a template for how family and how communities should function. All of us in one coherent body politic. So in that long soliloquy, I hope people got something from it, but I will be producing an actual PDF on this very soon. I'm just still studying and still trying to find a way to articulate it best to our condition today. I mean, it's one that's rooted in historical and dialectical materialism, understanding both the past, the current terrain and trying to afford something that can actually unify the African masses on a socioeconomic and political level. I mean, it's not a lot like proven on, especially when we talk about the new African nation and organizing in different locales and having forces wherever we are to ultimately have the same objective of freeing the land. And understanding they can't happen in San Francisco and New Africa. Without a national identity.  A political identity. Without these things is, what Pac says, poppycock is nonsense. Period. Without having a unified, at first, Jaleel was at a, both Jaleel and Abbas were at, I can't remember the exact name of the conference, but put on by community movement builders out in Atlanta, doing really great work. And one of Jaleel's questions was like, I raise your hand if you identify as new African. Of course he's talking to, not only the panelists, but the people in the board. The people there, right? And he asked this question that's to understand like, yo, both your political and national identity will start to govern every aspect of your life. Would you identify as that lays the foundation for your social, economic and political interests? And first and foremost, we gotta identify as African. New African for us here in the so-called United States and understanding what our colonial subjugation has meant, whether it's been forced to mix amongst each other as different African tribes, or forced to mix amongst the colonizers. Recognizing that we can't point to, I don't know where I'm from on the continent. Period, I don't know. I don't know, but I can trace to the land of Port Arthur. I can trace to Murrow, Mississippi. I can trace back to them plantations and my people that fought there, right? Understanding that we have had a specific form of subjugation exploitation being here in the belly of the beast as Africans here in America. And with that, we are going to have to wage a specific war here. That to me, it made complete and total sense. I just don't see how, again, Neo-Shit seems very stooped in history, very stooped in the current terrain and has a hypothesis for what can get us to a liberated and sovereign. I mean, and it's the dialectical unity between the new African nation and Pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism can't be established without the new African nation. No. The new African nation will always be on an island without Pan-Africanism. That's what it is. We want the world to be free. New Africans got to be free. If we understand the United States of America as the primary source of evil and periodism and capitalism in the world, we got to ask ourself, how do we best fight the United States of America with all its tentacles? What I'm saying, if the head of it is right here in the land we're using, we have to have a national strategy for us to be able to end imperialism. You can cut off a tentacle and take off, four African bases, but what they gonna do? They gonna put that tentacle somewhere else within the continent, or somewhere else within West Asia and develop another military apparatus. But if we go for the head, like George said, we go for the head, we can say humanity and prevent nuclear warfare. I'm curious as to why someone would say you can't be a Shakurist. When you look at what that family has done to organize the masses of people and combat international finance capital. Why would someone say you can't be a Shakurist?  And people can tell you everything about the 60s. They can tell you everything about what happened in 70s. They can tell you all about these movements that were toppled. But me and you come from athletic background, you don't teach somebody how to play cornerback. You don't teach somebody how to play point guard by showing them old 1950s Bob Cousy highlights. This is not to disrespect the foundation of what Chamberlain means to basketball players today.  Something that is somebody who's used similar technologies and had to deal with similar conditions to get outcomes that you desire. And then that's my issue with so much of quote unquote, left organizing is people are caught up in making monuments to failure, monuments to things that people, if they were able to have lived past certain ages, those of our martyrs, they would tell you, why are you still listening to what I said in 60? Why are you still listening to live exactly by this example, what I said when I didn't have to combat Google. I didn't have to combat facial recognition technology. I didn't have to combat drones that can see through 30 different types of surfacing from steel to iron. I didn't have to deal with robot drones that can go up in the building and take out an active shooter in Dallas. I didn't have to go up against BlackRock that has all of these technologies. It's not to say that our revolutionaries of martyrs of the past don't have valuable lessons that we need to adapt to our condition, but people don't wanna do that part, adapt the condition. I mean, adapt the expression of how we deal with the condition. Yes, it's still colonialism, neoclonalism, slavery and imperialism, of course. But every technology, which is what these things are, every technology and every organized force has mutations through time because capital has to react to the ecology. We're still natural beings. We're still organic matter. We're not immutable. We're not, you know what I'm saying, infallible. As human beings, we are a part of our nature. Imperialism and Western ideology wants you to believe that you are above nature. And that means that you can pick any point in time and just think that you're gonna use the exact same tactics and get free with them. That's why I say you have to adapt to your contemporary examples. And that goes back to the first point that we talked about where Tupac is the last living testimony that we have to the Black Power movement in contemporary American media, in hip hop, in film, all these things. He's the last through line that we have. It's not to lionize and romanticize people who made mistakes. It's to say, look at the mistakes of the last example. That baton has been dropped and we refuse to pick it up and deal with new examples and make new contemporary expressions, new contemporary disciplines for how we should live our lives and struggle. And I feel like that's the biggest issue I see is all these historians who want to make, they wanna make, if I could use this word, they really wanna just use a museum curator's eye to talk about left history. It's like, look at these objects from time and they'll pick them up and we'll exhume the bodies of Malcolm. We'll exhume the bodies of Fred Hampton and we'll say, look at how beautiful they struggled and died for us. But no one wants to think, what will Malcolm do in 23? What would he be saying right now? What program would he do? Exactly, how would he conceptualize the new African independence movement? How would he talk about pan-Africanism? How would he address BRICS? How would he address what's going on right now in every new African locale? Cause he would have analysis. I mean, we talk about what we read, you know what I'm saying? I'm reading our old writings, like, hey man, I cringe a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Like, I would change it, change it that, like. Pac would probably make some changes too. Malcolm makes some changes. They're human beings. They're not, they don't defy the laws of nature. You know what I'm saying?  Either in decay, it's just, what's what happens? People's thoughts advance. And this is where Huey says most people try to, under the guise of, Huey says that most folks just get caught up in historical materialism. Constantly looking at the, looking at the past, analyzing the past and applying that same, whatever analysis they reach and applying it to the future. When that is not, that's just not how it's supposed to be. That's not how science works. That's not scientific. That's not scientific at all. Scientific is making sense of the current terrain and trying to manipulate matter in the way that you want it in its current form in its current context. We say all the time Kwame Kuma wasn't dealing with African. He might have been dealing with the early seeds of it but he wasn't dealing with it. Africom did not exist. The Enigas might have had to been dealing with the Kamina base, that big ass base in the Congo and all these different things, right? But they weren't dealing with Africom. Wasn't dealing with drones. It wasn't dealing with Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda as proxy for the Western powers to come in and misrepresent Islam to the whole world. And oh, it was just the rebels who took out Qaddafi. It was just the, you know, that's who they would do in Kuma like they did Qaddafi. They would do him like that in today's context because I don't have to touch you. I'm gonna just get the CIA to pay some rebels who wanna go into your country and install reactionary Islamic law and now we're gonna represent that is what Islam is to the whole world. And that's my issue with so much of a lot of these people who've left the movement completely, they've people chosen book deals, people have chosen just to be podcasters, people have chosen to only be cultural critics responding to reactionary celebrity news. And that's because they don't have the heart for it.  It was never gonna be your beautiful poem or your amazing article or your great insight. It's not gonna be this that frees us. It's just gonna be the exchanging of ideas and how do we materialize them in real life in our locales? And that's the part that takes the everyday commitment and the work that I think, Afaaq or Hinkruma, Amalcom, the names that we're lifting up. Just think about like what, just think about that entire history. The reason why we're speaking about them now is because they materialized actual ideas and synthesized our reality for us. I mean, even when we were looking at the back end of the party, like they took the ideas of Amalcom and put it into practice. They did. So we gotta take what we've learned from the past and apply it to the current, understand the terrain. We got five minutes left. I wanna end on y'all top five, either Pauq songs or verses. My number one favorite to Pauq verses probably the struggle continues. If you listen to that joint, yeah, no, I was born as a rebel, making trouble for the devil.  Can you feel me now? I'm using every single definition of power. Definition of power through players. Are you with them? Like, you know what I mean? Like it's just like, come on now. Like we not talking about nothing else. So that's number one. I would probably say number two would be there's a staring through my rear view part two, which is all formerly known as grab the mic where he talks about the young nation and whatnot.  Just from McAvelli, just the shout outs to the Seku, Geronimo. Yeah, shout out to all his OGs, the real revolutionaries. I love that song. My fourth song probably would be, I'm a stick with McAvelli.  I appreciate that. You know, inter-communalism. And then probably my fifth favorite joint. I would have to say it would be, give me, can't see me. Can't see me is my joint of all eyes on me.  What about you B? Against all odds. That just, I don't know, it's just be getting fired up. Military minds, fame, Hail Mary, and just something about that beat, bro. It's a spirit, it's a spirit. Still balling. Yeah, that's probably, still balling. It's not a still balling. Ambitions as a writer. No particular order with mom. Like these all three make the list, but still balling. Troublesome. Yeah. And ambitions as a writer. So many tears. I'm getting money and the struggle continues. It's like, we're gonna have to make a playlist from after this. Troublesome is cool. That was real tough. Niggas talking a lot of shit, but that's after I'm gone.   Yeah, yeah, it was so. I appreciate you breaking bread with us. I know it's dinner and clock where you at. It's all good, brothers. Anytime my brothers call me, I'm right there, bro. We got.