Transcript/881: Chatting with Brandi Collins-Dexter

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Hello everyone.

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Welcome back to Knowledgefight.

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I'm Jordan, unfortunately alone without my co-host today.

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However, I am joined by Brandy Collins-Dexter, the author of Black Skinhead, the host of

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the Bring Receipts podcast, founding director of Color of Change, other incredible accomplishments,

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and I'm a clown.

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So thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you.

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I am not a founding director.

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I have to say.

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Oh, sorry.

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All good.

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No misinformation.

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But yes, I was senior campaign director and kind of founded our media justice department.

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My mistake.

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All good.

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I apologize for that.

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No worries.

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So the reason that I reached out and the reason that I wanted to talk to you is actually I

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had read Black Skinhead quite some time ago, but I had followed up, I can't remember why,

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but I had followed up on your coverage of COVID disinformation specifically in the black

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community.

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I was hoping that you would be able to better describe the nodes wherein that is best expressed,

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if that makes sense.

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So what do you think is the first major starting point for disinformation?

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So a couple of things, I think there's the different categories.

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So misinformation, unintentionally shared, inaccurate, or out of context information,

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and then there's disinformation, which is intentional creation of campaigns to forward

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a certain narrative.

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And so I think one of the big pieces of this is that I think most people, black and any

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other community, share misinformation at some point.

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I know I've definitely shared misinformation.

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It's really easy to in the kind of information economy we live in, but this idea of disinformation

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and how intentional hostile narratives are planted for often like political brand damage

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or sort of financial ends is something that we see a lot of across different communities.

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I think one of the things that I've been thinking about lately is that because of the way that

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internet research studies, which is a lot of what I do, is often disconnected from community

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based research and organizing, we actually don't have a lot of data on how disinformation

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may drive political activity per se.

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And so we've got like a lot of correlations and not necessarily causation, but one of

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the things with the canary in the coal mine report, which was looking at the early days

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of missing and disinformation around COVID, I at that time was working at Color of Change,

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which is a racial justice advocacy organization.

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And we had been in a lot of conversations with tech companies around disinformation

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online.

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And I started to notice that there were these narratives popping up that black people couldn't

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get COVID.

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And the initial different categories that we saw were, one example was that COVID comes

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from 5G.

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And because black people don't have a lot of 5G in our communities, we weren't susceptible

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that, melanin kept black people protected, all sorts of stuff around Bill Gates conspiracism.

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And so we actually documented some of this at Color of Change and sent it to Twitter.

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And this was like February of 2020 about, and they didn't take any action to deal with

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anything online.

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They said that they didn't see it was a problem.

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Well, that's gotten better now.

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Yeah.

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Shocking, right?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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And I think to me, like, so I started this report because one, I wanted to document this

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because we knew that that was not true.

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And that was a really dangerous narrative that was putting people in danger and that

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black people have certain amount of disproportionate pre-existing conditions that actually make

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us more susceptible.

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And one of the layers that I uncovered around that was a story around media failures, essentially,

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and that the gap in story is what allows conspiracism to fill it.

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And so in the early days of reporting of COVID, there wasn't many articles that were talking

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about the race of people or even placing them in neighborhoods.

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And so what we found out later is that actually a lot of the early deaths in the US were black

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people, but it wasn't, those numbers weren't being like reported.

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And because of the lack of black owned and controlled media within communities, a newspaper

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like maybe Chicago Defender back in the day that would have been doing that work, they're

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not able to do that same work anymore.

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So people were going online for information and it was spreading really rapidly and you

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had like really public figures that were putting out, you know, in some cases misinformation

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and in some cases with folks like Candace Owens, what I believe was intentional disinformation.

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And so that's how we wanted to kind of like talk about that space.

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And so for me, when I think about what happens with black communities is that oftentimes

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our stories are not told holistically and certain like mainstream media outlets, we're

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losing local owned and controlled newspapers, which is happening across the board across

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different groups, right?

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And because that gap is there, people are choosing different like broadcasters and spaces

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to go to collect information.

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And that's where you see a lot of disinformation spread.

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And so now it's part of what we saw was like a flip from black people can't get COVID to,

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you know, conspiracism around black genocide and that black people were being, you know,

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targeted as kind of race specific bioweapon, if you will, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

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Or you see, you know, kind of in political discourse, a lot of stuff around like, you know, how black

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genocide is happening in all these different ways through different political figures.

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And I want to say this, too, like one, I love conspiracies, first of all, so let me start

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there.

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But also, I when I think of conspiracies, I think of them as some ways an untold story

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or an unproven story.

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And so in some instances, I think that there are things that have a kernel of truth to

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them, but they haven't been legitimized.

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And in some cases, we're just talking like batshit, crazy things, right?

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And so like, how do you parse through that?

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And then how communities are taking that in?

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And then how they're responding either politically in, you know, public safety mechanisms in

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all of these other ways.

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And so that's a lot of the work that I that I think about and I do.

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Right, right.

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Well, and I wanted to I mean, the the thing that I followed up on or I want to follow

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up on with that is I've spoken to many disinformation experts and researchers, people who've gone

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undercover and all of those things.

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And the under arcing theme, I say under on purpose, is that kind of goes unspoken, is

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that most of these conspiracy theories that are spread do have a kernel of truth.

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Yes.

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And in general, in general, that kernel of truth comes down to something the United States

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government did to black people.

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Yes.

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And so and so what I found and I still find so I suppose compelling and obviously is the

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largest challenge is that with other conspiracy theories, you know, if you're talking to somebody,

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you can say, oh, that's ridiculous.

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They don't do that.

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But for a lot of black people, you have to say they don't do that anymore.

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Right.

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So that's a unique challenge in terms of fighting disinformation.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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No, for sure.

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I mean, I think so.

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The data is mixed on black people and belief in conspiracism.

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And oddly, most of the research that I found that's really delved into this in a meaningful

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way comes from the 80s and 90s, which I think is interesting in and of itself.

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But there there there's been a couple of research findings that have suggested at times that

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people that are that black people that are, you know, more educated and more politically

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connected are actually kind of more inclined to believe certain political theories.

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And again, that's like one or two studies.

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That's not full thing.

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But I definitely put myself into the category.

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It's like, when you know, kind of the shit that government has done, you know, it makes

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it a lot easier to believe certain things.

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Now, what does believing it actually mean?

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And how does that destabilize institutions and what is like institutional responses?

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I think that's kind of the trouble point.

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And I think in the field of disinformation, part of what I think some of the failures

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have been is that it becomes a conversation solely about the attack or the information

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itself and not the ways in which government or certain institutions have failed communities.

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So going back to the covid example, one of the early things that was being said was that

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black people were under vaccinated because they didn't trust getting vaccinated because

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of things that had happened, like the Tuskegee Air, sorry, not Tuskegee Air experiment, but

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you know, the Tuskegee.

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Yeah, when they shot them up in planes to the moon and nobody documented that black

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people were the first ones on the moon, didn't you know, but that's why they had to fake

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it later.

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Right.

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Right.

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Right.

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Right.

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People get there first.

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You know, you got to have that.

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But like for example, in Chicago, one of the things that was kind of discovered is a lot

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of the early vaccination sites weren't even on the south or west side or in black communities,

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or they were kind of only open during the day where working people didn't have a chance

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to go there or people weren't getting that information.

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And a lot of people, one of the things that we kind of saw was like next door would post

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up, Hey, you can get vaccinated here.

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And then people that were on next door typically like sort of middle-class urbanites would

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then go rush to those sites and get shots.

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And so there were a lot of practical reasons why people weren't getting vaccinated other

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than just not trusting the shot.

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And when you don't tell that part of the story or confront that part of the story of government

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failure and some of the actions of mayor Lightfoot at that time, then it leaves people almost

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like gaslit in a way about, and more, and then even more inclined to give into this

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sort of like conspiratorial mindset.

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Right.

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Right.

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It's, it's the twin truths of this conspiracy isn't true.

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This conspiracy is true.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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You can't, listen, you can trust the government, but you can't trust the government.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Or like this thing happened, but maybe why it happened is not because there's like, you

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know, lizards, you know, crawling the earth, maybe there's a reason for it.

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So yeah.

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And that kind of gets again to a deeper, a deeper layer of, well, the narrative that

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is built up around not getting vaccinated being because of distrust, which is also somewhat

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infantilizing.

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They can't get over, you know, there's definitely a ton of, they can't blank about that.

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Is that that helps overlay the fact that it is the economic injustice that leads to the

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very distrust that continues the cycle that then they create again, you know?

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Yeah.

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I mean, often economic distrust also kind of like bread and butter racism, like not

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directly related, but I think there was a recent report that came out that was talking

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about still with mortgages and who's given you know, access to certain loans at a favorable

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rate still breaks down along race lines, but not necessarily class lines.

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So black people that make more money are still less likely to get sort of like favorable

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loans for housing.

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The Navy federal thing.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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That made me want to start fires.

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I wanted to start fires.

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How do you not start fires after reading that, right?

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It's kind of like, it's, it's like, it's, it's sort of mind numbing sometimes.

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And that's, that's why it's like so important to have, you know, media spaces, alternative

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media places where people can like not just make sense of what's happening around them,

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but you know, kind of build an agenda or power to, to counter some of these systemic inequities.

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But it's hard to like not do the work to fix the systems and then just be like, oh, but

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we're going to pour like millions of dollars into studying disinformation and then finger

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wave at people based on, you know, perceptions around, the perceptions of an increase in

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like a black male conservatism and saying that it's because of the disinformation and

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not because of maybe some other underlying frustrations.

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That is a great, great transition into your book.

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See how I did that?

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I don't know if it gets much better than that.

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That's pretty fucking solid.

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So Black Skinhead is the title of your book taken from the track, what?

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Track four?

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Ooh, are you that good?

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Yeah.

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I want to say, I want to say it might have been track four.

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I could be wrong.

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Yes, maybe.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Could you, well, in the book, which was written in 2021, I assume the definition of Black

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Skinhead was written in 2021.

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It was actually written before that.

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It was actually, I started doing the research for what became Black Skinhead in 2019 and

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it was right around the time I'd already been studying online black political discourse

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had already seen some of the stuff with Kanye, obviously, but I think it was right around

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the time that he did the visit to the White House with Trump and try to make sense of

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some of that.

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And I was thinking about this and I was listening to, I don't know, a lot of his music for whatever

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reason and Black Skinhead just kept coming to me as a perfect concept to just to define

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some of the phenomenon.

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And so a lot of the book was actually written itself in mid 2020 through like 2021 and then

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got released and came into print in 2022.

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And the same week the book dropped was when Kanye did the White Lives Matters fashion

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show.

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So I was like, oh, cool.

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That's dope.

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Well, that's, that's what I was wondering, has your definition and your relationship

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to the words Black Skinhead changed?

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No.

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I think in a lot of ways it's actually been reinforced, reinforced.

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And so like when, when I use the definition of a black skinhead or, you know, what I'm

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talking about is a certain amount of like political homelessness and isolation that

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brings together, maybe is a strange bedfellows around the idea of grievance and often with

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a sort of underpinning of economic loss.

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And so when you don't have those spaces to go to, to make sense of what you're seeing

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or even be confronted on some of the things that you're seeing and you're kind of just

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like left out there where you go.

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And so Kanye to me in a lot of ways is like a quintessential black skinhead because I

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think he is somebody that operates in a lot of like political and community isolation.

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And you can tell that by the way in which some of his ideas have developed and redeveloped

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and who has become like his community or his people with folks like Nick Fuentes and Milo

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and Candace Owens and others.

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And so that, that idea, like it's not one that's, that definition is not one that's

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meant to describe black conservatives per se.

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Like there's a lot of like black conservatives and even MAGA people that I interviewed that

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I wouldn't define as black skinheads.

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And there's a lot of leftists that I would define and even myself included.

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I think that I have a certain amount of at times a feeling of political homelessness,

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but it's like, what is the kind of late stage version of that when you, when you're almost

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to the point where you can't be brought back.

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And I think everything that happened the week, months and years following the release of

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the book to me reinforces what that means.

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And I think to me it would be, I love talking about Kanye, I want to talk about Kanye, but

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I think in a lot of ways the book is using Kanye as an example, but I think every day

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we see a lot of people that feel disillusioned, a political homelessness and are looking for

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something and are being anchored to grievance.

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And you see that playing out in a number of ways, whether that's like rise in school shootings

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or a number of other things like increase of deaths of despair from black youth and

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the age of first attempt has dropped significantly.

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I think all of that is kind of signs of what we're seeing.

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Yeah, when you, I mean you obviously, as you said, you interview a lot of young black conservatives.

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Speaking specifically of Rain, who you mentioned, I found that so fascinating because that was

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maybe the most real politic view I've ever heard from a teenager that was essentially

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boiled down to, have you looked outside money equals civil rights?

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Yes.

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And I'm, I was, I'm, I'm wondering, I'm wondering what is there to offer to that person from

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the democratic side, you know, from the left.

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What do you have to offer to a person who is that practical about the United States?

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Right.

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I mean, I think that's, I mean, it's an interesting thing because that's kind of two different

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questions.

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One is kind of like, what does the democratic party have to offer something like that versus

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what does the left have to offer something like that?

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Obviously those are two very, very, very different things.

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No, no, no.

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I got you.

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But I think, I think part of, but part of the reason why that came up for me is because

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I was listening to, I was going back to listen to some different interviews of Kanye to freshen

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up for this interview.

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And I heard someone speculate that like had a Marxist gotten to him as opposed to someone

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like a Candace Owens, that the direction that he goes in might be slightly different.

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And I'm not sure I totally buy into that, but I think that there's a lot to offer about

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a value proposition that we can all expect a certain minimal quality standard of life

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and ability to thrive in community and the ability to have our own autonomy in different

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ways through meaningful governance and social projects and proof of concept.

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But now I think since we've kind of moved away from a lot of New Deal era policies,

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we haven't seen that play out.

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The government and the democratic party hasn't played that role or offered that value proposition.

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So I don't think at this point in time, there's anything the democratic party can offer someone

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like that.

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But what I do think is interesting about him is, and I'll say this for folks that haven't

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read it.

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So I introduced Rain in a chapter where I talked about-

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I'll say this.

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Read it.

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Yes.

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Read it.

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Please read it.

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Read the book.

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Read it.

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Leave a review.

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Or don't read it and leave a review as long as it's five star.

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But he was my- I talked to a group at that time of 10 black MAGA people that were ranging

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in age.

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Rain was the youngest, so he was 18 or 20, and then the oldest was in their 50s.

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And he was the only one, maybe Lisa, who I talk about at a different point that I would

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consider a black skinhead.

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And there were people in there that was like, we think the republican party has something

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to offer black people.

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And if Trump brings people in, that's cool.

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But the thing about MAGA and the thing also about skinheads is that they're not tethered

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to party.

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They're kind of like, who is a candidate, maybe a cult of personality figure or something

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that's offering something to them.

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So I think if he were presented with- part of what I heard in some of what he was saying

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is that he could get down with a leftist.

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He's not a guaranteed vote for the republican party.

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But right now, the slate of candidates that are being put in front of him from the local

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to national level are not offering anything.

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And I think that's really alarming because I think there's a lot of young voters that

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feel that way.

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And especially in the black community, part of why I think this- part of why I'm delving

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into this is that I don't think that this quote unquote phenomenon or theory is exclusive

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to black people.

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But because black people are such a large voting block for so long, you can see the

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cracks.

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You can put this under a microscope more easily with that voting block.

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And I think there are a lot of young voters that do not feel like their parents' politic

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or their grandparents' politic or the democratic party is a space for them.

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They will not vote for them or they will not vote at all.

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And I think even more with things that are happening around Palestine, I think that's

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also opening up this wedge in that space.

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So I don't fully know what the party, especially when you think about money and politics, necessarily

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has to offer someone like that, but I do think that there's an energy around political organizing

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that in my most optimistic state, I would like to think could help us get to a different

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place.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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I don't know.

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What do you think?

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What do you think actually?

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About what?

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I mean, what does the Democratic Party or the left have to offer someone like Rain or

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anyone?

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You know, I would say that if I was going to trace the history, especially using your

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book, and frankly, maybe the simplest guiding light to me is always going to be whiteys

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on the moon, frankly.

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Right.

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It's like, can I ask you a question?

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Is whitey on the moon?

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Yes.

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Are rats still biting now?

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Yes.

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Then we fucked up.

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The end.

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You know, if you haven't changed anything since then, then the Democratic Party has

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essentially in that time period coalesced around, they're going to fucking kill you

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unless you trust us.

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Right?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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So, and now it's like, well, it looks like they're going to fucking kill us anyways.

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Right.

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So you guys failed.

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So now we have new ideas, right?

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Yeah.

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What I think is so interesting about it is that in a way, you're kind of documenting

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almost a new flowering of 100 schools in 300 BC in China, you know, there are all these

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different thought processes going on geared towards finding a way to unite people.

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Yes.

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And all of it is segregated.

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And that's kind of the difference.

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That's one of the differences between in the past, you could, you could engage in like

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a business church space or news publication.

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If you look at like old editions of, you know, Chicago Defender or Pittsburgh Courier, others,

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you have all of these different political identities, you know, going back and forth

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with each other.

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And then galvanizing this around this idea of racial egalitarianism.

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So in the book, and again, or I didn't mention this book is essays, which I really like because

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you can kind of come, you don't have to read it from front to back.

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You can pop into what you want to.

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But one of the places that I start is outline what has traditionally been seen as like the

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wide range of black political identity.

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And black conservatism is definitely not a new thing.

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But what Rain is kind of exhibiting, which is more libertarian politic, is something

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that in some ways, you know, folks like Thomas will notwithstanding a little bit of a new

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thing and kind of what it speaks to is like, he's not somebody that's like the family values

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guy necessarily or, you know, getting into some of the like, certain types of like cultural

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war fights.

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Like he's like, it's money, like what government hasn't proven anything to us.

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So what do we need government for?

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And I think that that growing sentiment that government hasn't proven its value proposition,

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I think it's a real challenge for leftist politic.

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If you can't figure out a way to to make people understand what government can do for us,

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why would people necessarily choose big government over no government?

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Right.

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I think I think what what people aren't I mean, you know, the the the different schools

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that people are kind of grouping themselves around.

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You have you have the Marxists, you have the maga pokes, you have all of these things.

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I think what I find fascinating, though, is that ultimately the goal of all of them is

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to create unity among all of them in in a in a kind of strange, even even insane way.

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The young black conservatives support a white nationalist regime because they'll bring in

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all the black people together.

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Yeah.

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Is.

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Yeah.

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Which is kind of an interesting thing that I would say put rain on the kind of like borderline

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or would I say the black skinhead spectrum, like he's the closest thing to it.

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But I think in somebody like a Kanye, like I don't he he uses the language of black,

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you know, autonomy and all of these things.

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But when you listen to what he actually says, what his grievances are around, some of the

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conspiracism he like names is actually it has nothing to do with like uplifting black

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people.

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It's about his personal grievances and his gripes with Nike, Adidas, you know, Kim Kardashian,

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like all of these people.

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And so that's to me, that's what I call like the kind of late stage when you're not even

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thinking about what will be the best pathway to black collective, you know, improvement

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autonomy or whatever.

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But you're just out for yourself.

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And I think those are some of the trends that alarm me more.

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Yeah.

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The so do you believe that that kind of idea of I'm out for myself, that kind of that brain

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didn't quite express, but didn't quite not express.

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Right.

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I think that's on the uptick.

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Yes, I do.

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Yeah.

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And I think part of it is what, though, is my, you know, compared to when or or, you

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know?

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Well, I would say definitely with when you talk about black voters, one of the things

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I talk about in there is that the black vote traditionally has been driven by this concept

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of linked fate.

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And so it's this idea that I'm not seeing my vote as an individual vote.

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It's more tied to what the collective power brings to it, which is part of how you get

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a Democratic voter block like you have, because there was a calculus made at a certain point

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in time that, you know, consolidating votes into the Democratic Party could actually do

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more to like improve things for folks than not.

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But I think like, you know, what we're seeing now, what data from like Pew and others is

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showing is that this concept of linked fate among the younger black people is going down.

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They're less likely to learn black history or something that creates this like shared

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identity or shared fate through family and more likely to learn it online.

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And then when you go on and you think about what content gets optimized and algorithmically,

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you know, widespread, it's often not necessarily content about, you know, by or for, you know,

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necessarily black people.

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It's like PragerU.

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It's like, you know, some of these other places.

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And so I think that idea of a vote meaning something for the collective, I think that's

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something that's, you know, starting to shift in little ways.

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And I think broadly, I think people are starting to think more about their vote, less about

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like what does that mean for the collective versus, you know, self more self-interest.

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And again, like that's not necessarily directly new.

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There's always versions of that.

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But I think more and more as certain people feel like even now, like if I vote for Biden,

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but my material conditions don't change, then what is what is the point for voting for Biden?

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I might as well either vote for someone else like Cornel West or not vote, opt out, which

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is where voter depression comes in.

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And so I think that some of and I will say this, like, I think I haven't looked at the

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most recent data, but I do think there's something about the long tail effect of COVID and existing

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in isolation for so long for so many people that does drive a certain amount of self-interest

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that you see, not just in the political realm, but things like I've seen data about how crashes

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have gone up and the way that people drive on highways.

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And there's like all of these different signs of ways in which people are not thinking about

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the community good and slightly more solipsistic as a whole, because we've spent the past two

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years looking at everybody through a screen.

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I think so.

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I mean, and again, I haven't seen some of the most recent data about that, but I know

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it's certainly I feel that and I've seen some data around it.

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And I think I even act more in a lot of ways self-interested coming out of COVID.

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There's a lot of things I give less of a shit about for me.

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Well, I mean, I wonder I wonder so much if if it's that or if it's so much like we really

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discovering the limits of what it is we can do.

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Yeah.

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You know, ultimately, we can say, you know, the vote makes my material conditions change

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or anything like that.

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But the more we look out at what we can materially change, the more we can we can influence things.

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You know, yes.

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You do your best.

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You vote your ass off.

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And then Jon Fetterman shows up and goes, I'm not a progressive anymore.

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So you're like, all right.

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Yeah, that one's new.

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We were laughing about George Santos, but this guy's way fucking worse.

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And it's not funny.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, I mean, that's real.

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I know.

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So so in that sense.

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How is it possible to sell somebody on voting?

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I don't I don't say that it's like like let me try and put it this way, because I'm not

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one of those people who's like, don't vote, man.

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It's stupid.

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That's dumb or anything like that.

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But I'm also going to look somebody in the eye and tell them you should vote.

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And I'm not going to believe it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, I mean, it's funny because I was I was telling someone the other day that I am that

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this is kind of this upcoming election is the first time where I'm really kind of like

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having to really think about, you know, whether or not I want to vote at the top of the ticket.

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And I think there's been times where I've been on easy.

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Certainly I talk about that in the book, but it's like ultimately you do your due diligence

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and you do the thing.

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And also in 2020, there was a lot of things that happened around protests in the street

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and things that made made those like lines much more clear between, you know, Biden and

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Trump at the time.

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And not that I would ever vote for like I would go left, I wouldn't go right.

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But I think to me, there's a couple of elements to hear, like.

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So there's a lot of energy politically out there.

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And I think to me, whittling down the ability to be politically powerful to whether or not

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you vote, I think is not the best answer.

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I think there's a lot of ways to harness some of that energy and really productive ways

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that can shift culture, shift kind of at least shift the stakes in a way that can kind of

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like move politics in a lot of ways, like cultural change precedes political change.

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Right.

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So you can you can shift the cultures.

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I mean, I think that's something that shouldn't be disregarded and that should be like activated.

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And I think in terms of like voting, I mean, I mean, you know, can we repeal Citizens United

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like I you know, I think that it's like it feels challenging, but I will say this to

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kind of like Biden's credit.

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I think there's a lot of ways in which he has not shown up well for certain types of

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voters, including my own, you know, me as a sort of self-identified leftist.

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And there's some things that he actually has been good on, which I would say I would name

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as antitrust.

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I think he's actually been quite good on antitrust and some of these other issues and a lot of

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ways.

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Some of those fights are some of the most important fights that we can engage in and

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win.

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And the other thing I'll say is like we should not whether or not you vote the top of the

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ticket versus whether or not you vote locally or in different ways where there are, you

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know, more ways to to to apply a certain amount of pressure to political figures.

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I still think it's a worthy endeavor to like all the things you can vote for, like, you

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know, Baltimore just legalized, you know, marijuana this past year.

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You don't you don't you don't get a say in that.

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And so there's different school boards.

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There's a lot of like district attorneys.

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There are a lot of really important high stakes fights, high stakes fights that are happening

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at the local level where you can actually see the change more profoundly.

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That is another thing that I found kind of interesting.

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In some of those black manga conversations, that idea of like, well, I mean, the local

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Republican Party is up for grabs.

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We can just steal it.

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Yeah.

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I find such a great and fascinating idea.

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Can you just show up and steal a political party and just say I'm Republican and then

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do whatever the fuck you want?

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Because if you look at the Democratic Party, it feels like that's what they've done the

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whole time.

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Yeah.

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Why not?

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I mean, why not?

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And even like going back specifically to, you know, black voters, there's there's a

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lot of interesting data that says that if you ask black voters what policies they support,

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they actually support more left policies and maybe indicated there's a lot of assumptions

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about black conservatism.

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But one of the things that Leah Wright Rigueur writes about in the Loneliness of the Black

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Republican, which was one of my source materials, is that the actual modern black conservative

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strand of voting is like the legacy of black voters leaving the Republican Party and essentially

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hijacking the Democratic Party.

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And that was really interesting when I heard and sat and thought about it.

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And there's a lot of different examples, even like this appeal to whatever the Lincoln Republican

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or this this this invisible, like movable middle that I feel highly skeptical of.

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There's a lot of examples of conservatives hijacking the Democratic Party.

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So what would it look like to attempt to hijack the Republican Party?

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I have no frickin' identity, honest.

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And the people that were proposing that are not necessarily the people that I that I would

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want to to vote for.

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It's also interesting to me, though, that a lot of those folks were based in Chicago.

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And so I didn't fully get into it in the book because I didn't want to make it a fully Chicago

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focused book.

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But when you look at the history of the Democratic Party in Chicago, there's there's no like

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republic.

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I don't know how many, but I don't think there's very many, if any, like Republican older men

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or anything, you know, or anything like that.

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And so the idea that black people in, you know, Chicago or something or Gary or like

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some of these other places where these folks are from are like, hey, the Republican Party

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could be up for grabs and then we could shift politics in that level.

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There's something about that that feels both scary and interesting to me.

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Yeah, I mean, more scary than interesting.

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Well, it is it is so much like asking yourself the question over and over and over again,

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you know, can we make change from inside?

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Yes.

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Well, you're going to make compromises when you make change from inside.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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And it's just a matter of if you try and make change from inside the Republican Party, the

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number of compromises you make goes through the goddamn roof.

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Right.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So it's like a cost benefit thing, maybe.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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For like, you know, unless unless you truly are like a sort of conservative or Republican.

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The interesting thing about it to me, though, too, is that right now or for a long time,

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I think that's shifting in a lot of ways with national politics in particular.

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You have one party that doesn't feel like it has to negotiate with a group at all.

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They see that as a last vote.

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And when you and then one party that is kind of like, well, what are you going to do?

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Like you don't have anywhere to go.

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So if you shake up politics in that way, we're like the Republican Party has to somewhat

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like negotiate for a black vote.

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And then the Democratic Party has to like sort of actively lobby for a black vote beyond

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like a finger wagging and vote blue no matter who.

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That is interesting.

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I mean, I'd rather see that haggling going on on it, you know, maybe for their left end

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of the spectrum.

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But I do think it sort of changes the calculus and the stance that certain decision makers

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can take if they have to rely on your vote to win.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I find it I find it so interesting because it works it works way better one way.

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If you can, you can trace slave owners over the years through the words they won't say.

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And then and then now we backslide a little bit and they take those words back like, yeah,

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the amount they backslide is the amount of words they say they change their thoughts

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on anything.

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So, you know, plenty of those people have been in the Democratic Party for the longest

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time, right?

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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So they can infiltrate us.

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And we're like, yeah, because you're not murdering people.

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That's great.

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But if we try and infiltrate them, then it's like, well, now I got to murder some people.

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That sucks.

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Yeah.

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I mean, even like I mean, slightly different example, but even like the whole conversation

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around Donald Trump versus Ron DeSantis is what kind of wild to me, because like, I think

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people are like, oh, he's more there's like this idea that he's like more palatable or

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that he's a return to normal.

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I'm like, the man was like, wouldn't he like a torturer in Guantanamo Bay?

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Like, I mean, he is not like he's not and what he's doing in Florida like this is not

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a good dude just because he's more coded, sort of not even that coded, but because he's

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more polite about what he says or who he says it to or who he's willing to piss off.

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That somehow feels like a return to normal because we're focused more on the civility

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of discourse than the civility of policymaking and like what we need to do to create a society

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that actually feels stable.

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So, yeah, no, I mean, it's it's it's extremely interesting.

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That is.

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And that's the thing.

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That's the thing that the MAGA offers, right?

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If that makes sense, you know, the MAGA looks at Trump and Ron DeSantis and says, Ron DeSantis

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is weak.

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We will not reward that.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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And that is that is that is a attractive thing.

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That is an attractive thing, because isn't what we really want out of the Democratic

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Party consequences for the shitty job they've done.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, yeah.

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I mean, he speaks in the language of populism and I mean, I think one of the things going

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back to the moment where Kanye comes to the White House and has this conversation with

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Trump and the things that they're talking about around like criminal justice.

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And I think they were talking about, like, can't remember if it was Larry Hoover or Jeff

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Ford, but like some of those things he's done some signaling to like certain black communities

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and what's also, I think, interesting about him is the more I've been doing this project

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I'm working on about the history of Chicago kind of politics and the implications for

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now is I don't think I realized that for DOLAC and this is getting way deeper at Burke, who's

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on trial now.

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I didn't realize how many people from the old Democratic machine in Chicago were actually

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have been working with Trump for a long time.

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And there's something about some of his.

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But when I heard that, there was something about his language and the way that he speaks

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and like what that signals to a wide group of people that feels very familiar to me.

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And there's a certain amount of he is a party unto himself, like a lot of people are not

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necessarily going to vote red no matter who.

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It has to be Trump as a speaker and into the way in which he's able to move these kind

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of like networked factions or strange bad fellows or skinheads, how that is very interesting

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to watch.

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Well, yeah, I mean, again, I think he's the only one offering what so many people are

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have been denied for our entire lives, which is if not consequences.

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If I can't get legal consequences, if I can't get electoral consequences, well, this motherfucker

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is going to provide retribution.

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And that's that is part of what people are looking at now whenever they say, well, I've

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made all the compromises I can.

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I'm not going to do it again.

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Biden right.

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If Trump hangs everybody in the Democratic Party, you shouldn't have done it.

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You know, it's on you.

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Yeah.

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And he wants to bring chaos.

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And I think when people feel like the status quo is not working, they want chaos.

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They want something different.

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They want something shaken up.

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My cousin, who was actually in this MAGA group, she was but didn't speak because she said

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they were too.

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She's more radical than them.

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But she's queuing on.

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She was on January 6th.

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And you wouldn't necessarily think that a black woman would feel at home in a space.

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But there's something about the way in which she feels like worn down and let down by life

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in a lot of systems that makes that feel like it's a space for her.

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And she's on meetings every week with them, like smoking weed, tie dyeing her T-shirts

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and trying to raise money for the MAGA movement.

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And I think when you think of if that kind of person can find this attractive, you know,

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there's a lot of ways in which he can feel appealing to like an odd group of people and

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drive political motivations in a way that I don't think that either party fully knows

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what to do or grapple with.

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But then there's like the people that are going to vote for him and then the people

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that don't like him.

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But we'll vote for him anyway.

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And to me, some of that feels real scary or like, you know, this is a bad dude doing like

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bad things that should be in jail.

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But if he's on the top of the ticket, you're still going to vote for him regardless.

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Well, you know.

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Yeah.

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That's just extortion.

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That's.

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Yeah.

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Let's just call that.

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Yeah.

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Let's just pack it in then.

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Why not have an actual dictator if we're just going to do that?

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I mean, you know, why not?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Why not?

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Why not revisit this conversation in twenty thirty five when he's still in office?

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You know, I'm I'm I'm wondering just I'm wondering just how long these people are going to live.

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You know, I'm not I'm not talking about any kind of violent things happening to them.

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I'm just wondering how long people live these days.

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I mean, I don't know.

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But I think that's the other kind of like uncomfortable truths about the history of

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the world is there's like I don't know that there's many examples of radical change without

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violence.

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And so trying to kind of think that we're not heading off a lot of what I foresee is

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like, you know, violent conflicts or even this idea of a civil war, which I frankly

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think that we're already into a certain extent.

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We just don't know it.

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Like I just I think that the only way that some of this ends is through, you know, some

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really rough stuff happening.

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Unfortunately, that forces things to a head.

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And that's that's the thing that I don't think that the people that are trying to do civility

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in Congress are really fully prepared for.

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Yeah.

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I wonder all too often if this is exactly the same amount of political violence that

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the United States has always had, if less.

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Same way.

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Yeah.

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I mean, at any point in time, I think a lot of our history and a lot of our shared understanding

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of the United States is obfuscating all the things that have made the United States the

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United States.

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Yes.

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Totally.

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In order to keep us going.

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Yes.

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Like as long as we have a shared lie, this rickety ass machine will keep rolling along.

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Yes.

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Which goes back to.

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Yeah.

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I know our earlier thing about conspiracies and like when you know that some of these

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things have happened and it makes a lot more things believable.

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Sure.

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And it's I mean, conspiracy theories are comforting on so many levels for different people for

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different reasons.

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I think the easiest and the simplest one is not conspiracy theories are comforting for

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people because that controls because the world is ordering or whatever.

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It's because it makes people feel really uncomfortable when you have to really stop and think about

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the FBI murdered Fred Hampton.

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Yes.

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It makes you really uncomfortable to the point where you have to stop and you have to wrestle

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with I'm going to sit here and do nothing about this.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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But a conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory is shadowy billionaires and there's nothing

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to be concerned about there because it's either not true or there's nothing I can do about

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it anyways.

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Right?

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Right.

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Do you like conspiracy theories?

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Do you have like any like conspiracy theories or like a conspiracy theory that you sort

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of are like, I can actually believe this even though I know it's a conspiracy theory?

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I mean, my conspiracy theory is probably different from everybody else's.

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And it's just very simply, I think that John Wilkes Booth and the Know Nothing Party performed

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the most successful political assassination in the history of the world by killing Lincoln.

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They effectively ended reconstruction and put the country where we are now.

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Yeah.

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That's what I would say.

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I would say that the biggest conspiracy is people trying to hide the fact that political

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assassination was the absolute most successful thing that the right has ever done.

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I thought that about Garfield actually, but yeah, that's-

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James Garfield or the cat?

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Both.

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Did you see what they did to that cat?

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No!

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No!

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No!

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Again with the assassinations!

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Yeah.

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Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's, that's interesting actually on my, on my, you know, podcast Bring

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Receipts, we did an episode, like it's my friend and I basically debate unpopular opinions

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about pop culture, super random things, and we kind of tie it back to like then an investigation

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about where does this come from?

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When we did one about the national anthem, I think it was called Star Spangled Bangers,

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but like in thinking about how even this, the original sort of, you know, Francis Scott

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Key song was originally, you know, had racist lyrics and was not accepted.

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Like part, the different ways in which Confederate nostalgia and softening and reframing of history

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has worked its way into like sort of mainstream, I totally, I totally get you on that.

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That's a good one.

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That's a good one.

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Yeah.

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I think, I think ultimately that is kind of like-

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That's the smart one.

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Well, if we talk about America's been in a civil war or it's, we're in a civil war secretly

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right now, or it's all underneath the, I mean, I don't know if it ever ended.

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You can't end a civil war on an assassination, right?

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Yeah, no.

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That's what starts a war.

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No, I think that's a good, that's a good point.

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Now I feel really basic with mine.

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That's not, well, that's not what I was hoping for.

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No, I mean, I think that's, I mean, I think that's a really important thing to think about.

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And I think the way in which even we talk about things like the school, you know, school

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board fights or curricula or critical race theory in a way that term has been repackaged.

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Like it's like, there's a lot of, we've been here before.

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This is the same fight that was had over kind of like Catholic schools and you know, through

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an anti-immigrant slant and like what went into the curriculum in the 1920s and like,

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you know, there, there's, there's been a lot of iterations of this fight and there's a

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lot of ways in which you know, people have you know, formed this kind of like a union

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consensus that didn't actually leave a complete union or left a lot of people out of the idea

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of what makes, you know, a union or what makes the United States.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, you know, you're, you're, what's, I, you've got a new investigative piece that

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you're working on for a, for a new show about the eighties.

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And one thing that you referenced specifically was the satanic panic and, and the way that

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that's, it is, it is fascinating to think about the satanic panic now because it seems

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like it lasted so long.

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Yeah.

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You know, now we have so many satanic panics, but they last a day.

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You know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Or alternatively, maybe it never stops to your point, but yeah.

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That's my question for you.

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What's your favorite thing Satan does?

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My favorite thing Satan does, I mean, he makes for interesting art, you know, I think, you

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know, it is kind of the thing that's like convincing the world that Satan is an enemy

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and not the everyday people walking amongst us is kind of like, you know,

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That's what you're a fan of massive species wide scale.

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That's what you're into.

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It's fascinating to see how he does it.

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Well actually, so this is, this is going to be kind of like, this is going to circle back,

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but like one, one of my, when I talk to people, like when I talk to classrooms and stuff around

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like the history of conspiracies, one of the examples I give is Robert Johnson.

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So blues musician that is considered, you know, one of the pioneers of rock and died

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early and there's a lot of, but, but like, he was kind of like a mid musician and then

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he disappeared for a while and then he comes back and he's this great musician that has,

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you know, some different recordings and the narrative

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He's the soul to the devil.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:13.119)

Yes.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:14.119)

So that's the, that's the conspiracy that he went and he sold his soul at the crossroads

Unknown Speaker (00:55:17.519)

to the devil.

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And then he became this like immaculate musician and then he had to pay the costs by dying

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too soon.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:23.360)

Right.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:24.360)

So it's like this conspiracy about this, like deal with the devil.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:26.880)

That's kind of really interesting to unpack because one part of what's really hard and

Unknown Speaker (00:55:31.519)

white people didn't like that.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:33.000)

Exactly.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:34.000)

But like, but like part of part of what, what allows the conspiracy to live is that it was

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kind of this everyday working class black man who lived and died in a way that would

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have gone unnoticed by a lot of media and of the day and spend a lot of time in Mississippi

Unknown Speaker (00:55:47.579)

where black newspapers weren't really allowed, were kind of like burned down.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:52.320)

So where there would have been documentation of his life, interviews him talking about,

Unknown Speaker (00:55:55.920)

Oh, I practice really hard or I went with these musicians, those, none of that's there.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:00.679)

So we're left with these kinds of like artifacts and then what are we filling in with it must

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have been the devil.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:06.239)

Like, I think that's kind of like the interesting ways in which, you know, the devil and, and,

Unknown Speaker (00:56:12.019)

and Satan kind of like come into play and all of these different ways.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:15.159)

But yeah, also like the traditional satanic panic and how that was used to go after Proctor

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and Gamble.

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Also interesting.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:20.880)

But yeah, we, we talk a lot about the wet cement, you know, after, after an event happens,

Unknown Speaker (00:56:27.719)

Alex Jones's most powerful tool is the wet cement.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:33.480)

You know, there's not enough information, the media hasn't gotten everything right yet.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:38.639)

And as long as he gets his stamp in there, then that is going to stay there.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:42.880)

You know, that's the power of the wet cement is it doesn't matter what happens the next

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day.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:48.880)

The stamp is there.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:50.239)

Yes.

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And what I find so interesting about that story is that that cement never dried, you

Unknown Speaker (00:56:57.920)

know, and, and because that history is lost and oftentimes suppressed, that's the idea

Unknown Speaker (00:57:04.599)

is that the cement never dries and we can always rewrite over and always steal something

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else from this man's effort, from this man's legacy.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:14.280)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:15.280)

And, and that is the thing that, you know, you described earlier about being online and

Unknown Speaker (00:57:21.840)

losing that shared identity due to the algorithm, you know, just pushing PragerU in front of

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you.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:29.079)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:30.079)

And that's how you find out about, you know, Frederick Douglass.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:32.599)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:33.599)

Oh, God, that is, that is about the worst thing I could imagine.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:40.119)

That's, it's that and finding out about Martin Luther King Jr. through the, what is it?

Unknown Speaker (00:57:49.840)

The John Birch Society.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:50.840)

That's not the way to do it.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:53.840)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:54.840)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:55.840)

Well, I suppose, I suppose the only thing that we haven't talked about yet is I mean,

Unknown Speaker (00:58:03.400)

Kanye, really.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:04.400)

So when Kanye went on Info Wars, I assume you watched with, with trepidation.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:12.159)

Yeah, that'd be a good way to put it.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:16.880)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:17.880)

What was, how, how does it, how does it feel?

Unknown Speaker (00:58:21.800)

Because for me it recontextualized the past in a very instantaneous way.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:27.800)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:28.800)

So I'm interested to know how, how you reacted to that.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:31.840)

So, so I think one, there was a lot of things that kind of locked into place for me.

Unknown Speaker (00:58:37.880)

So one of the things that I talk about in the book is I recount when Kanye, or I talk

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about when Kanye went to TMZ and said slavery was a choice and got into like a back and

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forth with Van Lathan.

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And I like mentioned in the book that it was edited, but this is the read on it, you know,

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always on surface level.

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And then we kind of find out around the time that my book dropped was that the reason why

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it was edited is because he was saying this like wild anti-Semitic stuff, right?

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And all of that was edited out in a lot of ways to protect him.

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And so there's all of these ways in which a lot of different like media networks have

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this kind of awareness of certain things that he was saying and let that out of his story.

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But if you look at the company he's keeping, he's, he shows up to TMZ with Candace Owens

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and she had long been trafficking and anti-Semitism like that.

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So it's not like, so it's kind of like a, Oh, that locks into place in a different way

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now.

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And then you kind of see him have this mask off moment where he shows up with you know,

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Nick Fuentes who, you know, has always been, I knew that Nick Fuentes was always a Kanye

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fan boy.

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Like he's talked about in the past how Kanye was in some ways his, his gateway to Thomas

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soul, I think on January 6th and in different times he's used remixes of Kanye's music on

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his like broadcast or whatever.

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And so, and I knew that he was a Kanye fan and in a lot of ways it seems sort of inevitable

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that those roles, that those worlds would come together because as Kanye is kind of

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like losing community credibility, like people that can kind of check him in a certain way,

Unknown Speaker (01:00:26.960)

he's going to be drawn to kind of like the sycophants or the people that, that still

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demonstrate a certain amount of love or loyalty to him in a similar way to Trump.

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And it was also very clear that even in his support of Trump, again, he's talking more

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about himself.

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He always sees himself as the president or as the center and like Trump is an example

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of turning things upside down, which is almost proof of concept that he himself can do it,

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but it was never about him being like a Trump supporter.

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It was about how can I wield this energy, you know, for myself.

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So seeing those roles come together, seeing him talk about some of the conspiracism that

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he was delving into and then seeing Alex Jones kind of play the straight man role was a little

Unknown Speaker (01:01:20.119)

bit of an interesting dynamic and him being like, oh, well shit, like where are we going?

Unknown Speaker (01:01:25.480)

But like that felt like, you know, kind of like interesting to me, but it, it, it all

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of a sudden made sense.

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All of the different kind of like artifacts or drops of things that he said and how it

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all came together.

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I think one of the things that I did not necessarily that I feel like is worth noting about that

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is that at the time, a lot of his antisemitism and still was ascribed to like a history of

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black people being antisemitic and particularly that's coming together around the same time

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that Kyrie Irving is saying antisemitic stuff.

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So those things get kind of like conflated.

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But what I heard in his, the type, first of all, like black people were antisemitic.

Unknown Speaker (01:02:17.380)

So obviously all black people are sliding towards, like what are you people talking

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about?

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And to be honest, like, I mean, I think, I think there, there is a history between black

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and Jewish communities in America that have, that have bred certain moments in a way that

Unknown Speaker (01:02:30.820)

felt familiar in what Kyrie was saying, but like, like Kanye on the whole, like Hitler

Unknown Speaker (01:02:39.679)

tip, that is actually not like a common, that, that was not a thing that felt familiar to

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me.

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And it cued me instantly to, oh, you can tell where he's been on 4chan.

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You can tell what he's been reading.

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You can tell what type of content he's consuming and who he's surrounding himself with because

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the conspiracies that he's going off on, aren't kind of like, for like sort of lack of a better

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turn of phrase at this moment, a bread and butter thing that felt familiar about the

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ways in which some black people talk about like power in their relationship to the Jewish

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American community, like what he was talking about felt like, oh, this is what I hear,

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or this is what I see when I'm looking at all these neo-Nazi memes, like the stuff that

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he's talking about here is like these like sort of global conspiracisms that feel a lot

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of these like alt-right things.

Unknown Speaker (01:03:35.320)

And so like hearing him and seeing him and then seeing the response to him from Alex

Unknown Speaker (01:03:40.679)

Jones, Tucker Carlson, and even Gavin McInnes who like brought him on his show to do a like,

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let me talk Kanye out of being a Nazi.

Unknown Speaker (01:03:49.559)

Sure, they all wanted to explain it.

Unknown Speaker (01:03:52.840)

They all wanted their little cash out of the Kanye machine at that point.

Unknown Speaker (01:03:57.039)

How did you, I didn't get a chance to listen.

Unknown Speaker (01:03:59.920)

I'm assuming you guys definitely covered that episode and didn't get a chance to listen

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to it.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:04.920)

What was your-

Unknown Speaker (01:04:05.920)

It was a long one.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:06.920)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:07.920)

What did you think, what were you thinking as you were listening to it?

Unknown Speaker (01:04:14.719)

I hadn't, first off, I don't know if we're going to agree on this, but Jesus is King

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was absolute trash.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:23.519)

I hated that album.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:26.360)

It was absolute trash.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:28.280)

There's one good track on it, but otherwise it is fucking garbage.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:31.639)

Wait, what is the salvageable track?

Unknown Speaker (01:04:34.119)

Because I may agree with you based on what you say.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:36.840)

Because I follow God, I actually really like, but I am in agreement that the rest of it

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is trash.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:43.960)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:44.960)

No, it is very, very good.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:48.239)

Since then, everything he's made has been very, very bad, even with NOS.

Unknown Speaker (01:04:55.320)

See what happens when you lose community, when you lose your community, you start making

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bad shit.

Unknown Speaker (01:05:00.920)

Well, see, that's the thing that I started thinking is because I was, for this, I went

Unknown Speaker (01:05:08.400)

back and I started listening to a bunch of old Kanye, and when was the last time you

Unknown Speaker (01:05:14.239)

listened to B, Common's album?

Unknown Speaker (01:05:19.280)

Ooh, I always have chaotic mix list, so I still listen to songs from it.

Unknown Speaker (01:05:28.559)

I haven't listened to it as a whole piece in a long time.

Unknown Speaker (01:05:31.800)

Well, I listened to They Say for a year and a day.

Unknown Speaker (01:05:37.440)

Kanye's verse, and in fact, I want to say, I think that whole album, after listening

Unknown Speaker (01:05:41.320)

to it from start to finish again today, foreshadows where we are, and I'm looking forward to 2025

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whenever a bunch of writers do the 20 year retrospective and they all agree that it told

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the future of everything that was going to happen.

Unknown Speaker (01:05:53.840)

That'll be fun for me, personally, but Kanye's verse on They Say is the best advice anyone

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could ever give Kanye.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:07.840)

Remind me of it.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:08.840)

What did he say?

Unknown Speaker (01:06:09.840)

I mean, it is-

Unknown Speaker (01:06:10.840)

Oh, shoot.

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Now I need to go back and listen.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:12.840)

Yeah, you do.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:13.840)

It is basically, when you're black and famous and rich, people will drive you crazy and

Unknown Speaker (01:06:18.639)

you'll lose your mind and you'll, et cetera.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:20.880)

Yeah, fair enough.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:22.159)

And then et cetera happened to Kanye.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:24.239)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:26.039)

So it is really, really fascinating, and also, man, there's never a bad time to listen to

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that album.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:32.920)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:33.920)

That is.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:34.920)

I find it interesting you brought up B, or an album that wasn't his, as opposed to a

Unknown Speaker (01:06:38.360)

lot of people talking about... Are you still there?

Unknown Speaker (01:06:42.960)

Yeah, I'm still here.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:44.960)

Sorry.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:45.960)

You got something pop up?

Unknown Speaker (01:06:47.960)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:06:48.960)

My husband started calling me on my phone, but as opposed to my dark twisted fantasy

Unknown Speaker (01:06:55.860)

or Yeezus or even some of Cruel Summer or some of those, it's interesting that you pointed

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to B.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:02.599)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:03.599)

It's this really particular moment in time, right?

Unknown Speaker (01:07:04.599)

Because that was the one that was developed right around the time of Obama, right?

Unknown Speaker (01:07:10.119)

No, that was 2005, so that was shortly after, or that would have been developed concurrently

Unknown Speaker (01:07:17.559)

with George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:20.400)

Ah, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:23.239)

And what I find so fascinating about that is that it is a timeline for Kanye early on

Unknown Speaker (01:07:33.119)

of in response to negative attention, he does his best work.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:39.559)

Yeah, because that's also right after then Hurricane Katrina.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:43.400)

Yep.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:44.400)

Yeah, or around this time.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:45.400)

And then beautiful dark twisted fantasy is right after, and then Yeezus, and then Life

Unknown Speaker (01:07:51.280)

of Pablo is fantastic, but 50% of it is fantastic.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:56.840)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:07:57.840)

But wait, what's the common album that has... It's not B, the one that he did that-

Unknown Speaker (01:08:05.519)

Like Water for Chocolate?

Unknown Speaker (01:08:07.519)

No, the one where he did the video with Obama or the people.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:13.039)

That wasn't B?

Unknown Speaker (01:08:14.039)

Was that B?

Unknown Speaker (01:08:15.039)

Oh, you're right.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:16.039)

I was thinking... No, I was thinking when Obama became president.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:20.399)

You're right.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:21.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:22.399)

Holy cow.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:23.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:24.399)

I completely... See?

Unknown Speaker (01:08:25.399)

Everything is in there.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:26.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:27.399)

Everything is in that album.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:28.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:29.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:30.399)

The future is in B. Holy shit.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:31.399)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:32.399)

Because it's like, it's actually like-

Unknown Speaker (01:08:33.399)

We figured it all out.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:34.399)

Yeah, I know.

Unknown Speaker (01:08:35.399)

Right?

Unknown Speaker (01:08:36.399)

And putting that in the context of like where black people are at politically in terms of

Unknown Speaker (01:08:39.239)

disillusionment with political systems, after Hurricane Katrina, it kind of hits this low

Unknown Speaker (01:08:43.279)

where there's a lot of data that says that the numbers of black people that think that

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racial equity will be achieved in their lifetime or in several lifetimes, it drops at the lowest

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that it's been in a while.

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And then you see the kind of like emergence of Obama as this figure, and there's this

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like hopefulness and possibility of something new, and that's juxtaposed against like kind

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of rise of new media technology and all of these different ways in which you can kind

Unknown Speaker (01:09:08.319)

of like experiment with different sounds and ways of communicating with audiences.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:13.880)

And so that's so interesting to hear you say that.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:16.760)

Now I want to go back and listen to it.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:18.319)

Oh, you have to.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:19.319)

You have to.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:20.319)

Okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:21.319)

I mean, it's, it is, if you want another conspiracy theory from me.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:25.399)

Okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:26.399)

It is that Osama was really just trying to distract from how much great music was released

Unknown Speaker (01:09:31.479)

on September 11th.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:32.479)

Oh.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:33.479)

Because you got, you got the blueprint, you know, you've got the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's first

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album.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:40.359)

Oh.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:41.359)

I don't know, but fuck it.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:44.359)

Why not?

Unknown Speaker (01:09:45.359)

Phrenology was released on that.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:46.359)

I don't care.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:47.359)

Oh, was it?

Unknown Speaker (01:09:48.359)

Okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:49.359)

Phrenology was not released on September 11th.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:50.359)

Okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:51.359)

Okay.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:52.359)

Because the only, that's so wild you said that, because the only album that was coming

Unknown Speaker (01:09:55.199)

to mind was like Mariah Carey's Glitter.

Unknown Speaker (01:09:58.840)

And I was like, that, that was what he was trying to distract us from.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:02.359)

Could have been.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:03.359)

Could have been.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:04.359)

Maybe he was trying to distract us from how bad Obama was.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:08.680)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:09.680)

Yeah, that could be.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:11.680)

Yeah, it is, it is fascinating to, you know, see just that weird kind of coincidence of

Unknown Speaker (01:10:18.680)

Kanye exploding.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:21.520)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:24.039)

To use the wrong word.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:26.039)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:27.039)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:28.039)

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:29.039)

I mean, that era, like I actually had, so I had so much, by the time I got done with

Unknown Speaker (01:10:34.920)

my book, the editor was like, you actually have enough material for three books because

Unknown Speaker (01:10:39.760)

it was so much.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:40.760)

But one of the essays that I wrote that got cut was called, I can make you a celebrity

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overnight.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:46.840)

And it talks about like this era of this particular period of like rise of Kanye as a producer.

Unknown Speaker (01:10:58.600)

There's like, it's sort of national slash global platforming of all of these like known

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Chicago artists, like Common, Twista and others.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:06.640)

And that juxtaposed against the rise of like the cam girl and sex tapes in a different

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relationship to celebrity.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:13.439)

And I actually really liked that chapter, but it didn't make the cut, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:18.079)

Oh, well give me that one, I'll take that one.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:22.840)

That sounds really good.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:23.840)

I mean, we didn't even talk about the incredibly sex positive points of view from the Onlyfans

Unknown Speaker (01:11:31.840)

that you interviewed.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:34.680)

I mean, we're already at two plus hours or something like that.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:38.560)

I only have like an hour and 11 minutes.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:41.399)

I've seen some of your, I've listened to some of your podcasts, I know you go for like two

Unknown Speaker (01:11:44.880)

hours, 30 minutes, we could keep going.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:46.880)

No, you have not listened to our show.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:49.560)

That's incredibly embarrassing.

Unknown Speaker (01:11:51.640)

No, I love it because that's, I mean, it's just, especially the way that you dissect

Unknown Speaker (01:11:58.079)

like these different pieces of, you know, Alec Jones stuff.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:02.439)

Cause usually when I'm listening to it for research purposes, I'm either just kind of

Unknown Speaker (01:12:06.359)

listening to it by myself and documenting and noting things, but I'm not necessarily

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breaking it out and having a discussion around certain things.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:13.560)

You guys catch, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, this, you catch a lot of stuff around

Unknown Speaker (01:12:17.680)

it.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:18.680)

That's interesting.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:19.680)

But yeah, we're only an hour and we're good.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:20.680)

How long can your audience go?

Unknown Speaker (01:12:22.680)

Oh boy.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:24.079)

That is, that is, you know, that's a good question.

Unknown Speaker (01:12:26.479)

I imagine when we did, uh, we did the end game documentary and so we wound up recording

Unknown Speaker (01:12:33.439)

a nine hour straight or something, uh, covering, yeah, uh, with a 10 minute break for pizza

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in between.

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And we released it in chunks over a week.

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And I, I really wonder how many people would have tried to listen to the whole thing at

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once.

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Marathon.

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Now I'm going to go back.

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I'm going to try to do that.

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That's like how people try to watch all of the star Wars.

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Yeah.

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We're, we're thinking about doing something like that again, but it's, it's, you know,

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it's harder when you get older.

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It's yeah.

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Fair.

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Um, so then yes, let's do that.

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Um, I do want to talk about, uh, sex positivity and the way that creates friction there too,

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because that is another aspect of black conservatism that is almost separate from the political

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in a way that's almost, that's, well, I mean, that's mostly in the religious, right?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So, I mean, to take it kind of back, um, to what I'm, I mentioned earlier, I start the

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book, um, one of, one of the early essays talks about, uh, the different categories

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of black political identity.

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And if I were to, like, I had, I did do some rewrites, but I wasn't fully allowed to do

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like, you know, large rewrites, but I think I didn't do a good job of communicating that

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each essay is meant to represent a facet of that, of the different like spectrum of black

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political identities.

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So I have like my black conservatives, I have like, you know, my black, um, Marxists.

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And then there was, I'm not allowed to say it like that, by the way, I'm not allowed

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to, I have my, by who I have my black conservatives.

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I don't think I'm going to say it like that.

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Okay.

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I mean, that's fine.

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That's fine.

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I'm not going to be one of those people that tries to get permission and then have a bunch

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of people online and be like, no, so, um, so one of the, you know, one of the identity,

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one of the categories in there, and this is based off of dr.

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Michael Dawson's research, who's at university of Chicago and has done like a bunch of studies

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around black political identity.

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One of them was a black feminist category as its own unique politic.

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And I kind of grappled with that for a while and almost instinctively pushed back against

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it.

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And I was kind of like, why isn't there like a black man is very category, but like I was

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trying to capture what it means to have a black feminist politic and then to interview

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somebody who represented that.

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So just also for folks that haven't read it, I interviewed, um, like 50, uh, plus black

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voters between the ages of 18 to 108 of every different political identity and then did

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a bunch of other research.

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And so, um, Lotus lane is a, as a porn actress, um, black queer porn actress from, from, um,

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the Bay area that I wanted to talk to as a representation of what are the kind of like

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modern black feminist fights.

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And just as a side note, um, I knew I wanted to talk to a sex worker.

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I went on to Twitter and was like, are there any sex workers that are willing to talk to

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me?

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And I got a lot of DMS from people that are like, I'm not going to talk to you on record.

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And, but like, you know, um, here's some different folks you could talk to and like none of those

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interviews panned out.

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And so I was like, okay, I'm just going to shoot my shot with a couple of my favorite

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porn actresses.

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Um, and only fans were where they are.

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So Lotus lane and another one were on only fans.

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And so I went on to only fans, but I didn't actually know how it worked.

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I didn't know it was quite so dynamic.

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I thought it's like you leave someone a message.

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I didn't realize it was going to be like real time, a bunch of stuff sent.

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So I get on, I pay, um, and she's sending a bunch of content.

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And then in the middle of that, I send this long rambly message that was like, I want

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to interview you for this.

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And she didn't respond for a while.

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And she told me later, she thought it was spam.

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I also didn't, I like left some words out.

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So instead of being like, I don't want to make this weird for you, I actually said to

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her, I'd love to make this weird for you.

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So there was a bunch of weird stuff in there, but despite that journalist in a strip club

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in the seventies, it was, it was, it was so this, I understand this is awkward for both

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of us right now.

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Here's a dollar, but also let's talk Syria.

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Yeah.

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Which is actually my inspiration.

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Cause a lot of my primary source material for the book was we're old Playboy archives.

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It was weird cause I was like, Oh, actually these articles are great.

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And these are some of the most amazing journalists like James Baldwin and like all of these other

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people.

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And so I was kind of in a little ways trying to do that.

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So I reached out to her, she gets back to me.

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Um, and, and what she talks about, like one, she talks about the experience of being a

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porn actress.

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And I talk about this in 20 questions with Lotus lane, what it means to be a sort of

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like, um, black sex worker and how that's seen publicly and how a lot of sex workers

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are the forefront of technology.

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And there's this process of like making technology viable to the masses and then being displaced

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from it.

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And there's a lot of also stuff around how, um, sex workers can and, and have historically

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been a vital part of different, uh, of economies in different communities.

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And so I was able to, she, she got back to me, I was able to interview her, but it really

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made me think about the way in which one, the way in which we stigmatize sex work and

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who benefits from that.

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Also the way in which, um, the idea of protecting sex workers is often wielded or protecting.

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It's not protecting sex workers.

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It's like protect our girls or there's always this, this idea that like we have to like

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protect women from something infantilizing group as able to make its own decisions.

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Yes.

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And oftentimes the face of that is white women.

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But then the policies that get put into place are not actually around protecting, um, those

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folks.

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It's like, it's, it's about incarcerating and it's about, you know, criminalizing and,

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and subjecting a lot of, um, uh, you know, vulnerable communities to a lot of abuse from

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law enforcement, from John's, from like all of these spaces.

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And because often there's this, this underlying conservatism in America and then also within

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the black community, we don't see those fights around things like, I don't know if you guys

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have talked about, you know, FASA, SESTA, but like we don't see some of those fights

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that are opportunities to kind of, um, either legalize sex work or actually make it truly

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safe for people.

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Like we don't show up often for those fights.

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And so that kind of like black feminist politic was part of taking on some of these different

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dirty fights, um, that are not seen as respectable, but are actually really important for us from

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both an economic criminal justice and tech justice standpoint.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I, I think, I think I would agree just based almost entirely on the fact that

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if I go back through history, I can't find a group that didn't exclude black feminists.

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You know, like first wave feminism, woo, not a fan, second wave feminism, still not a fan,

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you know?

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And then you have religious communities, which were always a high source and any, any queer

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activists that popped up were roundly, yeah.

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So that's probably one of the most isolated groups, uh, ever.

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On so many levels and abused by so many systems.

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And then it's like, when we say black lives matters, what does that mean?

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Cause oftentimes, like even in the, you know, summer of 2020, it was interesting to see

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there was a lot of conversation about, um, you know, police killings that were happening

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and a lot less conversation about the number of like black trans women that were also murdered

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that summer.

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The number of like sex workers, it was like, we had to identify who felt like in some ways

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an ideal symbol to organize around.

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And that's not everybody.

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Um, in a lot of the spaces I organize in, there was a lot of, you know, organizing about

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that stuff.

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And then even, you know, conversations around, you know, Brianna Taylor and others, which

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was uplifted by the WNBA that summer.

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But like, I think, you know, when we have these different conversations, when I was

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at Color of Change, um, one of the campaigns that I ran was around R Kelly.

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And uh, so Color of Change is a racial justice advocacy organization.

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And we run these like sort of corporate accountability campaigns and we decided, my team decided

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to run this campaign around getting R Kelly dropped by RCA.

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Um, and we were working with Lifetime on surviving R Kelly, which hadn't come out yet.

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And when we first started doing that campaign, we got a lot of pushback, really shocking

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amount of pushback from like our members.

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We had at that time, 1 million members.

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I think now it's like 7 million, but around, um, you know, well, these girls are making

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that choice.

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Like there was no nuanced conversation or, you know, important conversation about the

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levels of sex abuse and grooming and all of these other things that were happening.

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It was only after that came out with surviving R Kelly that we could even begin to move the

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needle on some of those conversations.

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And again, it just reminds me how thoroughly unprotected, um, so many, you know, members

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of our community, whether it's like black women, whether it's, you know, queer, trans

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folks, whether it's like class lines, there are just so many people that are, that are

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left vulnerable every day.

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And what does it actually mean to show up for those communities?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, if you, you see, if you hear that response, how is that different from a micro

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version of slavery as a choice?

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All those women that's slavery is a choice, right?

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You know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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The same, same words.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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And it's a duality of one unpacking how much of that is a choice, but then also if it is

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a choice, it should be a choice.

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It should be seen as a protective.

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You're like in the case of Lotus lane, she didn't get into porn until she was in her

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thirties.

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And one of the things that she said was like, she was like, you know, growing up, um, had

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kind of, you know, love sex.

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She had our kids and she felt like this was a thing that she wanted to do and that she

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would be almost dishonest if she didn't pursue something that felt like it was like her dream

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or her bucket list, how could she then tell her kids to pursue their dreams?

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And I mean, you know, for some people would be like, your dream is to be, you know, important.

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But I mean, I think, you know, to respect that as a choice in a field that should be

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protection that deserves protection, that should, you know, not have to allow, you know,

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rape, rape, sexual abuse, and some of the things that happen even online in the ways

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that black women are depicted, um, in porn or even the names of porn.

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She talked a little bit about how a lot of videos will circulate and she thinks she did

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this like romantic sex scene and her name is in it and it's prominent and then it gets

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recycled on porn hub or like some other places and it's like black bitch takes it in the

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face.

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Her name's not on it.

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She gets none of that money.

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So it's like, how do we talk about, you know, these different things as a certain level

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of work that needs to be protected and should be a choice?

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And if it is a choice, it's respected.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I've, I think that's, that's such an interesting point of view on that of, I want to do this

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as, and, and like I, I was, uh, listening to Jesse Ware's most recent, uh, and, and

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there is a point at which they, is that one of her lyrics is, pleasure is a right.

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And the more I thought about that, the more of a transgressive statement that truly is.

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If you stop and think about the idea of pleasure being a right.

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Most of our rights are actively devoid of pleasure.

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And most of our laws are trying to destroy pleasure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So reading these, reading these interviews with, uh, uh, uh, you know, reading interviews

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at like the one that you gave with Lotus Lane, it's, it's always interesting to see that,

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uh, both like the amount of effort demanded of her, the amount of effort that is beyond,

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you know, the physical transformations that often porn stars are expected alone.

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She's expected on top of that to never have a chipped nail, you know?

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Right.

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Yeah.

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That concept is so fucking cruel.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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She talked about that.

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And yet that's her dream and she follows through with it.

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That's a powerful, you know, pleasure is a right.

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Yeah.

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You got to work with that software.

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I mean, and, and hey, like even if you get your dream job, like nobody wants to, very

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few people want to do that job every day.

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Sometimes you get tired of doing like your dream job.

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Right.

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But we, we actually had a whole bunch of stuff that didn't make it in, but we had this funny

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conversation about deep fake videos because she was kind of like, you know, if you can,

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if I could like trademark my image and they did deep fake videos and I could, I got money

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off of that.

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Hey, I wouldn't mind not doing the work and if you can, if you can create fiction indistinguishable

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from reality at that point, let's all just hang out and have a good time.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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There you go.

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It's not a, what is that weird metaverse thing, but.

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Oh yeah.

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No.

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No, that's no good.

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I wouldn't mess with that.

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No.

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Yeah.

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I, I, I keep thinking, sorry to go back further a little bit about that, you know, R. Kelly,

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about all of that is one of the, one of the things about my dark twisted fantasy, one

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of those lyrics that stuck with me is not so much anything other than at the end of

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the day, God damn it, I'm killing this shit.

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Yeah.

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And when, when I listened to that the first time, that was a bad, fuck yeah, man.

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Yeah.

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Fuck yeah.

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And then whenever I listened to the interview of Kanye on Info Wars, it was very much that

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same thing that you, you have to constantly realize is that that is why they get away

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with this shit.

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You know, because at the end of the day, you don't care.

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You care about he's killing it.

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You know, my dark twisted fantasy is a fucking killer album in the same way that people are

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like, fuck it, beat it crazy good.

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What do you want from me?

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I wasn't there.

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You know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, yeah.

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I mean, I think it is kind of interesting to think about in a couple ways.

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So I mean, I think when he did my dark twisted fantasy, it was right after, which I talk

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about in the book, he had the moment with like Taylor Swift on stage, God, I hate Taylor

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Swift, which yeah, me too, to be honest, but like where he gets up and in interesting part

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about it, he's kind of like defending the merits of single ladies, which I can't say

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I love that video either, but like, um, you know, and, and he gets up and, and he has

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all of this condemnation, this new president, um, Obama who in a lot of ways he was almost

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creating the soundtrack to and giving Obama a lot of like cool credibility through like

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the common, you know, the people in like all of this stuff.

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And then he calls him a jackass and he has this moment where he feels like he lost his

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community and then he goes to this Island and makes my dark twisted fantasy and all

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of his community comes around him.

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Like all of the new artists he had been talking to all that they come and they hold him down

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and he makes what a lot of people consider to be a one of his greatest albums.

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I'd be curious about yours, but then I juxtapose that with, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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But then you juxtapose that and when he's talking about it, there was a little bit of

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like false hyping himself up.

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It's like, I have to present this because, you know, I need to feel this, but I'm at

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my lowest point.

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But when I see him on Alex Jones sitting there with Fuentes with a kid, it's like, what are

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you doing, bro?

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You're like in your forties and you're hanging out as like kid that like picks his nose and

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is kind of like a loser, but like, and that's your people.

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Like it's just like I'm sitting and then, and Alex Jones is like looking like the reasonable

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one while he's sitting there also kind of proud that you're doing his work for him in

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a lot of ways.

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It's like that felt like the loneliest, most isolating moment to me.

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And I think if he was like at the end of the day, I'm killing this, like it just wouldn't

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be believable.

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And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, so much of his art has not just

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gone down creatively, but who's willing to engage with it.

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It's like these seem like cries of desperation.

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It doesn't seem like anymore.

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You're passionate about something, you're building up your community, like you're trying

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to do this, you're giving everything for your art.

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You're reading like this really bitter man that has now this twisted perception of your

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relationship with your mother that has put this like weird, you know, stuff around Kim

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Kardashian, which isn't, you're talking about, I'm not sure if he gets into it in Alex Jones

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or somewhere else.

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Like you're talking all of this stuff around porn and the Jews creating porn and all of

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this wild stuff.

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And it turns out later that it comes out that you're showing porn to people in your workplace.

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Like it's just like so cheap and kind of like really hard in a lot of ways to watch.

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And he seems again, not to, I understand why people don't want to mess with him and I,

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and I don't like when people use mental illness as an excuse for certain actions because I

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think there's, people can be mentally ill and it doesn't necessarily mean that they

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do certain things, but he just comes off as so like unhinged and not in, you know, tethered

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to the real world in any meaningful way.

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And that feels so different from his earlier work where it even uses where it feels like

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he's very much tethered to this, to this world in a different way.

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Yeah, I mean, I, it, it is hard to think of the guy who made blood on the leaves.

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Yeah.

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Now, you know, like that too plays around in black genocide theories, but yeah, no,

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no.

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I mean that guy, that guy now shouldn't be allowed to touch that song.

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So that's one of the, I mean, that's, he's the only guy who could touch that song back

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to that.

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Cause the horns were the only thing that could ever, you know, everybody else would have

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treated that track so somberly or such a slowed down beat or anything.

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Only Kanye would be like, this song should be in your face.

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It should be breaking your eardrums, this song, you know?

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Yeah.

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And then it makes it even harder, like, cause you still see glimpses of that.

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Like I didn't realize that that he worked on Industry Baby and it's hard by Lil Nas

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X and again, it's hard to parse out, you know, who does what, but when you listen to Industry

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Baby, and then I found out that he worked on it, I was like, oh, that's that glimpse

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of like, what made me fall in love with him musically.

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Like it still feels like it's there.

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And then it's so painful that it's like, whatever dark place you're in that you can't get out

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of, that's so trash.

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It's like, we still see that those glimpse of greatness, but it's so buried under all

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of this trash stuff.

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I wonder, did you read, his new autobiography is out, Sly and the Family Stone, have you

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read that yet?

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I bought it.

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I haven't read it yet.

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I bought it.

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I haven't read it yet.

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I haven't read it yet.

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You know, I was thinking about that in the context of like, what happens if Twitter exists

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in 1981?

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What happens when I have officially run out of ideas?

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I am the preeminent musical genius of my time, and now I'm out.

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I got nothing else to contribute.

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I just made Jesus his King, you know, what happens there?

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He gets to disappear only to be discovered every time somebody's like, well, I wonder

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how he's doing.

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Still drugs.

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You know, and I wonder what is the difference?

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You know, I can read his autobiography without judgment, despite you know for a fact that

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during that time period, that dude said some crazy shit for sure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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I mean, it's interesting to think about because, excuse me, because Kanye, he's one of the

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few celebrities that had had achieved a certain amount of fame pre and post internet and also

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a lot of what the making of Kanye has been in the modern era is because of his relationship

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and experience with media.

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So like the Taylor Swift moment becomes one of the first major water cooler moments of

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Twitter.

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He's like making the news and he's like redefining.

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That's part of what I was talking about in the, in the last essay, I can make you a celebrity

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overnight.

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He's part of that remaking the idea of what a celebrity could and should be.

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And so that vulnerability was a premium for him until it wasn't.

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And so it's almost hard to like, part of me almost wonders, could Kanye have lasted this

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long as a relevant figure without, you know, social media and, and what are kind of some

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of the like pros and cons to that, but his relationship to technology is really, you

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know, interesting.

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He grew up like a middle-class kid.

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He had a computer in the eighties at a time where computers cost like $4,000.

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Like he lived with his mom in Asia.

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So he's always been on the kind of like cutting edge of tech.

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And part of his persona has always been adept of staying just ahead of the tech to wield

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it powerfully.

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So it's almost hard to disconnect his legacy from that for better or worse.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You just, what I mean, is it just that you got to die before you go crazy?

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I mean, it's either before you go crazy or before you start making shitty stuff and that's

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then all that we like, remember, you got to, you got to tap out before Jesus is King.

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That applies to just about every situation you can think of.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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You got to tap out before Jesus is King.

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I think as far as a place to end an interview goes, it doesn't get much better than that.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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Brandy, thank you so much.

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This has been an absolute delight of a time.

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Again, black skin head podcast is bring receipts and then look for the upcoming.

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Podcast that you'll be really going to come out later and it's called killing Harold Washington.

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And it's about some of the conspiracy involving you know, local mayor and whether or not he

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was assassinated, but that's going to come out in fall of 2024 around the DNC, which

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is in Chicago.

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So look for that.

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And if you're on blue sky, brandy CD also I should mention to my soft back comes out

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in early January and there's some, some updates in there.

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So if folks, folks are thinking about the book, please buy, please support.

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Thank you.

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Well, thank you very much.

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Hopefully we'll have you back on whenever that's released.

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Yes.

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Nine hour marathon.

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Get at me.

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Andy in Kansas.

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You're on the air.

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Thanks for holding.

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Hello Alex.

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I'm a first time caller.

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I'm a huge fan.

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I love your work.

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I love you.