Early on in your rap career,
you write about facing constant criticism.
I love this quote.
You say, "At Catholic school,
no matter how well-spoken or intelligent,
I was still the Black kid.
In Winnefeld, no matter how up I was
on the latest music or fashion, I was never quite...
"Black enough."
I became one of the first hip-hop artists
who was considered "safe" enough for white audiences.
But with Black audiences, I was labeled "soft"
because I wasn't rapping about
hard-core, gangster stuff.
This racial dynamic is something that has plagued me
in various forms throughout my entire life."
And I wanted to ask you how have you navigated
what you call this racial dynamic?
So...
the elixir for me
has been comedy.
Comedy crosses all divides.
Mm-hmm.
If you learn how to make people
laugh, it's like...
it's the sugar for anything else that you wanna bring...
-Mm-hmm. -to that person.
People are wide open...
-Open. -when they're laughing.
Right?
So, for me,
throughout my career,
the...the bigger the laugh,
I realized
the less I was the "Black" dude.
Mmm...
Right? The...
The bigger the laugh, the less I was the soft dude.
Right? Laughter trumps everything.
Mmm.
Right? And it's--it's a magical--
it's a magical energy that connects people
and that it, for a brief moment, at least,
-purifies the poisons. -Yes.
And you're not in any way
marginalizing or minimizing overt racism
because you say,
"Every encounter I ever had with overt racism
were with people I estimated to be weak enemies at best,
so overt racism although dangerous and ever present
never made me feel inferior."
I thought that was so interesting.
-I felt the same way. -Same way.
So "I was raised to believe
that you can encounter any situation racist or otherwise.
Hard work, education and God will topple
any and all obstacles and enemies."
And I wonder, how did that affect you
moving through the world of power as a Black man?
So...
It's funny-- Tyrese called me one time.
He was goin' through something.
And he was mad, he had just left a meeting
or something like that.
And he's like, "Man, what I gotta do
"to walk into these meetings
"and have them not look at me
as just a ***** walkin' in the office?"
And I said, "Well, you gotta stop thinking of yourself
as a ***** walkin' in the office."
Right? So...
I don't--I don't think of myself like that.
Right? So because I don't think of myself like that,
I'm not feeding that in the person that I encounter...
right?
But I just think-- I think it's-it's...
it's really important-- and I was blessed,
as I talk about it in the book--
my encounters with overt racism
were never with people I thought were smart or strong.
-Had any power. -They didn't have any power.
Even-even--there were some like with police interactions.
One-a the times I got called ***** was from a cop.
-Mm-hmm. -Right?
But J.L., beside me, my-my manager...
had a law degree.
So he said, "Thank you for that.
We're gonna head right to Internal Affairs."
Right? So it's like...
the concept of intelligence,
hard work, and God
is what I was raised with as above all things.
And that you can fix it with that.