Welcome to Ask Me Anything.
Yeah.
Does anything mean everything?
You can ask anything.
It doesn't guarantee that you're going to get an answer to everything.
Cocoa butter or Vaseline?
Cocoa butter.
Co-host a nationally syndicated radio show with your nemesis.
Or make music that no one listens to.
Music nobody listens to.
I think what's beautiful about this show is that it is so radically honest.
I think some people be like, why did you name it after a funeral?
And I'm like, No, it's deeper than that.
I don't think that I would have been able to really make that show had a man not been killed on camera in 2020, George Floyd.
What brought you here?
Well, it was war.
Because I was a child I think I was able to sort of blank out the war war a little bit.
But when I came here, it felt like real war, [music] Mm.
Yeah.
What kind of dissonance do you feel between being an African man and a Black man in America?
Like, what dissonance do you feel with Black American people?
It's so weird being like plucked out of one society and dropped into American race relations because it's it's very confusing here.
And it takes a long time to learn what the hell is going on and where you fit in in all of that.
And to me, that felt like one of the biggest crisis of identity that I've ever had to fight in my life.
And I feel like it's only now that I that I think that I've got somewhat of a handle on it.
But some days I don't - Some days I don't even quite know where I, where I stand.
Mm.
Yeah.I think when I first came here, I felt a lot of dissonance because I saw Black people and they looked like me.
And I thought there would be a kinship there.
But little did I know there had been like hundreds of years of Black folks being told that Africans are dirty and disgusting.
Starving and stupid, and we need to send them money.
Exactly.
So I was I was sort ofgetting kind of that treatment from other Black kids my age.
You know, kids are mean.
But, so I kind of grew - I grew up feeling a little bit like separated from Blackness, like American Blackness a lot.
But the thing about American Blackness is the sh** is undeniable.
It's cool as hell, it's It's rich in history.
It's just like - Like I see why white people would be copying Black people so much, you know what Im saying?
Like its - It's undeniable.
Like, after a while, I think, like, I saw myself transform into, like, as I grew up, I was like, oh, I, I think I'm identifying more as like, like a Black person who grew up in this country rather than a person who immigrated to this country.
And I think it was only when I like got to like maybe senior of high school and got to college was when I started to like transform a little bit and started to learn about Black American history, the links between the slave trade and not even the links, but like the continuum, the diaspora, right of Blackness and what how Black Americans, in my mind, are a continuum of the African diaspora.
Right?When I started to learn more about that and started to realize that, you know, I was kind of just being we were kind of being pitted against each other in this real messed up way.
I thinkthat's I think that's what radicalized me.
Yeah.I think that's what made me really start to think more broader about like, you know, race and history and things like that.
And the dissonance became less and less.
I feel like America wants to do that to you, too.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Come, become American.
Leave all the rest behind.
There will be three days a year that are appropriate to celebrate where you came from.
But for the rest of the time, you're American.
Right.
I mean, I feel like you have a little bit of a homegoing going on inside of you.
Oh, that's so sweet.
That's true.
Yeah.
Celebration and mourning for, yeah.
And it's really interesting to hear you talk about Sierra Leone as a place that feels very solid and people who know their worth.
And also, you referenced it as a place of instability.
Mm hmm.And you talking about sleeping in the basement and whispering when the soldiers go by as, like, fun?
I don't know.
My therapist has been telling me recently that I intellectualize everything as a way to not have to feel.
Yeah.
Are you doing that?
Probably.
I think yes and no, right?
Because I have people in my family who look at me and they're like, we can't we can't believe you made it.
Basically, like, they're like, you kind of beat a lot of odds, bro.
Like, there's there was a lot of things to trip you up, and I can't believe I made it at the time either.
Mm hmm.
Like, it's really only like I thank God, honestly because there's been many moments where I could have been caught in any of the snares that are set for Black folks and Black people globally, right?
Mm hmm.Whether that be the war back home, whether that be when I came back here, the war here - The war here.
Yeah, many traps.
That I've hadfriends who who've been ensnared in those traps.
Like really good friends.
I think I deal with it totally by intellectualizing it and sort of controlling it.
And another way that I - I found to deal with it, and this is something that I want to talk to you about as well, is through my art.
Writing was a big saving grace for me.
Like I found poetry in college I had never really written anything except from except for some, like really terrible raps in like, middle school.
But you are a poet.
Yeah.
But I - That's when art, like, art was a way for me to really start processing.
And maybe art, in a way, has been a measure of control.
That's when art, like, art was a way for meRight?
Because it's a way - it's a that's the place where I feel that I can be most vulnerable.
Like in my everyday life it's almost impossible for me.
It's really hard.
So when I found that in college, I really started started to feel like I could, like, really access some of these things that I've been into and yeah - Have control,but also give myself permission to lose control.
I love that for you.
Yeah, and Im wondering - You've talked to me about this before, about like how at a certain point in your life, your art was very much fueled by your experiences and maybe the things that you were processing.
And at some point, that was no longer enough for you.
But I want to know about what it was like when it was enough.
A big part of being an artist to me is loving sharing it.
of introverts and I was born extroverted That's not like for everyone, you know?
of introverts and I was born extrovertedMm hmm.
Not everybody's a performer.
I loved it.And so I just started figuring out ways to kind of create my own It's too - It's just too many things.
avenues of sharing?
I dont know.
What did you love about it?
It's like, what do you want, attention.
What do you want?
I loved the fitness test.
I love to be like, I think this is cool to you.
And even if it got rejected.
It was like good information.
And I'd go back and try, try again.
Wow.
I just loved it.
What I'm saying about like coming to poetry and having it be like a way to sort of process my grief really is what I was doing, right?
I was processing the grief of leaving home.
I was processing the grief of losing both my parents processing the grief of my identity changing so many times.
I think what that produced was like a lot of my work was very much sad.
Like, I was always telling people, my work is sad.
Like I'm the sad poet, you'll cry or something when you listen to my poetry and I thought that was cool.
But I remember I wrote this poem called Play and But I remember I wrote this poem called Play and I know that poem and I have so many questions about that poem.
That poem is stressful.
That poem is stressful.
So any questions you have about it will be stressful.
So the poem is about my childhood sexual abuse.
Being abused as a child sexually.
My uncle lifts his head and explains.
This is what big kids do for fun.
And I'm six.
I brush my teeth.
I dress myself.
I am a big kid.
I'm no baby.
I can play.
Let me play.
I see how much fun you're having, uncle.
I can see it.
This bedsheet is just like Twister.
Put your hands in all the difficult places.
Let me prove myself.
I promise I won't tell Papa what we're doing in this pillow fort.
Call for the parts of me I still have nicknames for.
Just please.
Let me play.
Let me play.
I asked for this so I can not call myself "Survivor if it felt more like family game night.
And so I wrote the poem at a time when I was having a really hard time writing anything else.
I think I was trying to write a love poem at the time, and I was finding that, like, super difficult.
And so I did the poem and and I and I don't regret doing it like it's helped a lot of people, like a lot of people have reached out to me and said it's helped them because it's it was reflective of their own personal stories with trauma and sexual abuse.
Yeah, but it was the peak of this thing that I felt like I had been doing over and over again, which is drawing from this place of grief and pain from my art.
And after I did that, I honestly never even wanted to touch a poem ever again.
And it it spoiled it for me.
It spoiled it for me, like just writing everything.
I was just kind of like, I'm actually not even interested in my in myself anymore.
Like, I'm good.
I'm going to leave myself alone.
Like, that was the bottom of the well.
Yeah, that was.
That was it.
Yeah, that was it.
I'm actually very curious about your time in New York because that was when you were writing songwriting or when you were part of the label?
Both.
Okay.
So give me one of your I love New York moments.
It's the best city in the world, whatever.
Like I love it here.
And you're frickin Haiti here.
Like what the hell am I doing?
It's all might be in the same night.
Go here.
Because that's New York.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm living in a loft.
One of the last lofts that used to, like, the O.G.
lofts.
Let me curl up.
OK, cool, curl up for this story.
I'm living in a loft that's inside of a packaging company, and it was hilarious.
Six other male roommates and the packaging company sprays for cockroaches, but they won't spray our apartment.
I don't think, like, legally, we were supposed to be there.
And so the cockroaches just come to our apartment to die.
What?
Yeah.
So?
So.
So just giving you, like, a scene.
It's like six dudes, me, cockroaches.
I'm giving piano lessons.
There's a cockroach that just, like, falls on the piano.
Like, nobody likes to shower or, like, do their dishes.
So it was fun but gross.
I step outside of my loft onto the sidewalk, and this guy is a really tall dude with a curly mullet, comes up to me and he goes, Mary, pop off.
And I'm like, what?
What?
You know, I didn't know.
He was like, Mary, pop off like Mary Poppins.
Mary Pop off.
I was like, What?
No.
He's like, You want to pop off?
I was like, I don't know.
What are you talking about?
Turns out this is a very well-known person's producer and he's like, Do you want to hear some unreleased music at my studio?
And I'm like, Yes, I do.
I sure do.
You just met this man on the street.
This is where I was at mentally.
Do not judge me.
Okay.
So I was like, let's go.
And we went and listened to some unreleased records and cuts, and I was like, This is mine.
But I was like, melting.
And he's like, I'm going to take you to this rooftop party with all the rest of these recordings.
And tonight and this was like my fourth week in New York, right?
So it was just like, this is great.
So I get a friend of mine, a girlfriend of mine to go because that was as safe as I like, knew how to be.
Right.
Even though it was just like two young women in a really scary situation.
And this party is crazy.
There's somebody on a trapeze, there's bubbles everywhere.
Nobody was checking IDs.
Nobody cared.
It was just wild.
And then something switched.
And that dude all of a sudden thought that I was someone else.
Like he'd taken a drug or drank something too much or something.
And I'm learning to the way that he's screaming at me publicly that he had a biracial ex-girlfriend and he was, you know, hallucinating and just screaming at me about our relationship.
Oh, and I would go, you know, walk away.
And he would follow.
And my friends.
So anyway, I ended up locking myself in the bathroom at this party with him outside, like beating and crying against the door.
Well, my one friend is off, like trying to get 50 more friends to get me out of there.
And finally they did it.
And I leave and he's clawing at the cab as I'm getting in.
And then the cab ran over his foot!
What?!?
Yes!
[laughter] that was one night and one night.
New York is not a real place.
New York is not a race.
Not a real place, was it?
Yeah.
Sober.
Completely sober, by the way.
Wow.
I was.
Yeah.
That is New York.
That's.
That's wilder than any New York Ive ever experienced.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Saidu, you said that you'd taken a six year break from poetry.
Yeah.
What ignited the fire again and when?
I mean, I always knew that I wanted to definitely come back and perform again.
And also because I'm an actor.
I was also looking for opportunities to get back on stage.
I'm like, I want to get back onstage.
And I'm telling everybody this and this one guy, I know his name is Modesto Flaco Jimenez.
He's a Brooklyn poet and actor and activist.
He was like, Yo, it's simple.
Just write a poem and go on stage like, you can act.
You can.
You don't need any permission.
Like you can just do it.
You're a writer and you're an actor.
You have all the tools, what are you waiting for?
And he made it sound so simple.
And I was like, Yeah, you're right.
And he was like, Yeah, I'm doing this show where I want to have different poets and artists create art to commemorate hip hop or write and write an ode to New York City.
And I was like, you know what?
This is my opportunity because I work better under deadlines anyway.
So.
Sure.
Like, put me down.
I got you.
And, boy, writing a poem after not writing a poem for a long time is hard.
I spent three months writing this poem.
I also loved it.
I also loved just being a wordsmith again and also finding ways to incorporate everything that I've gone through in the city and that I that I felt about the city and my experiences with people, all these things.
I felt like I was able to like take what I've learned from audio and storytelling and write a poem that felt like unlike anything that I've ever written before.
And it wasn't, you know, I mean, it's a little sad parts, but like, it's not trauma born, you know?
It felt healthy.
That sounds so healing.
Yeah, truly.
Awesome.
This poem is about is about New York.
And I think this year is going to mark maybe seven years, I think since I've been in New York.
And as I was talking to Maya about like it's it's a place I really love, but it's a it's a it's a place that like, I think, you know, a lot of people every year, like, go to New York to chase their dreams, to, to to make it in the big city.
Because, you know, the whole saying goes, you could make it there.
You can make it anywhere.
So you go chasing your dreams and you think, this is great, I'm going to make it.
I have a friend and I read him this poem and he was like, This doesn't sound like your experience because I feel like you did make it.
You have this show, you've won these awards, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, Yeah, but there's still it still feels like there's things I wanted to do that I haven't been able to do.
So you go and you want to do these things.
You want to, whether it be on Broadway, you want to be on Broadway, you want to sing one of the big music halls, or you want to just be in the lights.
You want to you want to do the thing right?
You want to do the thing.
But what you what you encounter is just like New York is not a real place.
So, like, I remember, I would go, I would I would, I would, you know,I would I would, I would, you know, get all dressed up for work because Iwas interning at Gimlet at the time and then I would go on the train and I would have my book and I'd have my little scarf because it was like winter.
And I'd, I'd sit down and have my headphones in and playing something like really like poppy or whatever.
And, and I read my book and I think, yeah, like I had main character syndrome.
I was like, this is everyone is paying attention to me right now.
Look at me.I'm like, I'm this transplant.
I'm like doing it and like, I'm young, I'm handsome, oh, I'm reading my book, I'm intelligent.
Like, look at me.
Like, I was just, I thought I was the main character.
And then like fast forward, like, you know, a few months and I'm like doing overnights at the office and I'm also, I'm stressed out and it's really the city is really starting to grind me down and I'm on, I'm on the same train and I'm like, you know, I'm wearing my backpack.
I'm just I'm just where my backpack and this this lady behind me and this I didn't know that there's like aunwritten rule in New York that if the train is really packed, you take off your backpack.
Right.
Because it's it's a lot of bodies like you want to create space.
I know that.
And whatever.
Like this lady probably thought I didn't know that either, but too bad for her.
She didn't know that.
I was like, fucking stressed.
Like, I was so stressed that day.
Like, I probably had slept in the office.
I was like, at the end of my wits, end of my wits, it's like.
And so she's pushing my backpack and she's pushing me, she's pushing me, she pushing me.
And I like, I've never wanted to punch an old black lady, but in that moment I was like, Am I like I like something in me?
Snapped.
And I and I look back at her and I was like, stop pushing me like like, what's wrong with you?
Like, stop pushing me.
And that's when I realized the city got me messed up.
Like, I'm like, this was this was my rock bottom.
And I had many more rock bottoms like that.
And I think there's kind of like a little bit of like what New York can be like.
It is like you go there not knowing anything.
You go there not knowing what's going to happen except for like the dreams you have in your head.
And that's because it's it is it's a it's a risk to risk.
You take traveling there without a plan.
But, you know, you're 21 you're you're one of them cocky transplants from a small planet that no one's ever heard of.
You're one of them immigrants who crash landed in some cul de sac somewhere far, far away from home and and you've been called an alien in every other solar system.
You sought asylum.
You've managed to carve an ID out of Nike bees and Lupe Fiasco albums, and you're a boy with a name no one would care to pronounce, much less no, but you knew it was never going to be Miami, L.A., f***ing Connecticut.
Your dreams.
Your dreams would only be possible up there in New Metropolis.
And sure, there are horror stories of cities like that.
The streets occupied by tweaks and suited zombies, the apartments filthy with roommates and rude roaches, the twisted faces marching toward the future that barely pays rent.
The overwhelming stench of wealth rising up all around you.
And it's it's all bad gravity up there.
They say.
And no one tells you.
No one understands why you would move to this song city, why you would think it possible that you would shine where so many others have failed.
But knowing you animated by doubt, propelled by prove it maybe, maybe to African in your blood, maybe it's your gut, but you go your voice, a fresh cut to duffel bags and that smile your mother gave you.
It's all you pack before take off you whisper promise.
See your reflection on the launch pad.
We're going to take that city.
Having no clue what was waiting for you on the other side.
And you fly across galaxies for years to get here and you finally spot a new metropolis on the black horizon.
Stiletto skyscrapers posing with their technological face.
You glide close to row after row of windows glowing gold like the city's only got eyes for you in the sight of Metropolis at night is like an answer It's a yes so dazzling It makes all your red flags disintegrate into rumor.
It's the kind of dreamy silhouette that makes you forget sense.
The kind of bright magic that turns all men like you into morphs.
And those lights would look so good on you.
And you start thinking to yourself that maybe one day I'll glide across the skies to brunch on Sundays with my besties like Carrie Bradshaw.
Or maybe I'll find a stage that loved the color of all my stories, like Jerry Seinfeld.
Or maybe they'll even learn how to pronounce my name to hear you're not even asking for it all at once.
Just a chance to land somewhere, a small place to nest and enough money in your pocket to keep a baby's jagged breath pressed against your ear on Friday nights.
And oh, my God, how good it would have felt to arrive to a big soundtrack like Juice or something, or give money, anything old school and then reckless.
But what you get is the hissing of sewers.
The 3 a.m.sirens, the tin can conductors voice over sh**ty speakers, the landlords knock on the first of the month and every week your little sister sends you a holograms.
And she's so proud of you for leaving.
She thinks the sky of you and she ask, Hey, big brother, How is she?
Asked, How is it up there?
And you say, It's good.
It's everything I've ever wanted.
And she goes, It's good, it's everything I've ever wanted.
She's like, Be honest.
How is it up there?
Honest, honest.
You would rather write her an ode for this city, because how you supposed to tell her about the six months of nights you spent on strangers beds, cramped couches and dusty attics?
How you tunnel through the city five days a week to hunch over a desk downtown, just knowing that everything you want is in one of them buildings.
Just sitting on the other side of a white man's.
Yes.
How are you supposed to say I feel like a glitch in this city system.
And every time I open my eyes, I want to beg my dreams for forgiveness.
And I'm starting to forget what my own voice sounds like.
And I'm sorryfor everything that I have not brought back home yet.
How are you supposed to tell her about this one time when you got so stressed out, you buried your head into your backpack and cried on the to train.
And when you lifted your head up, there were two niggers dancing in front of you for a change and all you could do was laugh.
How you supposed to say, I'm sorry, sis for everything that I have not brought back home yet.
And still I want to stay here.
Still here, still here.
Still even on the days the heat sizzles.
Me dizzy was lonely And I get home to sweet my cat in my sink And open the medicine cabinet to find something to eat.
Even when I lose my sense and myself to the rat race here, there are still reasons I stay and I can almost hear the city laugh when I complain like that because I know for a thousand years it's seen a thousand of me.
And in those exactly who I am, I mean, bless me, but rent control and laundry in the basement, bless me with a roommate who pays her rent on time.
Bless me with neighbors who know my name, me Shirley, her 98 year old smile.
Bless me with all the moment I linger a while in the hallway because the Caribbean woman next door is cooking something that reminds me so much of my mother's hands on Sundays and still every morning I wake up and I stand on the steps of the home this city made for me.
I want to say thank you.
I get on the train, I open my book, pretend I'm the main character again.
I try not to miss my stop and I ask for more.
Thank you.
[applause] Thanks so much for joining us.
If you want to continue to be a part of the Homegoings family, stay in touch at homegoings.co and subscribe to the Homegoings podcast where ever you listen.
Take good care.
