Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
The Afrofuture: Remixed with Stacey A. Robinson | EP 154
This week I'm talking with Stacey A. Robinson, an artist and Afro-surrealist whose work lives at the intersection of hip hop, comics, and what he calls the Afro now. We go back to his earliest memory, drawing every morning at a window as a seven year old, and to the exact record he heard that same year that changed how he thought about art and sound before the genre it belonged to even had a name.
From there we trace his path through Milestone Media, the Black-owned comic company that reshaped what he thought was possible as a young Black artist, into the hidden systemic structure underneath hip hop itself, and land on his argument that Wakanda was never really a picture of the future at all.
00:00 Stacey's earliest memory, drawing by the window
06:15 Hearing Rapper's Delight at seven years old
10:27 What Milestone Media meant for a young Black artist
21:18 Not Seeing Black People In Futures
29:24 The hidden systemic structure underneath hip hop
29:10 Afrofuturism versus Afro-surrealism, and the Afro now
35:20 Hip Hop Elements As A System
47:13 Digging For Original Samples
54:14 Creating Art Inside Club Energy
57:52 Wakanda As The Afro Now
1:06:35 When Black Creation Gets Erased
1:13:33 Building Afro Futures Through Daily Practice
1:25:16 Joy Beyond Revolt And Rage
1:32:52 Designing Freedom And Leaving A Template
1:35:34 Where To Find Stacy And Closing
The companion Future Proof newsletter issue built on this conversation, The Future Is a Remix, is out this week:
SUBSTACK: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/
About Stacey A. Robinson: Stacey is an artist and Afro-surrealist based in Champaign, Illinois, whose work moves across comics, hip hop, and collage. He came up through Milestone Media's orbit and has been shaped by the Black Speculative Arts Movement. Find his work on Instagram and Facebook, and at his own website. [Steve: website URL and preferred handle weren't stated in the transcript, please confirm before this goes live]
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Wakanda And Hidden Power
SPEAKER_02What I love about it is I would argue, I'm like, does Wakanda actually exist and we just don't know about it? Right? Do we not know about it? I think there's a power to remaining hidden. Because once um a black technology is created and given to the world, it is often capitalized on by the rest of the world, and black people are written out of the origins of the creation of that thing.
Meeting Stacy A Robinson
SPEAKER_01Stacy, welcome to Think Forward.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's great to have you. Uh you know, I got connected to you through Lonnie and also Ahmed. And uh you are I'll let you tell your story. You have a great background and we share a lot of similar interests, but you uh I'd like to, I think I'd like to kind of let let you that you tell the story, earliest memories, right? And what you've been, you know, where you came from as an artist. Let's let's go let's kind of go back in time and this start with that.
SPEAKER_02All right.
Childhood Media And Daily Drawing
SPEAKER_02Rewind that. Yeah. Sure. I was uh born in 1972. Um currently I'm an artist. I I identify as an artist first. Um I've had to train myself to do that. And I'm a multimedia artist. Um I'm also a professor at the University of Illinois at Avana Champaign, teaching in uh design and studio and the campus honors program. My origin story, though, it goes back to 1972. My earliest memories are of me uh living with my great-grandmother. She raised me for the first seven years of my life. Shout outs to Lottie Boykin, Albany, New York. And we grew up on at 152 2nd Street. That's where I grew up at. And uh for those first seven years. And my life was full of cartoons, talk radio, late-night movies, uh popular television shows at the time, like watching Ironside, right? I imagine I was living with my great-grandmother, right? So I watched whatever she was watching.
SPEAKER_01And I for years I thought the guy was I thought the guy was really in a wheelchair. I didn't just like too.
SPEAKER_02I did too. Right. I was like, he can walk. You're seeing him on the team, like, he can walk. Uh oh. Right. Um, but also with this, you know, as I'm absorbing all of this media, right? And my great-grand grandmother was the one who taught me how to spell my name, like learn my letters, those things. But my earliest memories are of me getting up, you know, first thing in the morning, and I would run to the window, and there was a radiator by the window, and I would just, there's this platform I think had flowers and things on it, but there was always a pad and a pencil or a pen or something. And I would always go there and draw. Every single morning I would get up and I would go there and draw. Those are my earliest, earliest memories. And that had a I remember that still has an influence on me. Everything I do now, I trace back to the multimedia I was absorbing in those first seven years of my life. Right. So I used to watch cartoons, but even as I was watching cartoons then, I was studying them frame by frame. Like I was looking at repetitive patterns in the framings. There were some cartoons that would use the same frames over again for different cartoons, and I would notice this, right? But I and I think that I think that because there were multiple generations in that house, I lived with my great-grandmother downstairs, but upstairs was my uncle, right? And and I would go upstairs and I would have my experiences with him as well. So, and then right even down the street, like this was a time where your neighbors looked out for your children as well, right? So I remember my great-grandmother's neighbors, her friends, those who would come over and talk with her, you know, she would go and talk to them, and I would go and hang out, and I would play in front of the house and things like that. And so I had these wonderful experiences. Even the local grocery store where you could go buy penny candy before you would go to school. I had these amazing memories, and I think one of the things that stands out to me in that, you know, that origin story is there was a plant in the front yard of the house. And I'm trying to remember the name of that plant. I cannot remember the name of it. But a few years ago, me and my cousin went to visit because we were in Albany. That plant is still there. So that plant is still there at 152 2nd Street. And my cousin stole a piece of it. And she she took it and then she grew it in her garden in Buffalo. But when I when we knocked on the door, children of, I recognized the children in a particular way. And I was like, hey, so I used to live here. Is your parents home? Are your parents home? And the woman who came to the door was a childhood friend of mine. You know, like a child, like we went to school together. And I, you know, I asked if we could come and take a tour. Of course, like she would not want us to on the spot, right? So I think she showed us the upstairs. She showed us, no, she did give us a tour, but not of the entire house. She showed us the upstairs portion where my uncle lived. And she had kept it in beautiful, pristine condition. Um, but I could not go down to where I used to live in my great-grandmother's house because that's where her brother lived. And he wasn't home at the time, right? So I'm hoping to go back there. For for me right now as an artist, one of the things I'm trying to do is recapture my earliest memories and my art practice and and uh move that forward.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned, you know, the two two huge uh I'll call them shifts or or things that shaped you really early. And you talked about animation, you know, we're both of the same uh age era, like Super Friends, Battle of the Planets, Filmation. And then the second one you talked about when you moved to your mother's is like uh hearing rappers delight. Like you're seven years old, like like what did that do to you, like in terms of trying, you know, your mind, your impressions of things. Absolutely.
Hearing Rapper’s Delight For First Time
SPEAKER_02So 1979, my entire world changed. My great-grandmother passed away. I'm living with my mother now. We moved to a different apartment, still still in the same city, beautiful community. And my morning routine is relatively the same in some respects, right? I'm waking up, I'm watching Battle of the Planets. Um, and but I remember one particular afternoon, my mom and I, we go downstairs to visit our neighbors. And the neighbor's daughter, uh Courtney, who was at times my babysitter, uh, I think she was in middle school, right? She was a little bit older than me, but well, I guess twice maybe twice my age record, maybe. But she had a record, like she she had Rapper's Delight, and she played it. I don't know if I asked her to play it, was she just playing it? It just come out. I remember the cover, I remember the moment, and I remember the sound. And I was like, what now I'm seven, right? So I'm like, yo, what is this? And I remember I had never heard anything like that. And I think she might have played that on repeat. I I, you know, I I absorbed that sound. So what is that doing to a seven-year-old who is new to a living experience, living with my mom for the first time, in this new community, new neighbors? This is, I feel like this particular point at a seven-year-old, at seven years old, has been a repetitive pattern of me learning something new that is life-changing and it immediately altering the way that I think about art, look at art, the way I hear sound. I remember that being a pivotal shift. But also, it scientists have said that the first seven years of your life are those foundational years in which you you learn so much about how you're gonna navigate life. But imagine up to that point, what I had been absorbing were politics, talk radio, country music, animation, and then now this this seminal hip-hop record, right? Before there's really a lot of language around it, before it's really uh solidified as a particular art form that we that we would that had all of its tenets and things of that nature, right? We're get I'm getting it in the raw, right? Like it's almost like it's fresh out the ground, right? With all of this great nutrients before it's processed, right? And um and and it it was a pivotal shift for me in a very particular way that has that I still carry forward in the way that I make art today.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it we go forward through that, through those formative years. You had mentioned something I think was wild, you know, you think of like timing, right? When as you grew up, you you moved to New York City and you got there the day that Tupac died, which is like I did. Yeah, we're like the things that make you memory, you know, triggers memory. But I thought it was really cool, and I didn't even know about this group. I was, you know, I was I was a into comics, I was into other few other things, but you walked in, you went into Milestone Media. So for those who don't know Milestone, it's explain what that company meant, and especially to a young black artist. Like you've been watching, you know, you and I both are Star Trek fans, we watch Star Wars, you know. It's like, you know, wondering you said this. I thought it was like, where did all the black people go? Like it's like, so yeah, kind of give some help frame it for people. And there's probably people that are big comics people listening to this that may have never heard of this place and this this uh this media, the media, this company.
Milestone Media And Comics Mentorship
SPEAKER_02For sure. Uh Milestone Media Incorporated was a black-owned and operated comic book company from I want to say 1992. They may cred they the the date might be 1993 to circa 97. And as I was I followed my favorite artist to that company. So my favorite artist at the time was an artist by the name of Mark D. Bright. Recently passed away. And he was drawing a book called Icon. And I followed this I followed uh Mark Bright from uh book Green Lantern that he was drawing for DC. And uh I think he was drawing, he drew Iron Man first, then Emerald Dawn, which is a Green Lantern story, I believe, and then he was drawing Icon. I followed the artist to this company, and I have to shout out a really good friend of mine, um Sam Coleman, Samuel Dwayne Coleman. He was the one who was a serious collector of milestone comics. And so we're talking about I'm around 18, 19 or so, and I remember he's he's telling me, yo, you gotta read these books, you gotta read these books. And this happened at a time, this is very important because as Milestone emerged in the early 90s, there were other black-owned comic book companies, independent comic book companies that were emerging at that or around that time as well. So you were you were able to pick up if you could find them. I was gifted a lot of comics, right? From people who knew I were into comics and they would go to other cities. I remember um an editor uh for the my first one of my first jobs, art jobs professionally, was for a local newspaper called What's Up newspaper. And I was the art director, right? Means I did all the hand-drawn art for it. I remember that editor went to uh the Million Man March uh '95, and he came back with all of these books for me. He just bought me these black independent uh comic books. And so that was happening at the same time as for me, at least as milestone was happening. And so I remember my friend Sam, you know, he was like, yo, because every we would do this thing where we would spend the night at each other's house, right? And and listen to music all night, draw crack jokes, you know, go to the clubs so we'd get in the clubs early. Right. Um, and then we would come back, we would eat, and we would hang out and draw and read comic books. And I remember on this one particular night, he was like, yo, Stacey, you gotta come over. We gotta read all of these milestone books. And he pulled out a stack of comic books. And we re he would read one pass, we would read and pass back to each other. And he soon after that moved to New York City to pursue his career in dance. And he had been telling me for years, uh, Stacey, you gotta move to New York City. Around this time, we're talking like I'm around I'm around 20, I'm 21 now, um, as a couple years had passed. And I am figuring out my young adult life. I knew that I wanted to draw comics, and I I did not, there was no real avenue or connection for me to do that in Albany, New York. At that time, I felt like I needed to move to New York City. I um at first I attempted to go to art school. I got accepted to the Joe Cooper School uh in Dover, New Jersey. And I didn't know how financial aid worked. I went there with a portfolio of just half-drawn comic pages and things I had done, and they accepted me. So I came out. That's awesome. Well, it is awesome, right? It was really awesome because I was going from Well, they saw your talent.
SPEAKER_01They saw your talent. You didn't have to really package it or try and, you know, they saw your your raw talent and they they they knew that you know you had it what you had it there, you just needed a space for it to develop, you know, and and be guided to I definitely did.
SPEAKER_02And I needed to learn how to finish pages as well, right? So and I remember that being a conversation even when I was uh showing my pages at Milestone, which I'll get to in a moment, too. When I came back from getting from that interview at the Joe Cooper School, I went to my bank. And I was like, hey, I got accepted to art school, I need money to go, right? And they said no. So I repeated myself. I was like, maybe they didn't hear me, right? I need money to go to art school. And they said no, right? So I I didn't know how financial aid really worked, right? And I was pissed. So I decided I was gonna move to New York City. My friend Sam had been, he had already had an apartment, he wanted me to move there. He was actually campaigning uh for me to like he was really in on me about moving there to work with Milestone. I had been showing pages, I showed pages at Milestone twice. Uh, talked to um Dennis Cowan. Shouts out to Dennis Cowan, I met with him twice. Um, the first time I went there, uh he took me on a cab ride with him, and we talked, and he looked at my pages. He brought me back to the office and he connected me with another favorite artist of mine, uh, goes by the name Chris Cross. He was drawing some milestones early books, too. And Chriss Cross took my pages, critiqued them, flipped them over, and redrew what I was drawing on the back of them, like showing me how to make it more dynamic and better. And it was, yeah, it was wow. It was incredible. Like that, I had never had a lesson like that.
unknownEver.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is that that's that kinesthetic, that's that kinesthetic in the moment thing that you know it stays, it stays with you forever, which is why you're talking about it, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, shouts out to Chris Cross, man. See what it's like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 30 years later. Yeah, when you're good. Yeah, no, go ahead, man.
SPEAKER_02No, so really so really quickly, like the effect that Milestone has on me, and you ask, like, for many people who don't know, like I said, Milestone was a black-owned comic book company distributed by DC Comics. And now those heroes are embedded in the DC universe. Milestone is is uh still active uh as um and and those characters are um embedded in the DC universe, as many other uh companies and characters. If you do your research, a lot of other comic book companies, um there those heroes now are under the umbrella of DC. A lot of those comic characters, milestone included, and they're releasing books, uh have been for the past several years now. Um so I'm really happy to see those characters from 30 years ago uh back in my back in my life.
SPEAKER_01Were those artists, is that also the time Spawn came out? Like for the city.
SPEAKER_02It was around that same time that Spawn came out, absolutely. Right. So we're really talking about what was happening the early 90s was a pivotal era for comics. It became the era of the comic artist, right? So you have you had a lot of Marvel and DC artists who really blew up, really became super popular. And many of them branched off um to form image comics, right? And there were many other comic book companies that that um uh had their birth around the same time as well, milestone included, right? So there was a high, powerful energy of comic book creation that was happening at the time. But also there was a time of protest, right? You had the LA Riots, you had Rodney King, you had that powerful energy. Um and you had that influence, even milestone in the origins of the Dakota universe, because the the the uh fictitious city is is uh Dakota in the comic, right? And and the birth of those heroes uh and villains actually happens because of a protest uh turn into um a massacre and a dropping uh chemicals, uh, and that that alter the the DNA of of these um these popula like the populace, right?
SPEAKER_01Not only during that, well not only during that time. I grew up in Baltimore, and you know, the you had mentioned the term food deserts. For those who don't really know what that means, it's like imagine a city, you know, there's an there's crime, there's problems, there's no supermarkets to find fresh food. You only have maybe the corner store, but then you hit like a liquor store. It's like you don't have like healthy food, and on top of that, there's the poverty. I think about you know, back then it was AIDS, HIV, which is more, you know, there's so much medicine. You it's a livable disease. And back then, you know, Magic Johns was the only one that seemed to like be immune, like everyone out there was so much, you know, problem with it. And it was well, it was rampant in the drug, you know, drug community and also in um inner cities, and it was just a different, you know, it was a time. But you know, the one thing that you you mentioned you started asking, like what happens now in the future where you know I'll let you talk about it, like where things be people become extinct, like black people become extinct, like you just started to look at which to me when you talked about that, that was your first, I don't know if you knew what a future was futurist was at that point, but that was definitely futures thinking. Like you were definitely immersing yourself in the speculative futures, and I found that you know, like almost like tangenti, but you're intersecting with it. Yeah, so if you you go yeah, let you kind of expound on that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Not Seeing Black People In Futures
SPEAKER_02I think for me, many of my friends in our early teenage years, in our tween years, we would get together and we would draw. And this was a time, this was obviously before social media. So you learned about your friends who could draw, sometimes through your parents, right? Your parents would go visit other parents, and then the kids would be introduced to each other. You draw, oh, I draw two, right? And then you would become friends and things like that. Many of my friends drew. I took it, it was different for me though. This was my life. I did not see my future, uh uh, I did not see a future without drawing comics. I knew. What I wanted to do. Ironically, my first love, like I said, was animation. But at some point I knew around age 12 that uh, and probably before that, I knew I wanted to draw comics. And I think this happened because my uncle, shouts out to Valiant Robinson, uh, gave me my first, I think he gave me my first comic books. And so he gives me these books, and I was just going to his house whenever my mom would visit, and I would read his comic book collection. I was reading all kinds of stuff he was collecting, right? But I knew at some point it hit me that there was an absence of black people in the book, in these books. And I think this happened around maybe age 12, 11 or 12, or something like that. And so because I could draw, I started drawing black superheroes, right? I got tired of, I'm like, man, I love Spider-Man. Spider-Man's today, Peter Parker, Spider-Man is my number one favorite superhero, right? But I'm like, okay, every time I see a black person in the book, they're the villain, or they're a random community character, and there's something that is not, I don't resonate with them, right? There's something about that I don't resonate with. And many times that's because of the way they're written, right? They're very hollow characters, very shallow. So I always wanted to be, just like everyone else, wanted to be the hero. I wanted to be the cool, the cool person in the book. But they didn't look like me. So that politicized me at a very early age, too. But then, of course, at the same time, we're watching Star Wars, we're watching Star Trek, right? And we're watching these depictions of the future, even old movies. And I'm like, where are the black people at? I was also raised my family, my um my mom and her siblings, that generation that came before me are Jehovah's Witnesses. So I was also raised going to the kingdom hall. So I would get these beautiful books.
SPEAKER_01Was it allowed?
SPEAKER_02Was comics that wasn't allowed, and I don't think I didn't think well, some of the books that my uncle was reading were were definitely, I know he was sneaking these books in the house, and I think my grandparents weren't paying attention to what he was reading. I don't I think that's what it was. You know what I mean? Okay, but there are some things like I'm like, okay, this is these are demons. You know, and they're they're comics, right? They're stories, right? But imagine so I'm I'm reading that stuff, I'm checking out this stuff, loving the art. I'm going to the Kingdom Hall, right, and I'm absorbing those lessons as well, but I'm also looking at their publication materials. And rarely are there black people in the still to this day, there are rarely black people in there, but they were never the people of the Abrahamic messenger. They were never the messengers of the Abrahamic age, right? They're they were never they were never present in that time. So I'm like, where are the black people at? Why is it that um where are the black angels at? Like even to this day, today, I make images about black messengers, black angels, heralds, and harbingers, even too, right? As black black depictions, because they did not exist in these materials, and I'm absorbing these materials as a preteen, right? And as a teenager. And the older I get, the angrier I get, right? Because now I'm absorbing more and more information as well, and I'm comp I'm doing comparative text, right? Uh from these.
SPEAKER_01It reminds me of Jesus. Yeah, it reminds me of Jesus being depicted as like he he came from, I don't know, France. And you know, when I went to uh this is like 20 years ago, I went to well, there's two there's two disputed sites of Sinai. I went to Egypt and to Sinai for church trip. And it was amazing. You had a mosque next to oh, sorry, Greek Orthodox church next to a mosque. And when you go in there in the Greek Orthodox, there's a depiction of Christ, and it's the earliest version of it's from like 400 AD, the con around the time of Constantine. He's very, it's very much Middle East. Like you look at him and you're like, yeah, that's probably what he, you know, closest to what he looks like. And it's like you you you you you question like what is the representation, and I don't want to get into like, you know, uh specific wording of things, but it's like I guess it's like people, you know, when you think about uh bias and design, it's not about your purposely uh like intentionally doing something. It's just like what your experience or what you grew up with, you design for those things. And that's that's that uncon and I think for artists too, it's like uh who were the gatekeepers, you know. I think about Luke Cage. Luke Cage came out in I think the 70s, uh I think. Yeah. But his his was an answer to the time of the of that era, but he was exploitation. Right. And he was, yeah, very much so. And but he evolved as a character over the decades. I mean, I well I love the Marvel depiction of him, like the uh the series they did. I he was all it was great. And you know, you looked at this with you know, when you talk about your evolution to really doing you know afro futures, you know, you describe your current practice is afro-surrealism. Now, most people have heard of surrealism, they think of Dolly or Miro Miro. You know, there's a multitude of other styles. But I'm gonna take some quotes from you. You you you used so D. Scott Miller's Manifesto, I want you to get into, but I didn't know there were actual, like, it says like hip hop has a systemic structure to it. Like the the five elements, which I'll let you explain. I don't want to like, but I you called these things like the black systems, like walk me through like that kind of evolvement into you know that form, because you're an artist. You don't like to tell yourself as this kind of artist or that, but you're an artist. So, like, how did that kind of come through and give people some grounding? Because I found this fascinating. Because I'm not a I'm a jazz fan, but uh, and I like some hip-hop. I'm probably more like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of the artists that I like that on any hip-hop, but yeah, it's like there's a deep, there's a deep, deep level to it, which is wild. I didn't, you know, it's
Afro Surrealism Versus Afrofuturism
SPEAKER_01great.
SPEAKER_02So currently I'm identifying more so as an Afro-surrealist because of my aesthetic. I am drawing from so I I'm doing a deeper dive into D. Scott Miller's Afrofuturist Manifesto. Uh and in that what is that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what is that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I I'm still deciphering it because it is heavy. I think it's heavy, right? But in here, he's talking about how Afrofuturism in particular ways, if I'm interpreting this correctly, I do not want to misquote him or anything, but this is what I'm drawing from it, right? I'm still studying it. And I'm identifying more as an Afro-surrealist because of my aesthetic, and I'll talk about that too. But he's Afrofuturism really focuses on the future. Afro-surrealism focuses more on the present. And I focus on the present in a very particular way that I call the Afro Now in a very particular way. We could talk about that later too.
SPEAKER_01The Afro Now. Okay.
SPEAKER_02The Afro Now, absolutely. Uh Waconda, the Marvel's depiction of Wakanda in the Marvel cinematic universe is in the Afro now. It's not the Afro future. I think that's more powerful of a message than.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, we're going to definitely get into that. Because I think a lot of people connect, if they hear of Afrofuturism, they think of the cultural aesthetic of the continent, right? And they think of the future. But when you think about the technology of like adamantium, no, is it uh Adamantium? Vibranium, sorry, wrong metal, uh, wrong imaginary metal, but that it powered so much and transformed, but you know, it is it's it's it's got that like so sufficiently far in the future that it they think it's science fiction or the future, you know, but it's really not in that way. It's not. Right.
SPEAKER_02It's yeah, it I know we're gonna get into this later. So I'll that's an exciting conversation for me. Yeah, yeah. But going back to surrealism, right? So D. Scott Miller is looking at contemporary artists, he's looking at uh sociology. I am looking at that too, black source uh sociologists like Franz Finon, for example. And um, he's looking at the I I believe that what D. Scott Miller is doing in his manifesto is laying a foundation for how we build the aqua feature. But he does it in these ways that examines black culture beyond, he's looking at artists who are thinking of it in these this this grand imagining of the black experience. And he calls it the black lived experience, right? And but it's not it comes out of oppression, but it's not rooted in oppression, it's rooted in in liberation. And in many ways, I identify to that more than um some of the ideas or or some of the things that have been put forth of around Afrofuturism. Because for me, D. Scott Miller is laying out a template for how we think about building it. Contemporary Afrofuturism does that too. Shouts out to the work of Ronaldo Anderson, for example, in the Black Speculative Arts Movement, which I'm proud to say I work with. Often, it's about laying out a particular foundation for how we get to that future as well, through looking at the past scholarship, the past art movements. So we don't have a contemporary Afrofuturist movement without the work of Afro Cobra or Black Art Movement, the Black Arts Movement or the Harlem Renaissance, for example. Right? There is a uh system of uh and a history of protest and resistance that got us here to this moment, of even being able to imagine a wildly fantastic, uh free, liberated future rooted in this rich technology. However, I think it's also important to make sure that we leave room to examine and think about how do we get there. And I think that surrealism is, or afro-surrealism is the best way for it's one of the best ways in which we can examine that. Now, in that, and looking at that and thinking about that, you could look at John Coltrin, right? And and you could look at uh Yousef Latif, right? You could look at, you could look at Sunrod, you could look at MF Doom, who is my favorite MC. He's not a jazz, you know, a jazz musician in in that traditional sense. But for me, hip-hop and jazz is so they're so well connected because my love of jazz really came from, of course, those earlier records that my mother was playing, actually. My mom played some of these records in the house, and I was absorbing some of these sounds too. My family really listens to a lot. A lot of my family listened to a lot of music. So I'm always learning about new things when I go home. But it was those those early samples before artists were clearing their samples. Actually, they were sampling John Coltrane. They were they were sampling Yousef Latif. They were sampling so many of the jazz artists, especially around the early to mid-90s. Um, you could look at art uh albums like Tri- A Tri Quad Quest and Low End Theory, heavy rooted in jazz samples. Or their third album, Midnight Marauders. And for me, my archival practice or how I think about collaging actually comes from the inspiration of collage artists like Romere Beardon, but also how hip-hop was collaged. Hip-hop is a collage culture, right?
Hip Hop Elements As A System
SPEAKER_02Rooted in uh five elements of DJing, MC, breakdancing, graffiti, and knowledge. Those are the five elements. And if you look at those five elements, there are more, right? People add fashion to that, for example, and there are many other uh uh elements to to hip-hop, but those five primary ones are the ones I look at as a system that I study to help build a foundation for how I think about uh collaging a system for creating uh Afro-futurism. But it's all rooted in this Afro-surreal kind of thinking, but the politics of that may come from they the politics of that come from black nationalism, Afrocentricity, uh, and some other belief systems that once again, as a teenager, I'm becoming more and more connected to. But all of this culture and and much of African, especially West African thinking, or even uh Black American thinking, this is these these areas are not separated to us. I think it is a more European concept to compartmentalize these things. For us, we always looked at this as a way of life for us. Hip-hop is not separate from jazz to me, right? It's not separated uh from uh black speculative art or black protest art. All of these things, these are just the the the music or the visual art is just an expression, a different type of expression of the protest, right? And does it always have to be rooted in protest? I I'm not gonna say that, but much of it is. And there's a what there is what I call an opulent rage, right? That there's a beauty and a synesthetic to to the the opulence of what black creativity is that comes out of rage, it comes out of anger that is unreconciled, a past that's unreconciled, but it's expressed in these most beautiful and wonderful ways. Hip hop comes out of protest, right? Like the roots of it um come out of Jamaica, it comes out of protest, it comes out of the South Bronx, and it comes out of protest, right? And but that there's an opulence to that that is rooted in the rage of that as well, but expressed in these these wonderful ways that make me really think about and examine what if that oppression weren't there? What would we create without the the confines of the the the pressure, right? The the confines of that oppression. So, and then there are other systems I'm looking at too, the five percent nations of gods and earths, because I have mentors at that in my early teen years who are uh members of the five the five percent nation of gods and earths. And so they're what what is what is specifically is the five percent?
SPEAKER_01Like what is what does it mean by five? Yeah, no, it's one of the elements. So the five elements are the 12 jewels of the 5% nation, supreme supreme math, and that quantity go like so let's start with the 5% and let's yeah, let's kind of help people get some construct.
SPEAKER_02So for clarity though, the the the 5%, they have a system um called 120 lessons, they have supreme mathematics, they have the supreme alphabet, uh, and they have the 12 jewels, and there are other systems as well. Um Supreme Mathematics are is a scientific uh way of looking at the numbers one through nine and zero. So those ten numbers, um and there's an attribute for each the each number for Supreme Mathematics, and it's the same for every letter of the alphabet as well. A through Z has a particular attribute. And the 12 jewels are 12 ways of thinking or 12 systems that you can use, and you begin with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, and you end at peace, love, and happiness. In order to get to peace, love, and happiness, you have to begin with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. So I want to be clear though, I am not a 5%er, but I am absorbing this and I'm using utilizing this and I'm studying this because it's such a heavy influence in my life. The 5% Nation of Gods and Earth is um an offshoot, it was uh of the Nation of Islam, and it was founded by Clarence 13S in the uh mid-60s. And so that the the five So it was an offshoot of Nation of Islam around.
SPEAKER_01I mean, because yeah, so uh Malcolm X came about to prominence in 1965 or 66, right? And then he rose through 60. I'm trying to I'm trying to remember trying to recall. Yeah, no, I'm trying to recall. Um by the way, if anybody's never seen, if anybody's never seen the Spike Lee movie, it is F it's incredible. It's one of my favorite incredible film. I mean, his his story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and um, I mean, I would definitely say if you love the movie or even want to contrast the movie to uh the autobiography of Malcolm X, and there are many, many other books around about Malcolm as well. Um he's a contemporary of of Dr. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um as well. And I I believe in many ways they you don't have one, the strength of one without the strength of the other, because they are critiques uh of each other.
SPEAKER_01But also Well, I look I I look at it as an outside, um, I'm you know, obviously not born in that time after it, like kind of retrospectively. You're you're you're you're positioning Martin Luther King and Malcolm X is both necessary, correct? Is that that was what you were postulating? Because I look at it as conf conflict resolution, um, change in race relations, like there's different approaches, and some work better than others in different situations, and they both kind of punched at you know the beast in different ways, right? And it's like it showed different ways. Some things were resolvable in a march, some were not, and some were different. I I think you're right, they they have to one and the other, it's it they needed to kind of there were there was this counterbalancing, but yet like in multiple you know, force multiplier in that way.
SPEAKER_02So for sure. But they are also inspired by global politics as well, right? So you don't have Malcolm or Martin without a Megar Evers and a Fannie Lou Hamer, and they're there to like they're they're Americans coming out of the South and critiquing the South in a particular way, right? And and then heavily influencing mobilization. I I want to be clear, like there's a mobilization of people, of black people, um, and and allies that is happening in the 60s as well, right? But also you have the Black Panther Party out of Oakland, right? You have these chapters, um uh these national chapters that are growing too. And you once again, all of them are influencing each other. All of this is happening at the same time, but there are also global movements, right, that are happening. And so, and all of them are influencing each other. So, why is this important, right? This is important because all of this is influencing and happening um in the mid-60s. What is also happening in the mid-60s is you're having the space race. You're having the you're having the the anti the the Vietnam protests. Vietnam war, yeah. Absolutely. You're having all of this this happening at the same time. And this is why if when you look at uh the the strength of the 70s and 80s, we're really looking at what happened in the 60s, right? We're looking at what was happening but what was unresolved. And so for me as a as an artist born in 1972, I'm coming after the death of Malcolm, Megger, um, Martin, right? I'm coming after the those murders, right? And they're murders, like understand, like these are people who are trying to. To build a future that is equitable. And they're murdered for trying to build futures that are equitable, right? Part of this is what these systems come out of. Hip hop comes out of this. The the um Kwanza comes out. Another system that I look at are the seven principles of Kwanzaa, the Nguza Saba. So I'm looking at the 12 Jewels, I'm looking at hip-hop, I'm looking at the Ingusa Saba, I'm looking at other systems as well. I've already talked about Afro-surrealism, right? I even have tenets for Afrofuturism. You could just visit those on my site. But all of this comes out of this protest history. And it comes out of a lack of representation. And I want to say a lack of representation that is liberation building, right? When when looking at the I don't I don't think I have to talk about the lack of black people in the future. I think we we we understand what that is, right? In these future depictions.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think I think a lot of it's changing too in the represent in in the way that stories. I mean, I'm a I'm a but uh, you know, my butting science fiction writing. I think it also when you look at the tapestry of space and space science fiction writing that it's yeah, I think it's definitely present in mind and just in terms of it it's not this overt like you know, space must be diverse. I think it's just about the characters themselves. I think of um For All Mankind, which is a show alternate history, you know, it's uh very much representation. They also have a different path that or you know that history takes, right? And and you know when you talk about you know, African surrealism, you get deeper than even in the maybe the physical art or the medium itself, but you know, you uh also I love this phrase, you collect the original sounds of the culture, right? And it's like yeah, like you talked about some of the sampling and sampling of within the sample. Like what is that that cause that seemed to fuel a lot of you the philosophy that you have. Can you can you kind of you there's a there's a term for it, and I'll let you kind of talk about it, but you know kind of it it kind of we you know from from this from the the changes, yeah, from the changes from the 60s, right? And the influences there, but there's also the the birth of hip hop, there's a whole set of I think just don't people just take for granted, they just don't even think about it, right? But that's what you do, but that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's my obsession. I can't tell you why, though.
SPEAKER_01I would be confident to say that everyone on this show has some obsessions of things. So you're in uh you're in good company.
SPEAKER_02So I definitely am. I'm like, oh wow, this is a a yeah podcast with a very well-curated uh list of very serious practitioners. Thank you. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01Very kind words. I appreciate that. It's a lot of great voices out there, so yeah, and you're one of them.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
Digging For Original Samples
SPEAKER_02So I in collecting, I became a collector of records in my late teens. And I've always loved music. I just love music. And for me, well, in the earlier days of hip-hop, the DJ was the aspiration. You wanted to be the DJ, and they were playing records, and this was before hip-hop was known as hip-hop, DJs were spinning the roots of hip-hop, these original samples. They were jazz records, disco records, um RB records, but they were the foundation of hip-hop, and so hip-hop doesn't just happen, fall out of the sky, and just emerge. There's a tradition to it. And as I was growing up in high school, uh the DJ was still a heavy influence in the hip-hop movement. So I would see, and I would go to parties, and I was I told you I was getting into clubs early. I was going to parties early, high school dances, even you know, that I could get into, right? Uh early. And so I was always paying attention to the music and to the DJ. And that was my accession even in the club. I love to dance, I love to tear the dance floor up, and then I love to really listen to how the DJ is spinning records. As I am, you know, getting my as I'm getting my first jobs and things, I'm buying really inexpensive records. There are records in a record store. They were inexpensive at that time. Records, you could get a record for three and four dollars, like a contemporary record, uh one that was out at the time. But they also had these record stores that would sell old records, and you would get records for a dollar. But they would be new, right? Or they would still be in a packaging uh that hadn't been opened. And I'm like, I'm just grabbing stuff. I don't always know what I'm grabbing. I'm like, oh, I've heard this artist, I'm grabbing stuff, I'm grabbing this. And that was me starting to collect records, but I remember around that same time as I was learning of milestone, right? Shouts out to once again Dwayne Coleman, his neighbors downstairs, these two uh black women, mother and a daughter. I don't know how we struck up this conversation, but somehow we had a conversation about me collecting records. They wanted to give their record collection uh to someone who would really love it and appreciate it. And so I was like, I'm definitely interested in this. And they're like, why are you collecting these records? There's no language around what I'm trying to do or what I'm thinking about. Like I'm around 1920. And I'm like, well, I'm the the, you know, I like hip hop music and I want to collect the original sounds of that, like the sounds that made that. I don't know what language I'm using, but I'm really trying to say I'm I want to collect these original samples. And they're like, you know, okay, like this is weird to them. Like, why would you want to do that? You know, but they're like, okay, well, if you're gonna take care of these records, we'll let you have them. And it is my uh the first collection of records that I um inherited, and they're in great condition. And I get all of these records, I move out of my um my mother's house, I get my own apartment, and I have these records, but also at the same time, I have these collections of black magazines like Essence Magazine, Ebony Magazine, and other black-owned magazines. My mother grew up in the salon. So, my pardon me, my mother worked in the salon, and I feel like I grew up in the salon, right? My mother was a beautician. So I'm getting like I'm around like beautiful people, all beautiful black people all the time. And the old magazines, I could take home because they we get the new magazines. They didn't need to keep the old ones, right? So I'm bringing home hair magazines, I'm bringing home ebony and essence, and I'm looking at these images of black excellence and black beauty, and I'm putting these things on my wall. So there's this opulence and this majesty of blackness that I'm hanging around, hanging around at 20 years old, and I'm drawing, right? This is my first apartment. My I have my art desk, I have my record collection, and I'm listening to hip-hop, like the golden age of hip-hop. I'm listening to the hip-hop of the late 80s and the early 90s, and there are so many really awesome jazz samples in there. So I would listen to a song, and and then every once in a while I would go dig in my record collection because I want to familiarize myself with these records. And I'd look at the record, I'd look at the back, I'd be like, this title sounds like the chorus or the loop of the chorus on this hip-hop joint. So I would play that record, and I'd be like, yo, that's what they used for that's the sound, that's what they sample for that, right? Then I would dig more and I would find more. So I I it became a practice to mine my own collection because I was inheriting this rich history. So now what I do with that is I'm I'm freaking one of my the things I'm doing right now is I'm collecting all of the original samples for a Tribe Quad Quest third album, Midnight Marauders, because it's my one of my favorite albums, probably top five, top ten of my favorite albums. Why am I obsessed with this original sound? For me, it is how we I I think it is how we build the future. We don't build a future without the the genius of the past that we're building on the shoulders of. And for me, I think it kind of helps me think through that as a system. But I think that's a weak answer. I don't know why my obsession with collecting original samples exists. I don't know why. But it is how I think about collaging the richness of black culture. And that's gonna have to be a sufficient answer for now at least.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, when you talk about that, I mean it's you you talk about it structurally as the same as sampling, hip-hop, you know, like sampling hip-hop. So you go back to the source, you extract it, you transform it. You know, and that's you know how you approach that. Like, so one of the things I was thinking about is like when when I create, and most people they have an environment that create. What's it like when you're doing a piece? Is there music on? Is there sound? Like, what's going on in the space to let you kind of create?
SPEAKER_02It
Creating Art Inside Club Energy
SPEAKER_02used to be a lot of sound. Now I am probably more of a I examine more media with music now. Um, so I watch a lot of horror movies, I watch a lot of uh movies, I study storytelling, right? I will study the writing and the dialogue and the structure of a film, the lighting, the cinematography, the the sound, right, the sound design of it. And so it's grown from listening to music or or solely listening to music, which I still do a lot. I I definitely do that a lot. Uh, one of my favorite things is to do is to come down to my office in the middle of the night and throw on a record that either I'm familiar with or I'm not familiar with, and I will listen to that while I create art because the sound heavily influences the visual output of the work. I even, you know, my friends laugh at me, my wife laughs at me. I will take my iPad to the club because I still go to the club, right? I will go listen to my friends DJ. Um, once again, I've always been in love with the the sound and the music. And as they're spinning, I'm drawing, I'm making my work because their sound, their energy, uh, the way that they're moving the crowd is also influencing how I make my work, right? And I want to siphon that energy. I still DJ though, too. I I am a DJ. And uh so I'm in the I'm always in the club a lot of supporting my friends. Right. Even at 53, I'm the old dude in the club now. You know, um and I'm not the only one, right? Like a lot of us are there to really tap into the what I like to call a temporary utopia. Like we we tap into that space that gives us that freedom away from all of the all of the difficulties of life for a particular time, right? Maybe that party is going from 7 to 2 a.m. Right? 2 a.m. is really pushing for me. I'm exhausted by that time. Um we escape into that temporary utopia. And for me, I siphon the energy of that to create a different type of the visual aesthetic to the sound aesthetic that I'm absorbing. And I think I hope I answered your question. I'm trying to remember what you asked me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know. I think I think you're no, I was about to say, like, well, you're definitely uh an extrovert. You definitely get your energy from everyone, everything else. Um so at times, yeah.
SPEAKER_02At times I'm a massive introvert, though. Yeah, at times, believe it or not, yeah. I think after that at high energy time, I gotta get away and be by myself for a longer period.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I well, I mean, you've done a lot of uh exhibitions, and you know, I think uh will be good what I as we've kind of you've really done a great job kind of laying the the the groundwork for like the taxonomy of any in the politics of like Afrofuturism, you know, and Afro-surrealism, but it's like I want to come back to the Afro now. So like that will kind of table that, but like you know, you you don't fully put obviously like something like Black Panther in the movie, like in the in the category. So yeah, because a lot of people had their first encounter with this space through Wakanda. So I'll let you kind of run like you you started to touch upon it and kind of help frame that up, because I want to dive deeper in that.
Wakanda As The Afro Now
SPEAKER_02For sure. So um the Black Panther, at least it and when we say it's like we we gotta separate the movie from the comics, right? The movies from the comics. Um the and the animations too. There are some great animations. So but I think that, you know, when we're looking at Black Panther 2017, I believe it comes out, and and even, you know, before that, we have Civil War, right, where we we see T'Challa on screen for the first time, and we all lose it. Like we're oh my oh my god, like Black Panther is my number two favorite superhero. Spider-Man's number one, Black Panther's number two, right? So many of us growing up, we did not ever think we'd see him on screen. So um, yeah, just wouldn't I mean, but when it happened, it was a cultural shift. This was a I mean, this movie was a globally impactful movie.
SPEAKER_01I remember seeing people going to the film in uh all over the world, you know, like the representation of the it was definitely a global like message and sub of support for like we want more films like this. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, we we did, right? So imagine what the power of that film does when it galvanizes us to even like we were dressing differently, we were carrying ourselves with a particular level of pride that was different than the than before the movie came out. We were thinking about the future in in some more opulent and beautiful ways. Um, not to say that this not did not exist before that, of course it did, but after this movie drops, it it shifts, it changes things, right? Um and in a particular way, I feel like it it had uh a level of influence that was similar to when Obama became president, right? And that it motivated us, it galvanized us in a very particular way to think about the future. But the the power, I believe, and in the beauty of Wakanda, right, this this technologically advanced uh nation, there's so much to examine about it. There are five tribes that make up their nation, right? I love talking about this because in the movie they don't identify as black, not that I've seen in the movie. They identify as they're Wakandan. This is powerful because they're a nationalist people. They are a black nationalist people. This is important.
SPEAKER_01So like being an American, it's like being American or European or French. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So why is why is this important for a black nation of these five different tribes, right? In the beginning of Black Panther, um, people might not pay really pay attention into the opening credits, but you have this animation that shows multiple thousands of years. You have the crash of this meteorite, that's the vibranium, and you have the rise and fall of empires, right? You have the rise and fall of Wakanda until we get to the Wakanda that we saw a decade ago. This is important, right? By the time we come on screen and we're looking at this, we see um these the five tribes. They have a system of negotiation, they have a system of existence with each other, they have rules that govern their society. So every nation of people have um, well, I say they have six things, right? They have sovereign land, every free nation of people have sovereign land, they have a government that legislates their sovereignty, they have a military that defends their sovereignty, they have a form of currency that is for commerce, they have their own language systems, and the sixth thing is their gods or their deities look like them and express their interests. So you see all of these things happening in Wakanda, but what also do you see in Wakanda? You see an integrated their science and their spirituality is connected to their daily life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the technology and nature, technology and nature are one and the same. If you look at the design of the build, like you look at the design of the buildings in the city, yeah, it has different material like Vibrain Vibranium gave them uh different a material science and also energy creation that the rest of the world didn't have. And but they still infused it within, they still integrated it within nature and the and the the landscape of and they didn't like build some concrete metropolis, right? It's that's what's wild. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You know, so and but they they they have um and I I think there there are beautiful ways in which comic book writers have critiqued Wakanda as well, because we you know the danger of creating a a a black utopian space is that we can some sometimes bypass the injustice, right? And I think that's what Eric's character, Kilmondra, represents in the movie, right? It's this critique of and and not is a critique of what we are not, what what Conda did not do in supplying or helping the the rest of the black world become free, right? But also it is a critique of we need to reconcile our past, right? So Eric is is Eric is left in the world by his father, his father leaves him, right? And and but he's a Wakanda citizen, right? So when he comes back, he trains himself. Like he goes through military training, he goes throughout the world creating all kinds of horror, and then comes back to bring that that horror to Wakanda. This is powerful because he was created, I want to say his existence happens because his past is unreconciled. And as we are building our black liberated futures, we have to think about how we are going to reconcile our past. One of the arguments that I use, and we're I'm gonna get to talking about the Afro now, is one of the arguments that I make is we have to define who we are as a people in order to create this black liberated future that we want to exist. However, but the other part of that is we cannot define who we are as a people inside of a colonized space. We need to get outside of this colonized space to define who we are as a people. Why? Because our definition of who we are will be influenced by the colonialism and the daily oppression that we experience, right? So these are things I'm looking at and examining. And I'm not saying that um I'm open with my work, I'm always open to being wrong. I'm always open to being critiqued. The thing that is important is building that future. So in thinking about that and looking at that, how is this important to thinking about what I call the Afro Now? Waconda exists in the Afro Now. There are many Black Panther books that look at Black Panther in a future space and um Wakanda in a future space. Brilliantly written comic books. I would encourage you all uh to read those books. Um one of my favorite runs is uh Tenet Hesse Coates' uh uh run on Black Panther as well. Deals a lot with the politics of Wakanda. Um, beautifully drawn by one of my favorite artists, Brian Stelfries. Shouts out to Brian Stelfries and some other artists as well. But why is this important to looking at and thinking about the Afro now? Wacanda is what we would imagine is technologically advanced, it is uh future society. What I love about it is I would argue, I'm like, does Wakanda actually exist and we just don't know about it? Right? Do we not know about it? Right. I think there's a power to remaining hidden because once um a black technology is is created and given to the world, it is often capitalized on by the rest of the world, and black people are written out of the origins of the creation of that thing.
When Black Creation Gets Erased
SPEAKER_02You could look at Can you give me an example?
SPEAKER_01Can you give me an example?
SPEAKER_02You could look at so you don't have heavy metal without blues. Go to the earliest, like you don't have Elvis with you don't have Elvis without the blues. You listen, his mentor like has already like like going public, like showing him. He when I I had once I saw this, I'm like, who is Elvis? I don't even know who Elvis is because everything he does is an imitation of this black mentor that he had that taught him how to sing in a cadence, dance in a cadence, etc. Um, but you don't have the Rolling Stones and one of my favorite bands, you don't have Led Zeppelin. One of my favorite bands. You don't have Led Zeppelin with without Howling Wolf, right? You don't have, and then many other bands too. So it's a collage, it's also a collage culture. And so when I look at this and think about this, or you don't have, even now, there is there's always this type of movement that is happening to create the white rapper who will take over, uh, be the white, like the white person of hip-hop. Marshall Mathers will save us all. Marshall Mathers will be. Shout out to Eminem, because Eminem never fell for that. Like he always he always knew, he always credited the the black origins of that. Like he never played that game, right? Yeah, and I always respected him for that. But you also have RB music, the traditions of RB music that in in more recent years, I don't know if it's on an uh uh an incline coming back up, but there was a time when black RB music fell at a decline, at the rise of of uh gangster rap and and some of the things that came afterwards and re in um in connection to to hip hop culture. But what was what also happened in the last 10 to 15 years is you had the rise of these white RB artists who would sing and perform in these black traditions, and they would get all of the the like prestige or whatever of this originated black art form. So once again, black people create something, give it to the world, and then uh when white people come along, they are heralded as the as the the best of the best within this art form. Um, and there are many other examples of when that happens as well. You don't have like the roots of soul food, for example, right? There's a great documentary, I'm blanking on the name of it right now, it's on Netflix, that goes into the origins of many of our most popular foods and how they were created in black culture, right? So, why is this important? The Afro now was important because when we are creating and giving to the world, we have to have our own systems of capitalizing on that culture, not only capitalizing on it though, but also capitalizing on it in a way that leads to our liberation and not our oppression. There are many brilliant hip-hop artists who want to talk about oppression, who want to talk about ways of freeing the community, building futures, and the corporations that that they owe their advances to um tell them they they cannot perform those songs. But they could talk about these other songs in which they are killing black people, that or when they're pimping these women, or when they have all of these cars and mansions and things that are are lies, right? Those videos that you see, they don't they rent those houses, right? Those women are hired, right?
SPEAKER_01Like they're creating a they're creating an image of aspiration that is not not positive. And yeah, a lot of lifestyle.
SPEAKER_02Yes, no. Because I think aspiration is important. Like a lot, every MC that you hear will talk about how they're the best, right? I'm the best MC. I'm the all of them ain't the best. But imagine what that does for your self-esteem when you constantly hear or you repeat or sing that you're the best. Kanye talked about this in some of his earlier recordings. You would sing some of his songs. He's like, Yeah, I wrote that because you're gonna repeat it. And when you repeat that, you're gonna feel it. Right? And I was like, this is really powerful. This affirmation, this idea of apricadabra, which means like you're manifesting it. That's what that word means. You're speaking it into existence. Um, this is important to the Afro now when thinking about this. This goes back to thinking about the future of or the future depictions of Wakanda, right? And not rooting it in the nap. When they finally come to America or come back to America, they go to Oakland. They go to the origin, the root of the Black Panther Party. That's a very particular type of understanding we're supposed to get from that. So you have T'Challa, who has listened to um Eric, right? Who came back and he's like, okay, yeah, we do need to, we need to reconcile this past, but also we do have these people like who are um they might not be Wakanda, but they are suffering black people, and we have the means to to assist here, right? There's a part in civil war, I believe, at the end, where T'Challa um is approaching. Um my goodness, I'm blanking out his name. Um is it Baron Zemo? Uh this character.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's it. Yeah, no, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02He takes off his mask and and Baron Zeno tries to kill himself. And he says to him, he said, No, no, no, he won't let him kill himself. He said, the living aren't done with you yet. Right? There are two pivotal lines. Um, and then before that, it's about forgiveness, right? And then then Baron Zeno tried to kill himself. He said, No, no, no, no. I I he said, but the living aren't done with you yet. I think that that message is supposed to be, yeah, we need to have a conversation around the forgiveness of our past or letting things go so that we can get to that future, and which which we could debate, but also not letting the oppression go, not letting those who benefit from the oppression uh or capitalizing on that and the erasure of us, letting them go. No, the live part done with you yet. You don't just get to walk off into the sunset. No, no, no. You gotta deal with this thing that you created or that you benefited from that your father's father's fathers have created. There's a lot of powerful messages in there about now and getting to that future that we see in Wakanda.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so now we have Afro
Building Afro Futures Through Daily Practice
SPEAKER_01now. What is Afro? What is Afro future? So that's let's frame that. Let's take a look at it.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's what I've been trying to do and thinking about, right? Is is looking at um looking at the technologies that we've created and given to the world. And we need to tap back into those as the systems we use to create the Afro future. We have systems, we've already given systems to the world. I believe that our future looks very much like our past. It is um shouts out to Lonnie Brooks on Med Best who always talk about AI as ancestral intelligence. Right? Yeah, yep. Like we tap into because the systems have already been given to us. What do we frame our health on? For example, and I'll give an example of George Clinton who said, uh, whatever ails you, put it on a radio. Because the funk doesn't only move, but it can remove. Right? He's talking about healing ourselves through music. That is a black tradition. I know when I don't feel well, I will get in a bed under blankets and a hoodie, and I will turn on some very powerful music and I will heal myself. I do that. Coming down in my basement and surrounding myself in music to make art that I'm gonna give to the world is a part of that, right? There are black traditions in that that exist in the afro that we use in the Afro now. Um there are traditions of gardening. We need to go back to on the gardening used to be a regular part of our black existence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, just in terms of growing food, just in terms of growing food. Growing our own family.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Absolutely. So providing for your family and feeding ourselves is is highly important. Even killer Mike said, I think he was at a church uh during one of my favorite conversations I heard him have. He said, We're not ready to revolt anything. He said, We don't farm our own food, food, you know, we don't make our own clothes. And he went down a list of other things. And so we have to think about this. How do we how do we build our now? Right? Like we can look at our black traditions of gardening. For example, to create, start, you could start with growing a plant. You could start with growing one particular thing in your garden. There are community gardens that are often free. You show up, they will give you a plot of land. This this exists in our community here in Champagne, Illinois, in uh Champaign, Illinois, and they will give you seeds, they will give you the tools. There's a garden, there's a uh a shed that's open. You just go get the gloves and the tools. They will help you garden, they will help you figure it out, right? This is the now. This is important. This is in order to build our future, but it comes out of it comes out of a protest of our the the comfortability we've been given, the the we're often penalized or fined or punished for trying to grow food in our communities. There used to be a time where people would grow uh like fruit trees and vegetables right in the front garden. This isn't just black history, this is white history as well, coming out of, I can't remember what war it was, but they were growing food, uh, freedom gardens, I think they were called.
SPEAKER_01I think they were called they were called victory, they were called victory gardens. Victory Gardens, okay, thank you. Yeah, England, yeah, England, United States, yeah, it was designed to support because you had a ration card. You can only get so much milk, so much sugar, people would barter. Then you know, and the uh you know, the the victory gardens were a way of you know less food that needed, you know, for the it it just in and even when uh we had it's interesting how the last 20 years, and just to talk to that, I have some experience with this, is that they, you know, 9-11, that you know, a lot, even to 2008, everyone was about like Victory Gart growing your own food and when things were tight, and then the survivalist movement, the prepper movement came about about being more self-reliant. And it's wild, like you have you didn't have homeowners' associations in the 1940s and 50s, you know, people you know driving around looking for things to you know find you, you know. But now you have community gardens, people that don't have a plot, you know, and I think that's another interesting evolvement from that. You know, and you uh then what it you know you've talked about this, so the so squarely within Afro futures, what does it mean for someone to create in that space? Like what are they should they be what should they be thinking of? Because everyone's gonna come at it differently, like if they're thinking about what that might look like.
SPEAKER_02I think the beauty of Afro futurism uh is that we all there there's so many of us who are taking it in and doing something with it. All of our concerns are not going to be the same. I don't think that because we are if we're thinking about all black people, for example, like we're all gonna be the same, have the all the same lived experience or past existence. Um we're not all gonna have the same even dietary needs, right? Our needs are gonna be different. We we're not, we're not uh d to use the quote, we're not a monolith. And I think that the thing that you need for some people, I've often said this, that Afrofuturism is securing food for the evening for their family. Afrofuturism is securing a winter coat for their their child, right? For some people, um, it is going to be uh creating a a cure uh for this particular thing that black people suffer from that is not a priority um to our government, right? It for some people it's going to be understanding our relationship to the cosmos because what exists, uh we are already in outer space, right? So what exists outside the planet Earth, uh, we are also made up of. So having an understanding of uh or connection to not only the outer space but the inner space, like how we're made up physically as people, our connections to the planet. For some people, that is afrofuturism. I don't think we all need to be experts in the same areas, right? I think that in building a community, just like when you had these victory gardens, um you had you will have people who are expert bakers. The thing that they love to do is bake, right? You will have people who are experts at growing potatoes, you will have people who are experts at growing tomatoes, you will have people who are experts at growing herbs, right? We're not gonna be the best in every single area. Uh and but I believe that collectively, collectively, we have um the ability to come together and free ourselves and govern ourselves on ways that are equitable and just and done with equality. Uh and I asked that question, I used to ask this question at the beginning of my lectures. How many of you believe that we can share the planet? Um, I think I would use through economy, equality, and then uh I would think socially. How can we can we use, can we all share the planet equally in you know, some three are some three key areas? And most people would say no. So my thing is this regardless of what the rest of the world is doing, uh I know that the world often views the darker hue of us as lesser. So I'm I'm concerned about many times I'm concerned about the global South. Um I'm many times concerned about how um we are gonna create systems that we can use to create equality for all of us. I think that Afrofuturism does that. I think Afrofuturism, even in the now, focuses on building equity and building out justice. There are people who are concerned about uh in Afrofuturism, concerned about gender equality or their um their their you know, their sexual sexuality and those concerns. I'm interested in in uh liberation and freedom. How do we build out those as tenants? As I am not as concerned about some of these other areas, there are people who are. So I don't feel like I need to be the expert in all of these areas. I need to focus on the thing that I'm called to do. Right? Not that I don't do readings and and and and study some of these other areas of six intersectionality as well. I do. We are intersectional by nature, but we are oppressed collectively. So when I I always give I like to give examples and I always say this like when the police pull us over, they never question us about our they don't question us about our level of education, our gender and sexuality, how we identify and those things. They often pull us over because we are black. And that is the marker that they see, right? So when Ahmad Arbury was jogging in his neighborhood, um I don't remember them asking uh about any of those things that we tend to separate ourselves on um many times. He was black and he was a male, and he was in his own neighborhood, but they did not see him as a citizen in their community, right? So when those when his murderers did that, that that's how I approach thinking about Afrofuturism. This is how we are viewed, and these are the things that I want to address, particularly in my work. Those other things are secondary and tertiary, those other areas of intersection are who we are naturally, but I often look at James Baldwin, uh one of my my um favorite scholars, and I never know of Baldwin and anything that I've read of him or watched of him uh preferencing his uh his queerness over the revolution, right? Over freedom. I never know of him doing that. So in those same ways, I focus on uh revolution uh I focus on liberation and freedom. Liberation is how we free ourselves, the act of self-freeing ourselves, and then freedom is how we maintain that liberation. And all of those things I think about through the traditions that we have utilized, that we utilize now that are rooted in the systems we created in the past.
SPEAKER_01Let me let me flip this on you then. Okay. This could be a good thing. That was a long answer. No, that's good. No, I'm gonna it's definitely people, this can be a good clip for people to listen to. Well, so what and this is the my kind of you know just to kind of challenge the
Joy Beyond Revolt And Rage
SPEAKER_01position. So what happens when you have uh creative imagination, black creative imagination, yeah, when it doesn't come from revolt? Or like what does liberation art look like? What when things come from joy instead of like what is that what does Afrofuturism look like then?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you for asking that because what I don't want to do is sell the idea that I'm just uh I'm like um Well as a f as a futurist, we gotta look at possible futures, right?
SPEAKER_01All the that's that's our thing, right?
SPEAKER_02We do, we do, and I think there is a relationship that we have with the rage, right? And uh I I like to quote uh I like to think about uh Bruce Banner uh walking toward the creature, the giant creature at the end of the um of the Avengers, the first Avengers movie, and he's walking in his human form after um Tony Stark is is sticking him with stuff and trying to get him to turn into the hope throughout the entire movie. And Bruce is just laughing at him, you know, and by the end of the movie, you know, Captain America says, You might want to suit up now. Hey, we need to hope. We don't need Bruce Banner, we need to hope. And he's walking toward this creature in his human form, and he says this really interesting line. He looks back at the team that says, You want to know how I basically how I live, like how I manage the Hulk? Right? And he's like, or basically I'm blanking on a term, like how he said this exactly. He says, I'm angry all the time. And then he immediately hulks out. When he lets it go, he turns into the Hulk immediately. When he's trying to hold it back, that's when you see the slow change. When he lets the Hulk free, the change is immediate. He says, I'm angry all the time. I am too. That is the black experience. Many of us, we are angry all the time. But what I don't want to do is sell the idea that there is no joy in this. There is so much joy in the black lived experience. You know, for me, you know, my joy is watching, some of my joy is watching my children figure out their young adult lives, even when they're making decisions that I don't agree with.
SPEAKER_01Right? Yeah, they have to worry, they have to learn on their own. Otherwise, they'll never make the decisions. It's it's a it's a job of a parent, and I say this to Max, is uh he's only you know, he's eight years old. He's like, But our job as parents is not to do everything for you, but it's to help you make the decisions when we're not there. It's like help you make the good decisions, like because we're not gonna be there all the time. But you know, when he's faced with things that he has to do, right? Even though you might not agree that he has to learn. But he has to make the smart hope, make just hopefully make the smart decisions.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And as somebody who was raised in the church, right, you know, there's a there's a scripture that says you raise a child in the way that they should go. And when they're old, they won't depart from it. Right? You teach them the ways in which they should live and do make decisions. And they're gonna make mistakes along the way. They're supposed to, right? We learn from mistakes too. And I think it's important to make mistakes, but it's also important to have a template, uh, a map to go back to. When you're driving to a destination, you get off course, you look at the map again, right? You know what I mean? So mistakes are natural, they're gonna happen. Even when you're following your phone or uh, you know, your map on your phone or whatever, it's going to happen. But um, you know, but there's a joy for me that comes in knowing that, okay, we're gonna be here when our children make mistakes. Right? There's a joy in which I have I've done almost by the time I was 50, I had done everything that I wanted to do in life. I think I had done everything that was on my list to do in life. I had to make new goals. And I was 50. I had just gotten tenure, uh, or around the time I had gotten tenure, or I knew I was gonna get it, and and my children were adults. Their college was paid for. They were um, they had graduated, they owed no debt. I everything that I wanted to do, I had done.
SPEAKER_01That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is it's great joy, right? It is great joy. It came with a plan and it came with a lot of sacrifice. That's a whole other podcast conversation, right? But there's a it really is, because it was it was intense in many ways. But and it was all rooted in this science and these belief systems that I have. But there's a joy, even right now, where I'm pushing myself to get back to uh to animate again. I learned animation a little bit uh around 20, 25 years ago, but never really utilized it in my job, so I just didn't keep up those skills. And now technology exists that allows me to animate again, and I'm doing that. I'm falling in love with my first love again. There's a joy that comes out of that too, but also I am tapping into all of those things that fuel the inspiration um for the work. I'm going into the um utilizing the 12 jewels, the the Iguza Saba, the five primary elements of hip-hop, Afrocentricity, black nationalism. I I'm I'm looking at those all of those traditions, and how do I incorporate that into animation to tell stories for young people? Because I really want to connect young people to our very rich um past in thinking about how we build these futures. I'm trying to think about this as almost like I I think about time travel in a very particular way. It is not linear. Um, West African belief systems, many of them are are spherical, right? And I use the sphere a lot. I call them cipher systems. I look at cipher systems or circular systems. The Bukongo Cosmogram is a counterclockwise system of looking at the life cycle with the seasons and the spiritual life as well. Um and those three systems uh spin counterclockwise. But I'm a DJ. So and I, you know, I'm I'm studying the mathematics that are laid out by Grandmaster Flash and breaking down the record, and and I'm looking at 33 and the third rotations, right? And and the math of that is sacred geometry. And then uh that's a cipher system that we created a liberation system out of, right? Um, those systems of spinning records create a peace for us, right? So I'm looking at those types of things. I'm also looking at the hero's journey. I'm a storyteller. That's another cycle system of 12 points of storytelling, right? So, how am I connecting all of those things in an Afro-Now context to build out a future of Afro-surrealist future, an Afro-futurist future that is equitable for us all? And I do that through my mapping system. That's on my website too. All of that stuff is there.
SPEAKER_01So as we kind of wrap getting to the you know, kind of close, it's been a phenomenal conversation. I'm gonna kind of pose a what if and a challenge, kind of bringing all this to one place.
Designing Freedom And Leaving A Template
SPEAKER_01So designing a future, you're not in well, obviously, we're not predicting it, but like, you know, you we talked about animation, you know, talked about a lot of different experience, experiential work. Like if you could design it as an artifact or experience installation, so what does the world look like when black people are genuinely like free? What is it? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it feels like us utilizing these systems that we created. For me, um, the the systems that I use, they function as a constitution, they function as a framing of government. That's how I think about them, right? So we will build our system, at least the way that I think about this, this is the gift that I want to leave to the world, is that I will lay out a template that utilizes the Ngusa Saba, the 12 Jewels, um, the elements of hip hop and many other systems as a form of government, how I think about that. And then what does that look like? One of the primary concerns I have as an artist is I have to show people what the future, what the black liberated future looks like. That's what I do with my work. It is open to be challenged and added to. I consider I would look at it like a digital humanities project where we could, you know, or an open source project that we can all add to. I do believe that the future will take from my work what it needs to build that thing, right? And they might leave everything else. They might take one thing, right? One poem, one fictional writing, one essay, one piece of visual art, one DJ mix or something. They will choose from my work what they need. So, what does that future look like? I believe I will be able to um leave a template for what that future can function like through the traditions that we've already created and given the world. That's what I am working on right now, and that is the bulk of my research right now.
SPEAKER_01So that sounds also kind of I usually like to ask the legacy question. It sounds like that's the thing you want people to kind of when you have that that career that you know you're kind of repurpose in yourself now, but like when you look back, it's kind of that. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I've thought about this um because I get this question a lot. What do I want my legacy to be? And I believe that is what I want my legacy to be. So right now I am writing a lot. I am making a lot of art. Excellent.
Where To Find Stacy And Closing
SPEAKER_01So, Stacy, if people want to find you, where would they go? Like Instagram, website, I know you have some great spaces and some places where they can see your work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I am the the place that people can really find me is on Facebook, Instagram, and on my website. I am on I am on other platforms as well. I'm not on Twitter though, or X, I'm not there. Um, and you usually can find me under my name Stacy A Robinson, S-T-A-C-E-Y-A Robinson. Uh, I'm even on Twitch, not much anymore, not spinning as much anymore, but I will be. Right now, if you really want to get in touch with me, you can get in touch with me on my website. I check that email every day.
SPEAKER_01You can I will uh put all that stuff in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_02For sure, for sure.
SPEAKER_01That's a great place.
SPEAKER_02I'm easily accessible.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, I just want to say thank you. It's been uh, and those of you hanging on, it's been a heck of a conversation. So I'm gonna bookmark the heck out of it and clip it up too and get the you know, just bliss, you know, people listening to the whole conversation. It was absolutely a pleasure to have you on. Thank you. We'll have you on again and hope you had a good time.
SPEAKER_02I had a great time. Yeah. I don't know if we got to everything, but there was No, no, we got yeah, we there's still more.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure there's a round two in there. Okay. But again. All right, man. Thanks, thanks for uh just uh let's see. Thanks for uh thanks for being on.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure, seriously.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
