Good Life Project - Roy Kinsey | The Rapbrarian

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

My guest today, Chicago-born and raised, Roy Kinsey, is a bit of an anomaly. A black, queer-identified, rapper, and librarian or as he puts it, Rapbrarian. Roy’s escape from trauma and creative outlet as a kid was writing and music and also a love of books and learning. He began sharing his words and beats, rapping at a young age, but really began to elevate his pursuit of music-making in college, performing and refining his craft. Graduating, he began making a name for himself, performing, recording and releasing albums, while simultaneously earning degrees that would find him working as a librarian by day and an artist by night.A few albums in, Roy began to feel like an essential part of him was being kept from his music and also his community, so he made the decision to come out as queer on an album at a time very few others in the space of rap and hip-hop were out. It was a moment that would transform him and his music. Roy has since released a series of powerful albums, including his latest powerful reflection, KINSEY: A Memoir (http://www.roykinsey.com/shop). He’s been featured on the cover of major local publications like Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune, in and on major national, and international publications like Billboard, LA Times, NPR, WBEZ’s Vocalo. And Roy has even found a way to bring his love of music and books together, running workshops as a librarian in the Teen Services/Youmedia department for Chicago Public Libraries.You can find Roy Kinsey at:Website : http://www.roykinsey.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/roy_kinsey/---------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Chicago-born and raised Roy Kinsey, is a bit of an anomaly. A black, queer-identified rapper and librarian, or as he puts it, rap-brarian. Roy's escape from trauma and creative outlet as a kid, it was writing and music and also a love of books and learning. And he began sharing his words and beats rapping at a fairly young age, but really began to elevate the pursuit of music-making in college, performing and refining his craft. Graduating, he began making a name for himself, performing and recording and releasing albums, while simultaneously earning degrees that part of him was being kept from his music and also his community. So he made the decision to come out as queer on an album.

At a time, very few others in the space of rap and hip hop were out. And it was this moment that would transform him and his music. Roy has since released a series of powerful albums, including his latest reflection, Kinsey, a memoir. He's been featured on the cover of major publications like Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, and major and international publications like Billboard, LA Times, NPR, and others. And Roy has even found a way to bring his love of music and books together, running workshops as a librarian in the teen services new media department for the Chicago Public Libraries. So excited to share this conversation with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. Tell me if this is true. Your parents met in a way that kind of foreshadowed your future in a little bit. Like they didn't meet in a bar. They didn't meet in a party. Is it actually true that they met at a library? Oh, yeah, of course. I've had my own moments with that story, but it's the absolute truth.

My mother was going to an interview at what was the large library, then the cultural center. And my father was working at a desk. So I guess he, you know, slipped some game in. But yeah, that's where that's where they met. And then my mother was working actually on the the floor where the music was, where all the film, where all the vinyls and all that stuff was. This is not Harold Washington Library. This is before Harold Washington Library. And they met. Their first date was Purple Rain.

Oh, the movie? Yeah. Their first date was to go see Purple Rain, the movie. That is an auspicious first date. Yeah. Yeah. My dad loved Prince. And it was really interesting because when I was putting out Kenzie, a memoir that is very reminiscent to me in a lot of ways of the story of Purple Rain and Prince, the first place that I was asked to come pretty much to drop the album actually was to First Avenue for a sold out show. And that's where my father lives now. My father has lived in Minnesota for longer than 20 years, 25, 30 years, probably, which is why this album is a

purple one. So why I made the vinyl purple. But it was the first show that I was asked to come and do at Princess Club where my father would walk in and see me performing in his hometown right before the shutdown. So it was the first and last show that I got to perform before we, you know, before the pandemic times. Matt, what was that like for you? It was magical. It was so, so amazing. I felt like Prince called me there. I felt like Prince called me, you know, called me to be there and not knowing that things would shut down and a couple of weeks after that.

But I think that it sustained me in a way I really miss performing. And for it to be a sold out show, I was called by Dessa. So Dessa of Doomtree, who lives in Minnesota, is an artist and author in her own right, of course, asked me to come and open for her. So I do this sold out show, and it was just one of the most magical experiences that I've had thus far. The reception was so, so incredible. And the people of Minnesota really made me feel like a star that day. And so it was just a lot of moments that were more magical and more synchronous than even just the 40 minutes I was on stage. It was just a whole magical experience. Yeah. It's sort of like everything was leading up to that moment. Have you talked to your dad about that, his experience of that show?

Yeah. It was so funny. My dad is a very mysterious guy. So when he came, I didn't see him. He called me, told me it was a great show and all that. But I think just the way that my mind works and the art that I was moving through and the art that I was making and where I was in that space, I can't lie that I was like, I don't even know if he came. I don't even know if he was even actually here. And then, but me and my dad have this really interesting connection. I mean, you have that connection with your parents. You have that connection with people that brought you into the world where it doesn't have to be so literal or on the phone or show me proof or whatever.

Like I have that tie with my parents. My parents know when I'm going through something, whether I talk to them or not, you know what I mean? Like they'll feel it from across town or across state or across the country. And so, uh, randomly two or three weeks later, he sends me a video of me, like on my last song, you know, rocking the stage and i was like okay all right he was legit there that's awesome yeah i mean as a dad i think uh you know and a son there's that connection there's

that sort of like thing which you know i'm a fairly practical person but there's also there's certain things like that that i just believe in where you just feel something, you know, it doesn't matter where you are. I know you're also really close with your grandma coming up as well, right? Oh yeah. My bestie. That was. Yeah. Tell me more about her. in Ellisville, Mississippi. And I love to speak her name. She was one of the first people that clapped for me and made a really big deal out of me knowing how to read. On my seventh birthday, she made me the protagonist of this book. It was a story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It should be around here somewhere, but oh, it's right there. Hold on. So in this book that my grandmother gave me,

my tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., I am the protagonist of this book. And I'm writing a paper on Martin Luther King Jr. I tell the story of his life, but I'm, you know, in the beginning saying, oh, telling my cousins, Ricky, Craig, Turtle, I have to write this paper on Martin Luther King Jr., blah, blah, blah. So then I go into the story. By the end of the story, I've told this whole thing. I turn it in. I get an A on the paper. That is the book, right? not only did my grandmother clap for me when she seen me reading and seen that I, you know, had a love for words, used to, you know, go to my kindergarten classes with me and sit in there, walk me home. And then when I began talking, she would say, she would call me radio or lawnmower.

She said, because I talk so much, she would call me that. And that was a foreshadowing in itself, right? I mean, of me getting an A on the paper, maybe the paper was the Blackie album, right? Me being able to use my words for the upliftment of myself and marginalized communities. And it was really just kind of like thinking about this is a power device and words and education, literature are a power device. So we were really, really close. I would go over to her house through my college years and it's the wildest thing because i was watching sylvie's love a week or two ago and all these jams are coming on and it's just beautiful music and one of them is like sam cook's song and that's how me and my grandmother bonded when i was that age was like listening to sam cook front to back and i'm like in my 20s thinking like even watching the film last week i'm like yo

i haven't really listened to any of this soul music in a really really long time and it was interesting to have that connection with my grandmother. I would go over there. She would drink her beers, her warm old Milwaukee. I would drink whatever I was drinking. We would just like vibe out listening to Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin. And I would ask her about her life. And I've always been interested in asking about the lives of her, especially, but of my family. And so when she passed away, that was the way that I thought that I would be able to honor her and to honor everybody who was a part of the Great Migration and all of the ancestors. That's how I thought that I would honor them. That's how I thought that I could honor hip hop and adding something to that canon. And I also had a question, which was, why didn't I really see the story of the Great Migration in hip hop when we rep our cities pretty frequently?

We like that. That's a huge part of hip hop. And I didn't really understand that if we were talking about space and place, why this story hadn't lost anybody that close to me and so it really uh shook me and changed me in a in a extremely profound way yeah i mean and we're talking about the album blackie here which i guess so your grandma passed in 2016 the album drops 2018 from what i remember right correct yeah which was this I mean, it's like this really powerful blend. It's a look at history. It's sort of like a tracing of lineage and trauma and evolution, but it's also, it's an offering to your grandma. I mean, it kind of, it feels like this was not just you creating art, not just you bringing

a certain moment in history and journey for a lot of people to the public but also this was you sort of like speaking to her um through the album to a certain extent absolutely because there were things that i realized that i didn't understand about her life until she passed away and that's a thing that i think a lot of people experience once a person that they thought was going to be here, you know, for a long time, kind of like, and it wasn't sudden to me. I think that up until that, I mean, it was sudden to me, but, but I think, you know, you're very naive in a way, uh, up until you really lose someone that is very important and instrumental to your life. And so when I'm thinking about it and also reading The Warmth of Other Suns that definitely inspired my thinking

and my writing of that album, I was just like, oh, my grandma's not just my grandma. My grandmother was part of this wave of people that was leaving the South to come to places like Chicago and Oakland and Harlem and Northern cities for a better life. And people, you know, a lot of times definitely are naturally nomadic, but more than not, people are leaving for a better life. And I couldn't imagine that my family was any different than any of the millions of Black folks that was leaving the South, you know, for a better life. And so thinking about what she had come up against and really going through my whole experience of 27 through 32 in astrological spaces. They call it your Saturn return. And that is a time where you're pretty much shaking off what can't come with you to adulthood, right? And so it means that you might experience a life-changing breakup or a death in my case, whatever's about to mature you, right? It'll be

a personalized set of circumstances. That was what was happening for me. And I was really confused about what was happening in America for the first time. My parents had seen it. People had seen what it meant, but it was my first go-round with seeing a person get off for killing Mike Brown and leaving my master's program one night after class, listening to the radio. And the radio was so, it's just such a somber tone as they say that this police officer won't be arrested. And that was just what my experience was for the first time in my life, right? For the first time in my life, I'm experiencing, literally watching people get off for killing Black folks. I'm logging onto social media and not choosing to see, you know, a video. A video will literally start playing on my screen

before I, you know, so I'm watching Black death on a loop. And I had to, and so grateful to have a container to have put those feelings and those expressions and those sentiments from a micro to a macro level, from my family to, you know, a collective, an American collective, right? Like this is what we are all experiencing. We're experiencing generational trauma as well as trauma in a digital age. And it was just wild, wild to me. Yeah, man, I couldn't imagine. Because you also, when Blackie came out, you toured that album afterwards, from what I remember, also for a bit, right? I definitely toured some libraries around Chicago. And then I did a lot of shows in and around Chicago.

Definitely. I guess I'm curious what it was like because writing this album and then recording it is one part of the process. But then when you go out and you're performing this around, there's a lot of trauma in the album. And I'm wondering, I guess, when you're performing that, how does that land with you just personally? It was wonderful at first. When I was first performing it, it was cathartic. It was very healing for me. I was lucky to have worked out a lot of the album in front of people before the album had come out. So a lot of the songs really kind of weren't written, but I was asked to do this thing. And I think that I had just read The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes, where I was kind of like, you know what, I am not going to tell myselfis Staples and was asking me to host open mics.

And I was just like, where did this come from in my mind? I'm like, where did this come from? And then I was just like, yo, yes, whatever. It came to me. Say yes. And then I had an idea to kind of form that into something else, which is like, I am going to take this opportunity to work out these songs that are kind of different from the songs that I've done in the past. It seems like they're pretty on brand, right? I'm telling a story of the great Mike Gracie, you know, Maven Staples and Staples Singers.

They're from the South, Dockery, actually. So I'm finding a lot of ways to kind of plug this in. And so I, you know, work that work that part out in front of people. But then I go and take a song like Jungle Book and perform it in front of people for the first time. And actually, even before that, I practiced a lot in my car, rapping the songs. And I knew what I wrote. We recorded it.

But then I'm practicing the song in the car. And for the first time, I feel myself like yelling, rapping the song until I'm like crying and I'm just like not really knowing what that was right like overcome with emotion and then I do this in front of you know at these library performances and and I think being exposed and showing this emotion that is one that I usually kind of tuck away one of of anger, for a lot of different reasons, it's continuing to come out. And I'm like, oh, I definitely have something here that is different from what I've done before. So it was healing to be able to have a space to be angry, to honor hip hop, to honor my grandmother, to

let people who came to these library shows and everyone else know that a rapper is experiencing the same thing that you're experiencing and sees this because I think that that was the thing that I was also experiencing while making the album is like, yo, this is crazy making the fact that I'm watching a lot of artists not say anything about this. Right. And so there's importance in representation. There's importance in being seen and letting people know, like, no, you are not going crazy. I've seen that, too. So it began really healing and cathartic. And then I think by the time I was, you know, moving around two years and, you know, it was just a, it was just a cycle. It had become to me

re-traumatizing to have to perform these songs that hold so much anger and pain for me. And then, you know, I am not different in the way I can't just perform this song like I don't have feelings, even if I've tried to move from a different state. So I was beginning to feel burnt out and like I was re-traumatizing myself because I'm bringing so much here. I'm like before the show, building an altar and doing, you know, before every show, right, like bringing pictures of my grandmother and doing all this thing that is just it's not that's not part of the show. That's not part of the show is part for me, but. It was just a lot of energy moving before and after the show. I feel like I'm getting people opened up at the show. So people are literally going through a range of emotions. They're laughing, they're crying. And I was really just kind of feeling like, I don't know about this anymore. I don't know about performing these songs in front of, I don't know about performing these songs in front of,

I don't know about crying about being a Black man in America on stage anymore. I don't know if that's like, it was never what I wanted to do in the first place, but now it just seems like more of the show. It seems like more of an exploitation, especially because I'm not seeing anything necessarily happening. It was just weird. It's still very confusing for me, actually. I may sound confusing and confused about the entire thing, but I do know those two feelings for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think so many people see, you go to a show and you hear music, you hear the performance side of things and it resonates with you in really powerful ways, but we probably don't think all that much about how it's affecting the performer, the person on stage, especially when

you're talking about really hard things and traumatizing things, both on a very personal level and on a systemic and society-wide level, which is why I was curious about that. Because yeah, and it's helpful to sort of see inside the way that you experienced it. We kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool, like zoomed forward to 2018, in no small part because Blackie was, really brought your grandma in, who was such an early influence for you. And it sounds like music and books, music, reading and books were a part of your life from the earliest days. This was something where it was sort of like a go-to to you. And I guess in high school, it sounds like you kept notebooks from the earliest days. So like working out lines, working out. I'm curious for you, what was the why behind the notebooks?

Were you doing it because you saw yourself as putting together things that you would eventually perform? Or was it healing? Was it an escape? Was it all the above or things that I haven't even mentioned? I've always kept a journal from as early as I can remember. I've had my earliest, earliest memories of being with my mother and my grandmother. My mom used to write songs.

She used to write the lyrics to Whitney Houston songs to learn them with my grandmother. Right. Whitney Houston songs to learn them with my grandmother. So I seen that. I never needed to write down artist songs to learn them. I know a lot of songs just by listening to them a million times. But I loved artistry and I loved musicians and love musicians so much that I wanted to be one. It seems like those were the freest Black folks that I had ever known and had ever seen. And I wanted to do that and I wanted to be that. And so around the time of my adolescence, I'm really then seeing people like Eminem not only be a really great rapper, but be a rapper that is kind of like carrying notebooks.

I think that I just always had a real connection with my words. And so I always wanted to like stash them somewhere. I always wanted to stash my words and my thoughts somewhere, but I always knew and always wanted to be a rapper for a long, for a really, really long time. As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a rapper. And writing these words down, although it felt like I was carrying a notebook around probably 10, 15 years before I even said anything to anybody or performed, you know, and took it to that next level. Like I was senior year when I went and actually like recorded a song. Right. But I was carrying a notebook around since I was probably like second or third grade. The first one was gold and had a lock on it. It was definitely a little diary.

It was definitely a little diary, you know. But I always just felt like that was me and that was my kind of connection to myself. I think about people like Tupac, who wrote, who just wrote. And I always found that really fascinating that, you know, there's books published out with his handwritten poetry and his handwritten lyrics. So I just have always loved that. For some reason, I've always loved pens and paper and books and journals and people kind of walking around with those. I've just always loved the spoken word. I always loved the poet. Yeah. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. I mean, it sounds like it started with a spoken word you always had in your mind, sort of like these were going to be shared with the world at some point starts to find an outlet in high school but it sounds like

things things really changed also you end up in depaul like after high school and i know you you connect i don't know when it was when you were there but at some point you connect with nick castle who goes by dj castle and it sounds like when you two sort of like connect, that's a moment for you where sort of like the way that you approach the art and what you're doing really starts to evolve. For sure. Oh yeah. That's my buddy. I tell people often that he's the person that made me a professional. And I think that he, and I think that he explained that to me. He didn't explain, I made you a professional it wasn't like that but it was you become a professional the first time you get paid for

the thing that you do and Nick Castle was definitely the first person to invite me out to spit some rhymes at a at a bar I don't know if it was a live one or a tonic room not far from the DePaul campus and he asked me to rap a couple songs, and I did, and he paid me. And that's what made me a professional. But there was this other thing that was going on, which was that it was like the wild, wild west, you know, around this time where so many rappers wanted to get on. And there were showcases that we would do in Chicago where we would get six minutes. We had to sell 20 tickets a piece for twenty dollars to our fans and friends or whoever would buy tickets from us and be like, yo, we're going to be performing at Wild Hair on this night we had to turn that money over to a promoter who has stacked this bill

of like 30 other hungry rappers and we're all opening for whoever the rapper is so clearly all that money that we just hustled throughout Chicago was going to them and it was and it was a bunch of people I've done I did it a good 10 times and it was uh people from Keith Murray to Twista to Big Sean but knowing that we only had seven minutes you know I was with the DJ a lot of the thing that set me apart was that a lot of these rappers were going on stage and they just would hand whoever a CD. But that eats your time up like that. That's two songs. That's three songs.

Nick Castle, a professional DJ, would say, we have to make the best of this little time that we have. And so I'm going to pretty much take the BPM that you're rapping on on these original beats, and we're going to put you on beats that are popping already, that are already famous. So it was like a live mixtape, actually. And so I am rapping consistently for this seven, eight minutes, and he is changing the beat every 30 seconds. And so that was the hook, right? People are just kind of like, you know, they fall in because they know these songs already, but they haven't heard me rap. So it's original bars on beats that they know.

And that was just, it was a mixtape era, but I never had put out a mixtape like that. But my live show was a was definitely a mixtape. And, yeah, we made we made a lot of magic, but he really helped me to be a professional. And, you know, in a lot of ways and really just kind of having a very high level and a high standard of the performance. And I love him and I'll always appreciate that about him. Yeah. I mean, it seems like there's this bridge sort of experience where the craft really becomes much more front and center. It's like, okay, the words really matter. and but like the entire thing from end to end there's a craft element to this that is critical and like really

transformational in the way that people experience it yeah absolutely people are coming to see a show and there's a lot of different elements that go into people having a really great experience and that's what i always try to bring, you know, for people. I never want people to leave my show and be like, I could have stayed home. You know, I never, never want that because I operate that way. And because I create from that way, I feel that way. So I'm like, well, I could have stayed at home for this, you know, like, you know, I think we all feel that way.

It's like we have a limited amount of time in our lives and if we're going to allocate it to do something we want it to be worth it yeah absolutely you started you know essentially producing your own stuff and you start putting out albums you know at some point rookie of the year comes out and then there's this really interesting moment. I think it's 2013, Beautiful Only drops, right? Which is effectively a coming out album for you, different pronouns. So I'm curious, what's happening in your life and in your thought process between Rookie of the Year and Beautiful Only that sort of leads you to this place that says, okay, I need to present myself on a truer level to the industry, to my colleagues, and also

to my fans? Yeah, that's a great question. I always looked at hip hop, true hip hop, to be a space where you should be your most authentic self. Somebody asked DMX about a ghostwriter years ago. He said, if they can't write it, they don't need to be saying it. Right. And I am just from that era, you know, where I felt like if I didn't say it, especially thinking about the music that I had made on Keep the Receipts, Rookie of the Year, where I would be using pronouns. And up until that point, I had had girlfriends and had done all these things.

It was just something that was really sitting within me where I'm just kind of like, it's time for me to come out and say this. And this is the evolution of hip hop. Hip hop is not, oh, can I come and be a gay rapper in your thing? It's like, no, I'm about to snatch this mic like everybody else snatched their mic and said their piece. And at that moment, it was really, really important to me because I felt like if I didn't say it, that I was hiding something for some reason. I just kind of felt like that. And so I knew that it was necessary. I knew that we were moving in that direction of queer voices who had always been around in hip hop and influencing hip hop, I think it was just time for us to step up to the mic.

And that's what I wanted to do on that album. Yeah. How did it land? I mean, how did it land with the industry? How did it land with colleagues? And how did it land with fans when you came out? And I'm curious whether, even though you were feeling like, okay, so this is the thing I can't not do. Did you have hesitation? And then once it was out there, what was the response? I don't remember any bad responses. If there was anything that was said, it really, it wasn't said to me there, nothing reached me that impacted me negatively. And I didn't really have, you know, I was still ascending, I'd say. And so didn't have a lot of expectation from anyone. I can't say one way or another if things would have been different if I was straight.

I would have no way of knowing that. What I did know is that I was a good rapper and wanted to be a good rapper and wanted to be a better rapper and that nobody would be able to deny if I was or not. And that was the thing that I always cared about. That's the thing that I still care about is that you can say, you know, really kind of whatever you want or feel whatever way that you want. But I'm at peace. I'm at peace because, you know, I followed my intuition about a thing and it really is whatever. Now, you know, definitely had moments where I felt like I was treated a certain way, but that literally could be for any reason, I'd say that I got more love than hate. And we zero in on the negativity a lot of times, but no, I have always really gotten a lot of love

from my city and the music industry. And that's the thing that kind of made me continue to make music. And I think, you know, if there was any negativity, it probably was what I was using as fuel up until that point. So I'm like, bring it on. I was, I was fearless back then. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting too, cause you, you, you start out by saying, you know, like when you get on stage, somebody hands you the mic, nobody really cares who you are are how you identify what they want to do you know like

are the next 10 minutes or half an hour hour whatever it is am i gonna love this experience like right here now um but but i feel like also it's not just music but a lot of industries but i feel like in music in particular everyone everyone wants to genre-fy you. And part of that is not, well, okay, so what is the subcategory of rap? But also, well, is it queer rap? Is it? And it's like, but can it just be rap? And I happen to be a queer-identifying person.

And so I guess that was part of my curiosity is whether you're like, once you're out, like whether people start wanting to sort of try and figure out what's the right box to put you in, in the industry. Sure. It's always interesting to me when people ask me like, so, you know, who do you rap like? You know, are you like, like what kind of, I'm like, it's an album. Go listen to it. Go listen to the album. You know what I mean?

Like you want me to describe my album to you or describe my style? But that's just where we are. We've gotten very lazy as a people and lazy as a culture. And I think that it exists in the music industry, but it's definitely on a lot of platforms as well, where you have to hashtag this thing. You have to market this thing. You have to sell this thing. You have to box it up and package it and put it out there. And we forget that we're, you know, real big humans that contain multitudes. And so we want the cliff notes for the album.

We don't listen for pleasure anymore. We don't, there's a lot that we really don't do. And it actually takes the fun out of things that we found pleasurable, whether it be listening to music or reading a book or, you know, we just want it quick and dirty. So, yeah, I've absolutely experienced that. But I think that there is a mystique that you kind of want to hold on to and not just for the sake of being, you know, cryptic. But me personally, the way that I approach music is that I'm a prophet. And I think that my job is a lot of times to go out on my own journey

and bring something back. And it gets difficult when you are a person like that in a digital world you know uh erica calls herself analog girl in a digital world right that's just kind of how you feel a lot of times it's just like you're not i'm not of the world i'm just i'm just in it. I'm really just in it. So I feel spiritual in a lot of ways. It's literally what my name means. My middle name is D'Angelo. It means messenger of the angels. And a lot of times I really do feel like that's what's held on the Blackie album. That's what is on the Kenzie album, is a conversation between me and ancestors, me and higher powers to bring back to the people, right? And that's not easy. That's not an easy thing. You know, beyond being a prophet, I feel very much like an empath. I feel very much like a person who knows that, who is in a constant conversation with higher powers and with ancestors and things like that. And it takes a real discipline. You know, a lot of times I was just like, I don't want to, you know, when I talked about being re-traumatizing, I'm like, I'm tired. I don't want to be sad. I don't want to make this music. I don't want to do this. But I also understand that I am from a legacy of, I would call what I'm doing blues rap a lot of times, but I also feel like I am from a legacy of people who have contributed so much and I have not reinvented anything. There were queer rappers,

there were queer musicians. Forever. Forever. And that needs to be known, you know, and that needs to be known. I mean, and that needs to be known. I mean, I think Langston Hughes' estate still is saying that he wasn't a queer man, right? Like, what are we talking about here, right? So it's really important because I've always used story and spoken word as a power device, but also just knowing that you're not the first and you're not alone. Just go so far and it helps so much. And if I can leave something, you know, as a legacy, but just so the next generation after me doesn't have to work so hard or, you know, dig so deep. Let's just put it put it right here, you know, so you can get on with your life and you can have a high quality of life without

trying to or having to spend so much time undoing what we were hoping ancestors would you know done for us or did do for us and they got buried or hidden or whatever yeah mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilots are hitman i knew you were gonna be fun Whatever. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I mean, it's really interesting. It kind of feels like Beautiful Only comes out in 2013 and it's sort of like saying,

okay, so this is who I am. I'm still an artist, but this is who I am just as an individual also. And I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to rap about it. I'm going to create, I'm going to offer from it. And then in the beginning of last year, before everything started to go crazy, you dropped Kinsey Memoir, which I guess was February, right? So it's like, we don't know what's about to hit, but Kinsey, it feels like a really interesting bookend to me to Beautiful Lonely. Not like the book is over or the story is over, but the album feels like in a weird way a homecoming to me.

That's nice. It's a nice way to put that. And I can see that. I don't think that I've ever put those two together. It's really interesting because yesterday I was working on an artist's resume because this year I want to begin just building more things, building more of an infrastructure for myself, trying to work on funding and grants and all that stuff. But I was working on an artist's resume, just writing down all of the shows that I've done, venues I've played, cities, press. And I've seen Beautiful Only on there. And I think that I talked about Beautiful Only being

a coming out album more than it actually holding what I needed it to hold. So definitely there was a song that was dedicated to a guy on there. Absolutely. There was a companion piece of a video that was an interview that talked about being Black and queer in hip-hop industry. But I think that once Kenzie was created, and thinking about the songs that I was making, and that was, so you nailed it, right? Fetish is a song on Kenzie that scared the hell out of me, but it really just kind of, I just gave it the space. And that's one of the things that I'm talking about when I talk about being an empath or being able to meet my creativity and understanding that my creativity is a negotiation and a conversation between myself and a higher power and not just like, ooh, I'm about to write this. This is going to be

controversial. You know what I mean? It's not ever that. It's really kind of like leaving that door open in that creative mode. And I just found myself in my space and the words to Fetish were really just kind of like coming out. But even in that song, the person that is in front of the place that I go into, I just never forgot that. It was all the five seconds, but he said, trust ain't nothing going on. That was like, I'm like, oh, that's a that. It was all the five seconds. But he said, trust ain't nothing going on. You know, that was like I'm like, oh, that's a sage. That was a you know, that was and we've had those. Right. We've had I'm starting a book called The Prophets, which is a queer love story that takes place on the plantation.

And I just finished Terrell Alvin McCraney's Brother Sister Plays. So Terrell Alvin McCraney, you know, of course wrote Moonlight. And I was at the library a couple of weeks ago when somebody ordered that book and I pulled it off and I'm like, what? I had no idea that Terrell Alvin McCraney like wrote this book that is deeply rooted in African spirituality, which he's taking these gods and dropped them in, you know, present day Louisiana and New Orleans and made them characters. And my favorite God and character is Ilegua, who was queer in the book. And I'm like, it's just so funny how the thing that you need finds you when it was supposed to, right? But for Kenzie, there are layers of shame and guilt to shed, I believe. And so I'm really just kind of happy with everything that I come across. But Kenzie is absolutely the album that I wanted to make. I really just want to be more and more myself when I'm recording.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned somebody came into the library a couple of weeks ago. So there's this whole other through line that we talked about in the very beginning, about your love of reading and books. While all this is going on, while you're expressing yourself musically, you also have this passion for books. And it ends up taking you through a master's program. And then you end up like your full-time gig is you're a librarian. But also you're a librarian in Chicago libraries. And you focus a lot of your energy on teen services and sort of like youth generated media there. So it seems like they're not two separate lives. They're like two passions, two things that it

seems like really make you come alive and you love in different ways. And they also, they weave sort of together in interesting ways as well. Oh yeah. I thought that they were separate for a really long time and treated them as such, but it wasn't until I was sitting in my storytelling class during that master's program and questioning, like, do these things go together? And I think about the term Rappabrarian that kind of came of me being in that class like oh I'm the ratbrarian and this actually makes a little too much sense right I mean I'm informed by words and stories and I'm using stories and books to have the best quality of life that I can. And when I understood that, I understood another part of myself. I understood the importance of being and seeing a Black male librarian.

I understood information and education as power. I finally understood for myself. One of the things that my mother would always tell me is that people can take whatever they want from you, but they'll never be able to take your education. They'll never be able to take what you know. And so there were a lot of things that I was understanding for myself. And then I think with my programming, I think that being able to then do a program like a rap writing workshop where I am literally just teaching teens how to use their voice and their story for empowerment, right?

I am in a really interesting spot on the West side of Chicago. And the kids love rap and love making rap, although they hadn't lived the life that they're rapping about. Now their stars are rapping about this life, whether they live this life or not, whatever, but they are rapping this, and I know these kids, and they didn't do that. They might go out and do a lot of this stuff. But my job doing rap writing workshops is to teach them that their life is valid and their life is important and that they have to live through things. But I'm always just asking them to pull from their lives and write a verse about that, right? Like

write a verse about what your experience is and your thoughts and how you approach certain situations or advice that you've gotten, right? Your life is valid. Your life is, you know, real and your life is yours. And I think that that could be an extremely powerful thing. I know how I started rapping and it was definitely emulating my favorite rappers, right? And talking about certain things or even stealing their verses, right? So you do have to kind of develop your voice. But I think that

if I would have known that it was cool to rap about my life and understand myself earlier, then that was something that I would have done earlier. Yeah. I mean, I love that. I also love that you do this in the context of a library where you can give them the invitation to go into themselves. But as, you know, as we do that so often, especially when like you're younger, you know, a lot of questions come up and you also have, you have the experience and the knowledge and then the container of a library system to kind of be able to help direct them if it comes up and say like, there's actually a larger, like that thing you're feeling right now,

you know, there's a larger history around that. Like there's a bigger context. And actually, if you're curious about it, like I can help point you to like these different things. Absolutely. I mean, that's what my work is because that's what I did for myself.

I told you, my parents met at a library and I grew up in libraries. I was in, I was volunteering in libraries. It was my first job. I've worked in libraries for more than half my life. And when I had questions about libraries. I was volunteering in libraries. It was my first job. I've worked in libraries for more than half my life. And when I had questions about myself, I'm like, oh, let me go to this book over here. I'm like, oh, okay. So I'm not the first gay person. Good. Oh, I'm not

the first gay rapper. Great. That was great information for me to know. Oh, James Baldwin. Oh, cool. You know what I mean? So that's our job. That's our duty. It's not even a choice at this point. It is our duty to make the generation after us make their lives better and to pass certain information down, literally information, right? And so just being in that space and understanding the issue and the time that we're in, that so many people that I serve are suffering from the digital divide, that so many people will be lost because of the access that they don't have to certain information or certain stories or knowing how to look for things. There's so much information out there and we are actually probably more lost than we were only 10 or 20 years ago because it's become so convincing and there's so much misinformation

and disinformation that just because it looks legit, it really doesn't. And that's just an aside, but to kind of stay on topic is that I understand a lot about the field of information, but I also understand people as libraries themselves, right? And there's a lot that we have to kind of figure out in ourselves. And a lot of times our eyes are always focused on everything outside of us, but like, you know, how do we make sense of our inner worlds? And I think that that's what I've spent a lifetime doing in a library system, becoming who I am as a rapper, poet, and a librarian. It's kind of like I've used information in this way to kind of sort through my inner world and my inner life. And I really want to teach people that richness. And I want people to understand themselves better because I just don't feel like society gives us that

opportunity to understand ourselves very well. I think that we're asked to understand literally everything else but ourselves and our inner worlds. We're not asked to understand our thoughts. We're not asked to understand our spirituality or our spirits or our emotions. And so that's kind of a lot of what I've used that library space for. And I want people to know that. I want people to know that they can and should do that. Yeah. I love that notion of, I think your, your language was understanding people as libraries themselves. I love that idea. Yes. There's a vast resource of, of information all around us, but also there's a whole lot to mine within us as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. There's this idea, I think it comes from

Africa and a man actually told me this in the library. And that's the other thing I've learned so much just from people coming into the library and having conversations with me. And that's what they talk about. A lot of times people won't ever pick up a book at the library, but they come to have conversations with people. And that's a learning mechanism as well, right? Being able to have conversation with people. But what that person said was that in Africa, we celebrate days on end, maybe 30, when an elder dies because it's like a library has burned to the ground. And you won't ever get that information back if you didn't spend time asking grandma stories or learning those recipes or learning that wisdom that was only contained from the passing of one

mouth to another's ears, right? There's a lot that hasn't been captured. There's a lot that hasn't been documented. And so, you know, I just love wisdom and learning and experience. And so I love the space and I want people to love it too. Hmm. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life means to be at peace. Yeah. I think in the beginning, I always thought of things or acquiring things and being able to get whatever you want. It's a good life.

But at this point, I'm like, a good life is being at peace. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com.

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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.