The Questlove Show - Questlove Supreme: Reverend Al Sharpton

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

This episode of Questlove Supreme is the perfect way to end Black History Month and continue the conversation. At 4 years old Reverend Al Sharpton knew what his mission would be in life and so his journey began as a great orator, warrior and leader in the plight of justice and equality for Black people. Listen as Reverend Al shares his story with Quest and Team Supreme and find out how music was pivotal in framing his story. Class is in session! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clivert Show on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.

If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Quest Love Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. There he is. Hello. Hello. What's going on, real?

What's happening? What's happening? All right. I know you got limited times, though. I want to start the clocking. immediately because we got a trillion questions. Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme. I'm Westlove. We are here with Team Supreme. Shooka Steve in the house. Hello, how are you? Congratulations on Sundance. Hello, Reverend Al. Hello there. That's right. Reverend Lel also star of Summer of Soul. I forgot.

Lai. How are you? Congratulations, but power to the people. got the power. Robert Allen is here. Yes, absolutely. I'm Bayville. I'm here.

I'm fantastic. I'm a little involved. Let's do it. Yeah. Von Tigolo from North Cathdale-Lac. Yeah, brother. Yes, indeed. Yeah, man.

You just call it North Carolina. No one calls it. No one says North Carolina. Nobody. Nobody. That's like no one says New York City either. Yeah, it's like people saying Philadelphia or Ila fresh or Philadelphia. whatever it's just yeah no one says North Carolina sign no okay noted people we cannot

call North Carolina North Kalka Lack all right so our guest today how shall I say our guest today is is cut from a rare cloth the cloth of justice he's a gentleman who at the ripe age of four knew what is calling was I believe that at the age of four, my parents allowed me to watch Soul Train unshaperoned. So that should give me some comparisons. Anyway, he was practically baptized in the civil rights movement, appointed as leader of the youth movement from the one and only Jesse Jackson's Operation Breadbasket. Our guest today is literally black Ghostbusters, the person. Who is blackish?

Who you got a call? The person whom you call when it's time to put wills. When the white folks start tripping. Exactly. Into motion. Bringing attention to justice, name it. He's there literally on the front lines. The always exciting, never a loss of words or the right words.

Always there on the front lines. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Questlove Supreme, the one and only Reverend Al Sharpton. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We made it. How are you today?

How are you today? I'm doing good. I'm doing very well. And congratulations on Summer Soul. You really did a masterpiece on them. Wow. I appreciate that. But I got to ask you.

And I'm a self-admitted former reluctant leader. How hard is it to still want to lead and be on the front lines and always have the answers because there's many a day where I mean, my version of leading is more like, not even close. Yeah, make it a music edit or having a lunch with somebody, but, you know, not to your level, but still, like, once you decide that that's the path that your life is on, you've got to see it through. And what makes you get out of bed every morning to fulfill this role?

I think that I put it this way. Michael Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson's mother spoke one night, and she said something that clicked with me. She said that Mark Twain, and you got to remember we're in the middle of this whole battle in Ferguson, and for the mother of a victim, to quote Mark Twain was like, what? What is she getting ready to do? And she said, Mark Twain said something that she never forgot. She said, the two most important moments in your life is the moment you're born

and the moment you find out why you were born. And that's what clicks with me. I believe I was born to do what I do. I've been doing it since I was four. Like you said, I started preaching as a kid in the intercostal church. I became Jesse and Bill Jones Youth Director at 12. So I don't know nothing else.

And even as I got, Earl Olden got around James Brown and others in entertainment, I kept going back to activism. James Brown would say, he can't make a living doing that. He'll be back out here. And I wouldn't go back. because that's where my comfort zone was.

And as you have developed into a leader, you can drop the reluctant, you do it questioning yourself, but you do it because you can't do anything else because that has become you. And people look for you to do that. And what you are ambiguous about, that ambiguity is what attracts people

because they know you don't have an agenda. You're doing it from your heart. Wow. Okay. I got to take that. So there's never time. where you feel like, you know, where you're in a situation and you don't know the right words to say or, okay, there's a moment. Let me back up. So there's a, there's a moment that President Obama told me about in which he knew that he was going to do that, the funeral service for in South Carolina.

The folks from the church. Yeah, Charles. Yeah. in Charleston. He knew he was going to do that service. And with a good eight-day lead, he knew that, you know, he had the, he crafted the perfect speech that he felt that was going to fit the tone. And he said, like three minutes into that speech, he knew that wasn't the tone. And he didn't know what to do. And he just, like, took a breath. And something said, just start saying an amazing grace. And it was a risk for him, but he did it and it opened the people up. So

I'm just saying, like, in leading some oftentimes, you have to think on your feet in real time. How does that come to you? I think I come from a place where, like, we, we now have to watch our words and I don't want to get canceled. I don't want to say the wrong thing. So, you know, often get caught in my head and leading because you don't want to say the wrong thing because of the repercussions. But how do you get over that? I think you go with the flow and the energy and no matter how much you plan and all of us are worried about if I say this wrong, am I going to hurt the cause? Am I going to hurt the family? I'm representing. I'm going to hurt the organization. But then you get in an energy and you just flow. I'll give you an example.

and President Obama told me the same story about Amazing Grace. I was in the audience that day. It worked, and I didn't know that he didn't plan it. But when I walked on the pulpit to preach George Floyd's funeral, I had no plans of doing that whole thing of get your knee off our neck. It just came as I was speaking, and I just went with it, and it worked, and I just kept doing it then. And I think that you've got to be disciplined enough

to put some borders on yourself in your own mind, but then free enough to say, I'm going to press as far as I can inside these borders and let it flow. The advantage I had starting as a voice preacher, the disadvantage is before I could read and write well, I was preaching. The advantage is I never learned how to use a manuscript.

So I can't speak from a manuscript. That's why when I started my MSNBC show, the hardest thing in the world for me was to speak with a text. because I never read a sermon or speech. So I'm like, I'm messing up, Saturday Night Lives Good, all these things. Yeah, that was pretty. I never, I never, I never used a manuscript

until I started on MSNBC. I was 57 years old, learning how to speak and read at the same time. Wait, so you're saying you're a freestaller? You said you freestyle for, I was freestyling before you're calling freestyle. I was freestyling, I was freestyling when we were still saying North Kackerelackerel.

Do you remember what you spoke about when you were four? Yes. What was your parents' reaction to this like? Or whoever was in charge of you speaking, how do they know that this four-year-old had the gumption or the right words to lead? We had in the church what they called the junior usher board. That's the kids that would hand out the little programs and help see people. It was a cute little thing to keep kids involved. Once a year they'd have the junior usher board anniversary.

So the adult supervisor said, what do y'all want to do at the anniversary? And it was about 10 of us. One of them was the guy who ended up being a pretty big single, Ronnie Dyson. He was about two years old. Yeah, Ronnie Dyson did Aquarius in here. He was a kid with me in Washington Temple Church in Brooklyn. He said that he wanted to read a poem. My sister wanted to sing.

I said, I want to preach. So everybody laughed. The dolly bides said, let them preach. Maybe God's going to use them. This is a Pentecostal church. And my mother said, I prayed that God would use my son. My father said, oh, this is crazy. But they let me preach.

And I preach it down the version. About 900 people there, they put me on a box because he couldn't see me up on the roster. And I preached from St. John's 14th chapter, let not your heart be trouble. And I've been preaching ever since. By the time I was seven, I was doing the youth days and other churches. By the time I was nine, they did the World's Fair in New York, and they put me up to preach before Maheahia Jackson. That's why I loved Oswald Somers, because I end up doing two or three cities with Maheahia.

And the rest was history. That's how Jesse and them heard of me. I was called a Wonder Boy preaching. Wow. Okay. So how would you figure out what your sermons was going to be? I would listen to older ministers because I grew up. in Pentecostal church. We're in church all the time.

And I would, in many ways, just preach back what I heard out of memory. And I could put the sermons together in my head. Wow. Do you have any, like, the recordings of your, your sermons as a kid? Do you, have you kept track of this? I have one when I was nine. When I was nine, they did a 45 record of me preaching. And this guy that was a radio guy at the time, Doc Wheeler, made a record. I have that, a little 45 record of me preaching. And I was doing more, you know, going back to what I heard other preachers did,

and then you go through the hollering and a shout. And because you was cute, you got away with it. When you got older, you had to say something. You get away with a lot when you're 9, 10, 11 years old. Thanks. Can you, okay, can you explain to me? I know that you're a Pentecostal preacher. But what are the exact, what are the difference between?

Pentecostal Baptist. Pentecostal, Cojic, Baptist, or, you know, the various, because I just thought like Southern preaching was one thing. Yeah, well, I was raised by Southern parents, though I was born and raised in Brooklyn. Kojik, which I grew up until I was like 14, then I won Baptist. Cojit was more grassroots with James would call Gut Bucket. We would do the singing and the shouting and the Hallelujah dance.

Baptist was a little more refined. And Methodist was even more refined. It was a matter of style, there's a matter of music. Like I remember when in some big Baptist churches, when I was growing up, you wouldn't have drums in the church, you wouldn't have choirs that would sing emotional songs.

So when I would go to Baptist churches and Methodist churches, they'd be singing anthems. We didn't do that. All of our stuff was Shirley Caesar kind of singing. And then you got more refined with the Baptist. So it was more cultural and cultural. class. Grass roots people were more to the Pentecostals. And as I grew up and then got in the

Civil Rights Movement when I was 12, they were all Baptist. And then I later became baptized. I would re-vaptized the Baptist. And they were a little more learned. We were all spirit. And that's probably why I gravitated so to James, because James was a secular version of the Holarola. I mean, with James, we didn't do, wasn't much different than we we doing the choir in the Holyness Church. Where were your parents from? You said they were from the South.

My mother was from Dothan, Alabama. She passed. My father was from Ufala, Alabama. Neither one of them was on the map. Man. Wow. Wait, what city is that? Dofithness.

Doth in Alabama. Doth in the... You follow Flaude. I love that name. You follow. You follow. You follow Alabama. Okay.

Okay. As a musician, I, I, I, do want to know, like right now as a record collector, I'm kind of on my 70s gospel kick right now. And I'm noticing that it's very hard to find, rare to find, like, gospel records that have, like, a certain groove to it or a certain soul to it. And I realize that a lot of it is that, you know, they thought it was sinful or whatever. But, you know, knowing that you're cut from the the cloth of the James Brown shadow, if you will. How, I mean, how hard was it for kind of secular sounding music to finally

break through to the black church where it wasn't considered simple or that sort of thing? Because even when I was drumming in church, like, if I started playing too good, I would get looks from like the elders like, you're playing that rap music. I know that you're playing run DMC right now, like that sort of thing. Right. No, it was hard. I remember that in the early days of the 60s when I was still like eight or nine and Sam Cook left the church because Sam Cook started with a gospel group.

And he left and started singing secular. They said, oh, he's backslid. He's going to hell. And little Richard would go in and out. And after a while, people would be in and out. Ronnie was in and out, Ronnie Dyson. And after a while, people started getting comfortable that it was all right. It became all right because those were that was kids got old and we didn't see the difference.

But it was a lot of tension. You're right. If I would go to a political rally when I was 12, I'd backslid. You were in the world. You were supposed to deal with going to heaven, nothing on earth. So it was the same in the music. in our social life. But this was the era where Dr. King had got killed. It was a black power era. I was still 13 years old. And I wanted to be with my contemporaries. And we were activists.

And many of them didn't stand activism like I did. But that was the time where everybody was a member of something. You were either with us with Dr. King or you were with the Panthers, which were more militant, or you joined the nation of Islam. But everybody in New York was something. and your whole life was around what you were a member of, what girls you dated was based on what silo you were in. And the church became, had to make adjustments to that because people started changing. When I was first starting the Pentecostal church,

it was a sin for women to wear lipstick or pants. And I remember we went to Detroit. Yeah, I remember we went to Detroit to speak of a youth convention, and I saw my bishop's wife come out at a motel with some slacks on. And I called my mother collector and said, Madam Washington's going to hell. She's wearing pants. My mother got mad at me for calling her collect to rat out.

Wow, man. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep. That's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit hit. by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Everyone, I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from

Stepbrothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and The Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through.

And I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you. Which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so as of this recording, we're a few days ahead of the passing of the infamous Danny Ray, James Brown's MC, his, his, I guess you could say his his mouthpiece, his Paul Revere. Can you talk?

When's the first time you met James Brown? And what was that like? All right. When we were growing up, when I started growing up, I was born in Brooklyn, like I said, my father had a successful business, and he bought a house in Hollis, Queens. At that time, we thought Queens Hollis was like the suburbs. And James Brown had a big mansion in St. Alps. And all the kids in the neighborhood, go over and stand outside the gate on to see James Brown.

So he was my hero. My father did his hair like James Brown, but I never met him. So fast forward, I'm now known as a teenage preacher, and I had a youth movement that you mentioned, Questlove, and a kid came and joined the youth movement, same age as me, and he said he was from the South. He came to New York. He wanted to go to Columbia to go to law school.

And he joined my youth group. His name was Teddy. He ended up being James Brown's son. And about seven months after he was in our youth group, trying to get in law school, he got killed in a car accident in Albany. He was driving with some friends and Teddy got killed. James was having problems then because he had endorsed, this is 73. I'm 18 now.

And he had endorsed a year before Richard Nixon for president. And a lot of the brothers was mad at him for going with Nixon. He was a seller and all. And they picketed him when he was at the Apollo in 72. When Teddy got killed the next year, he came to New York about Teddy. And the lead disc jockey in New York at that time was Hank Spann on WWRL a. This is before FM got big. Oh, before BLS.

Okay. Right. And Hank Span told him, he said, if you want to do something in memory of your son, Your son joined this little youth group with this young preacher. You should do something for them. And nobody will picket you because everybody likes this little kid running around being a civil rights guy. And they set up for me to meet James Brown at his office on 1700 Broadway. And I went in, I'm meeting God.

That's why I told you the whole background of I stand at his gate. And James Brown looked at me and he looked me up and down and he started talking. And you had no idea what he was talking about. And he was like, he was looking at, well, you know, if you do it, I tell you to do it, I'm going to do it, and all of that. And finally he shook my hand, which was dismissing me. So when we got outside, I told me, you know,

youth quit me. I think he said he's going to do the show. So he told me what to do, how to pass out the flies, how to promote Hank Spam pumped it up. And we did it at the RKO Alby Theater, downtown Brooklyn, which is now the Albee Square Mall. but it used to be a theater there. And they had about 2,000 seats.

And two shows was going to sell out 4,000 seats. Now, I didn't know they had picketed James Brown, and I didn't know that they were worried about what was going to happen. I went out and did everything he said. And he pulls up that night in 73 in the limousine, and he jumps out the limousine in the driveway behind the year backstage. And he looks at his manager, Mr. Bobbit. Mr. Bobbit, how did he do?

Mr. Baba said, they sold every ticket out, and there's about 500 people outside. He said, what? He said, yeah. And he told me, you come with me, son. And I walked behind James Brown in the building. And he went and combed his hair out, and he's talking.

And again, I don't know what he's saying. And he gets ready to go on stage. Then he raised introducing him the band that hit. People are screaming. And he walks on the stage in the wings at my show. Now, mind you, I'm 18 years old, was Miles Davis. And Miles had come to see James perform. And I'm standing there between James Brown and Miles Davis.

And I thought I had died and went to him. And the middle of the show, James stopped the music. I think he had done Try Me or something that was slow. And he stopped and told the band, He stopped. And he called me out. He said, I want to bring out this young man who made the night happen. His youth movement, y'all helped. My son was apart.

And I want him to lead us in prayer and memory of my son. So I'm like nervous. I'm used to every pulpit, but I've never been on a show business stage. I walk out to the mic and I look at him and he said, pray. Go on and pray. You know how to pray, don't you? I started praying. And when I came off, James Brown sent for me in his dressing room after the show.

And he was sitting on the head drive because he would always have this happen until he died. after every show, he rolled his hair back up, and I start talking to him, and I'm trying to communicate with him, and he's like the hairdresser making all this noise. He kept, huh? What you say? Huh? And he finally said to me,

I'll be back in New York in two or three weeks. I'm going to play in your career. And I met him in his office, and he said, I'm going to take you with me to California. I said, to California. He said, yeah. And we went to California. He took me with him to do something.

Soul Train. And he said to Don Caneas, Mr. Caneus, he said, I want you to meet this young man. He's a teenager. I want him to give me an award on Soul Train. By the end, he had the big payback out. And he said, Don Caneas said, we don't do awards on this show. And he said, Mr. Caneus, do you know how to sing payback? And Don't you do that. He said, you know, you're going to sing unless you let this kid give me this award. And I went on Soul Trade, gave Jay Brown this award. I was the biggest guy at Brooklyn there because now all the girls that wouldn't give me a date

because who wanted to date of preaching? Right. Wanted to date me because I was on Soul Trade with Jay and Brown. And I became, in many ways, like Teddy because I was the same age, ambitious. I reminded him of the son he lost, and he became the father that I didn't have because my father left us when I was about 12.

and we moved back to Brooklyn. We're in the projects, Mother on Welfare. And James started taking me around the world. And he kept saying, I want you to stay in the ministry. I promise your mother you will lead the church. See, send me home for me to preach, do my youth work, send back for me. And he became like a father figured in me. Wow.

Wow. That's an incredible story. I wanted to know how you got on soul. Okay, now I get it. I get it now. So when did, I'm just curious, since I know you guys had the father relationship, but you, politically, you were growing and you were growing further and further apart. So did you just, how did that work? Did y'all have conversation? Did you not feel like? Oh, yeah, we would argue. James Brown was a very conservative guy and to the right of the right.

And from Gus to Georgia, he was a southern conservative guy. And he didn't believe in none, but he used to always said to me, I don't know. you doing all that marching. James Brown always had one or two guns with him. That's what you need, Grail. Well. And he was a regular country guy like that. But we would debate and argue, but he had just like him for me. So he would always explain to his guys, Reverend is more militant, but that's my son.

And he would take me in these rooms. And as I got known, he would tell people, you all got to accept Reverend. I'm talking about a lot of the whites because he takes me the crossover shows. I never get later in his life, they gave him the Kennedy Center Award. And he had made them have me write the liner notes in the program. And when I got there that night to the Kennedy Center, it was George Bush was president. He was in, you know, the president's whatever they call that, where you sit up in the booth. And next to him, the box they called it, the presidential box.

Next to him was Colin Powell. And then there was the guest. and James Brown said, give Reverend the box. So these people all never said, Mr. Brown. He's being honored. Carol Bennett at him, they always do five. Said, Mr. Brown, Reverend Shropton's running for president under Democrats against Mr. Bush.

We can't do that. He says, you're going to do it tonight. And I'm sitting up there in the box now. Bush. And Bush is two or three people down. So when they're in a mission, we all go in this little VIP area, Only the president could go and the honorees and their guests.

And I come in, and this is how James Brown was. James Brown stood there, looked at me. The president said over there, he's a Mr. Bush. And George Bush comes over and he says, Mr. Brown, honored to have you with us tonight. He says, look here, I know you and the Reverend got y'all's differences, but his music tonight. Differences, I'm calling this man.

James Brown, none of that matter. He's James Brown. He's going to tell the president what he's going to do. And George Bush and I later would laugh about that. Every time I see George Bush, he said, did you ever tell anybody about James Brown and me and you at the Kennedy Fed? Wow. Can I ask, okay, so James Brown won't be the first or the last,

I mean, I guess the paraphrase terms, the rags to ristice story that has probably more conservative leanings, even though, you know, they say they're of the people, but has more conservative leanings. He just said it out loud. Yeah, well, the thing is, is that what I noticed about this past election we just had, the amount of rappers that were kind of going down the same path. This, well, this thing of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps and, you know, if I do it, you can do it. What do you think is the mindset that produces that? I guess from him, it's like I worked hard to get here and everyone should follow my path.

Or is that like where he was coming from? I think that it is some of that. A lot of it is that I work hard, you can work hard. And some of that is that they just were afraid it would interfere with where they were trying to go. But the problem that they had with James is as conservative as he was politically. He had this real streak of black in him. And he refused. His music kept him black.

And he wouldn't apologize for blackness. And I think that was the difference. Because I would go in places and they would tell him, I was with him one night. He went to do the Tonight Show. And they went to do the sound check. And he did the sound check like he was at the Apollo. And the guy told him, said, Mr. Brown,

you're going to have to water it down. Our kind of audiences are little, you know, trying to tell them that, you know, they wouldn't, it's too hard hit. And I'll never get, and this is why I love James Brown despite his politics. And I love me because he was like a father. He looked at the guy, he said,

if you wanted Sammy Davis, you should have booked him. He said, you're going to get James Brown tonight. And that's what he was doing. I love it. And that's really, in many, ways what he would put in me. He said, I want you to be your own style. He said, whatever you do, we used to ride around. He had about 32, 33 cars at his estate. We'd always be riding around one of his, because I think one reason he had kids, but a lot of his kids didn't hang around them.

His daughters were still very young. And I used to want to hear all the stories and all advice, because he talked incessantly and his other sons that were younger than Teddy, but, almost my age, didn't, they wanted to get away. They didn't want the elections. I wanted all of it. And we just right around in the dark because there wasn't no streetlights in the woods where James Browns estate is. And he would be talking to me.

I remember he stopped one night and he said to me, I went no more than 21, 22 then. He said, Reverend, because everybody was surnamed. He believed in that respect thing. He said, Reverend, I want you to promise me one thing. I said, what's that? He said, promise me you'll never be one of the boys. He said, I know you're a preacher.

I know you're civil rights, but don't be like none of them. Be different. He said, I always am different. When I do my first two chords of a song, they know that's James Brown. Don't nobody sound like me. And he pulled up in a parking lot next to Daddy Grace's Church in Augusta, Georgia. And we just sat there. And I'm like, what are we doing here?

And after about a minute or two, he said, you hear that? I said, hear what? He said, that. I don't hear nothing but they haven't. church inside. He said, listen to that drum. And I listened. And I said, yeah, I hear. He says, that's where I learned the sound. They're on the one. He said, I'm on a one three beat. Everybody else is on a two, four beat. Learn how to be on the one. Set your own beat. He said, and if you set your own beat, people always remember you. And you do your own style.

And when I started a lot of activism, in your face kind of activism, the people you say, oh, he was too bold, why am I marching and Benson Hurts? Why am I doing this? You can put out a press release and make a statement. I got that from James Brown. I developed my own style. I took a lot of flat, but my father figure told me I had to be different in bold,

and I did that. And he used to laugh saying, Reb just doing the James Brown and civil rights. Rest of them bourgeois and the girls don't know. He's doing the raw stuff. He's raw. I remember we were in his office. I tell you this, He's in his office one day in 1982.

And I had to come down to visit him. And he said, I hear y'all marching to try to get Dr. King a birthday holiday. Yeah. I said, you tight with the Republicans. Why don't you see if you can help us out? He said, I can go to the president whenever I want. And he hit his inner con and secretary picks it up. Get the White House on the phone.

It's about 11 o'clock at the border. And I said to myself, yeah, right. So we're going through the day, went out, got something to eat. Come back, about 4 o'clock. She has the intercourse. The White House was on the phone, Mr. Brown. I looked at him. I was a little shocked and impressed.

He picks up the phone and he talks to them. Then he hangs up the phone. And he looks at me. He says, January 15th is Dr. King's birthday. He invited me up. Wow. He said, they didn't get a holiday. They didn't get a holiday.

But they agreed to meet with him that day. So I told him, are they just using you as a show? He said, you're right. He says, and you're going with me. So I went back to New York. January 14th, he flew me to Augusta to fly back to Washington. I kept saying,

I can meet you in Washington. I'm flying over Washington. No, no, you got to fly with me. So we're in Delta Airlines because his private plane was in the shop. And we sitting in the plane. Wait, that's a little. Right.

My plane is a new alternator. He's playing in the shop. He played in the shot. So we're sitting in first class, his bodyguards and coach. We sit there and he looks at me when the plane levels off. He said, Reverend, I say, yes, sir. He said, I want you to do me in favor. I said, what's that?

He said, when we land, we're going by Bobby Bennett's place. Bobby Bennett was one of the famous flames who had stopped singing, but they were still cool. And I said, oh, Mr. Bennett, okay, because I met him a couple of times. He'd come out to some of the show. he said, Mr. Bennett, I want him to, he's going to tighten up my hair. I want him to do your hair like mine. I said, you want him to do what?

He said, I want him to do your hair like mine. And I said, all right. Again, this is my father being. My father never tried to emulate nothing. So I'm like the abandoned son that found a man that really felt I was worthy of being like him. It was a real self-identity thing. Bobby Bennett did my hair and became, you know, I started wearing the comp, and we met with Ronald Reagan.

When we came back from the White House, got in the plane, hit it back to Gustav. Plane levels off again. He said, I got one more favor, Reverend. I said, what's that? He said, I want you to wear your hair like that as long as I'm alive. And that's where I got the hairstyle from. And I never forget years later, when he got in trouble when he was old, and went to jail.

He would call me from the jail about three times a week. And you have to call collect because he's a prison. And they said collect call from the South Carolina correction facility. Which is your seven. I'm halfway not being able to pay bills, but I'd have to take his call. I'd take the call. He would never ask me how my kids work.

By then I had two daughters, nothing. First question was, Reverend, how's your hell? Because he was checking to see if I tell him. You stuck with it. Make sure you just step with it. And that's where to ask. And I took a lot of flack from a lot of the Afrocentric brothers. But you sacrificed for us.

But you sacrificed for us. Like it wouldn't be no Martin Luther King nowadays. But it was a father thing. It was I finally had a father in my life. I'm looking like my father. I didn't care what people said. So how do you, I just ask you, Rev, since we're on the hair, you've had this hairstyle for such a long time.

Yeah. How do you maintain the hair now? Yes. Because it's still beautiful. What's your hair measurement now? Yeah. Those that no don't say, those that say don't know. Not even the grease

You ain't even going to drop us a grease You ain't even no shame all that nothing You're not You're not You're the best secrets You put no dax on it, Redd I mean your edges are beautiful So whatever it is what it is

You let it edge down With a toothbrush real Let us know That's an incredible Soundbite Rev, I need to know I think it's easier now because of social media and the internet

Okay, but pre-internet Let's say Before 1997 I mean, even though the internet was out then But it wasn't as viral If one needs to contact you For assistance

Or your presence how does one do that? And what is the thought process and the sort of decision making that you go through before you decide, yes, I'm going to take this on because I can imagine

a vetting process. Actually, let me start with how many calls do you get every day on an average to take up a cause? Well, before I 97. I always since 91 had an office. And I got that from Jane. James said you're not in business if you don't have office. I always had a staff. Started with two or three. Now we got offices in

seven cities, regional offices, and no government money, we raise our money. And we have crisis departments that vet out cases. Usually a lawyer will call me because they want me to help publicize. Like, it starts. I thought it with Vernon Mason would call me and say, something happened. Kid got killed in Howard Beach. We vetted it. They give us information.

And I would go and say, we're going to do a march. We're going out in the neighborhood. Now Ben Crump calls me. Like he called me when George Floyd family wanted to reach me. And, you know, that's one of the things that was always crazy to me. They would always say,

Al Schaubler just wants publicity. That's why people call me is they wanted me to blow it up. Nobody called me to keep a secret. So we would, We would come in and we would decide that we thought it was legitimate and we'd rally people around it because if you don't create that kind of drama, you will never create the media because it wasn't social media. So other people said it's a shame, 1986, they killed his boy, Michael Griffith and Howard Beach because he was black. And nobody knew what to do.

I said, well, let's go out there. And they were saying it might have been a mug. It might have been a love triangle. I said, if we march, everybody know what it is. What do you mean march? I said, we got to go out there and dramatize. I called a march. We went out there.

As we start marching down the street, maybe about 500 of us. There must have been 7, 800 white stuff coming out, calling us to end words, throwing bananas and everything at us. And I said, now everybody understand it's a race thing. Because you bring it out. I knew if you go in certain sections, Benson and Erslade with Yusufo Hawkins, they were going to make the case because they're going to react, and that became on television.

You had to remember, I didn't come out of Georgia, like Dr. King or out of Chicago with Jesse. How come out of New York? You're competing with Times Square, Statue of Liberty, Empire State, Wall Street. New York is used to everything. So you got to be dramatic to get attention on your cause. So people you say, I was flamboyant and bodacious. You had to be in New York.

You can't send out a press release in New York and get attention. You got to do something, and that's what we would do. We would do things to grab the media attention. The outrageousness of it made the case which changed the racial profiling laws. But you had to be able to dramatize. I remember when we was marching at Bensonhurst, when they killed Yusuf Hawkins, and they were throwing watermelons at us and calling us words. And one of them said, he said, he said, I remember I was marching, locked arms with

Yusuf Hawkins' brother. And he said, Reverend Al, you're right. They're acting crazy. going to be wild on TV news tonight. They'll know now it was race to kill my brother. He said, this is going to be great. I said, yeah, we live to the end of this watch because they were so crazy. Even I got nervous.

But that's what you have to do. You've got to be able to strategically know how to raise the drama level. And that edge, you got to be real careful and disciplined about. And you've got to be ready to be different. People would not do that. It was me learning the theatrics from James Brown, combining it what I learned in the King movement and trying to bring it up north.

So the question, that's interesting you said that because one of the questions I have for you, because, you know, you are a reverend and you said, you know, that's your calling, but you are, you know, very much a celebrity as well. So how do you kind of walk that line between, you know, your ministry and your calling, but also having to be a public figure

and if not an outright entertainer, so to speak. But, you know, like you just said, you have to, you know, get people's attention. How have you walked that line throughout your career? Because I always am honest with myself that I'm not an actor. I'm not a singer and dancer. My celebrity came from my activism,

not my activism from my celebrity. A lot of celebrities try to act like activists. I do what I believe in. And I won't do it if I don't believe in it. I'm the kind of person. that's very disciplined like that. And I remind myself, kid, you've grown up broken home on welfare in Brooklyn,

that only God could have put me where I am, and he put me there for a reason, and I don't want to get him to drop me for forgetting the reason I'm there. When James Brown and others tried to get me to just, you can drop that, you can do entertainment, no, I've got to do this. This is what I'm called.

I would have never known you, Mr. Brown. It wasn't forgotten. And I really believe that. Yeah. When you talk about, you know, doing, you know, getting behind stuff that you believe in. Do you think in any way like the Toronto, the Tijuana Brawley case, did that change, I guess,

the way you would vet things, you know, in your career? You know what I'm saying? How did that affect you? When the lawyers called me about brawling and I was out there three or four months after, you know, they started the case and were moving, I went on the lawyer's word and I believed them. And I believed this girl. Why wouldn't I? You got people now that there.

I believe when people say thing and win a me too error. But I learned from that to vet it more carefully so that every, every eye, died, and every tease crossed to the best of your ability. You never know all the way what somebody's going to do. Because a year after I got in Brawley, I stood up for five kids accused of a rape in Central Park that they confessed to. I ended up right on that one. They say I was wrong on Brawley.

It all happened within the same year. So you're taking a leap of faith, but I learned not to take crazy leaps. Try to bet it as much as you can and be careful because you don't want to discredit the movement by getting in situations that blow up in your face. Like right now, we have three policemen indicted for Kieland and George Floyd. We don't know what the jury's going to do when they go to trial. We went and helped blow up Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman got acquitted. And some people will say, I was wrong on Zimman.

They said he was not guilty. But Trayvon Martin is dead. So you've got to be willing to stick in there and take the bad days with the good, but make sure your intentions are good and right and that you're as careful as you could be, which is why I've not getting any cases like that sense. Because I've vetted, even if a lawyer brings it to me,

I vet it as much as I can. Like, I'm a prosecutor. I want to know every angle. That's what up. A win is a win. A win. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football,

or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports. and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that

don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Everyone, I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and The Big Money Players, network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day.

And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.

If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My question is, you know, we're going all over the place now.

In 2004, when you decide, what made you decide to try to run for president in 2004? I looked at the fact that in 84 and 88, Jesse had run and had really moved a party more to toward the left, which we believed in. And nobody had picked that up. And I'm looking at the fact that we had just come out of the war in Iraq. and there were people that had moved the party to the right. If you remember Clinton and them were triangular, and they were like almost centrist. And I wanted to run to get into debates

to bring up racial profiling, to bring up police misconduct and how the war in Iraq was wrong. So I ran to try to be on the stage to get a national hearing on our issues. And that's what I did. And the debates, would bring up stuff that nobody would bring up,

but they had to deal with race. They had to deal with policing. They had to deal with Iraq. And I knew I wasn't going to win, but I won because I made those issues, that those issues become central. And I got a good vote. And that is when mainstream white America started saying that, well, he's not just some guy out there angry. He really knows the issues. But the point was, if we could get on the mainstream stage and argue our issues, we could affect policy. And that's why I ran. Can I ask you, it's interesting because the issue recently came up. I was watching a new show about Van Jones. And I love the way you ride your relationships because you were just talking

earlier about how, of course, you ran against Bush. Your relationship is not the same with Bush as it was then. Relationship is not the same with a lot of people, right? C Clintons. How do you walk this line? I mean, in the Van Jones comparison, some people were saying, well, why are you in pictures with this person. You know, we don't, that doesn't happen with Al Sharpton, right? Like, everything seems to be very planned out in a way, but yet you still work together. So can you kind of break that down? Because you got to let him know it's not personal.

But just like you got your beliefs, I have mine. So Donald Trump, I knew in New York, I marched on him about Central Park. Then he tried that. He was Democrat when Dinkins was in. But I, when Trump won. about a month after he won. He called me. I'd been on Morning Joe that morning.

And Joe asked me about Trump. He said, you know him. You fought with him. And then he tried to be friendly. And I said, well, you got to understand New York to understand Donald Trump. And I explained Trump was an out-of-borrow guy in the Queens, going to money, but he wasn't part of the established. He wasn't at the power spots.

So he had this chip on his shoulder that the Park Avenue guys looked down on him. and his father. And he was able to translate that to a lot of white blue-collar working class people who he never was. But he wasn't part of the accepted Rothschilds of the world. He was able to sell it to them. Right. So when I got off the show, this is about December 1st, I think, 2013. And when I got off the show, no, 2016 when he ran, and I was in a board meeting of National Action Network, my organization. And my cell phone. rang and I looked down. I didn't know the number and I had it on silences. So I let it rang again. So I said, maybe something happened. So I picked up the phone

to whisper. I'm in a board meeting. Call me later, whoever this is, because I didn't know the number. And the voice said, can you hold on for the president elect? And I said, huh? They said, can you hold on for the president elect? So I put my finger like I'm in church and I walk out the board meeting and I go in the hall of where we were. And Trump comes on, Al, I don't. I don't. I saw you this morning or morning, Joe, you got me. You're right. I wasn't outside.

And look at me now. I'm the president-elect of the United States. Can you believe it? I said, no, I am having a hard time believe it. He said, well, he said, look at you. You got a TV show, but you're still marching. They never thought either one of us would be anything. He says, I want you to come tomorrow, Lago.

We're going to talk. I said, I'm not doing that. He said, I said, I'm not doing that. I said, in all due respect, you will not do the photo op with me. A lot of people came to Trump Tower in those first months. Not me. I will not do it. And the whole time he was in, he called me two or three times,

and I wouldn't go to the White House and all because I understand from my background growing up in both the church and in show business, optics are important. Everything. And you give them the photo, they use it whatever way they want. And I would not give him that. photo. How dismaying was it to see that photo when he had the

whatever, the 50 black preachers or whatever, or just in general, how dismaying was it to see how easy it was to be I'm assuming a bot. Bought. Bought.

Bought. Not no R. Yes. But. How does it to see that? It was disheartening because you know, that he's using you. And knowing Donald Trump, he probably didn't give people that much. People get all enthralled

just to go to the White House. And the advantage I had, Questlove, is by growing up around people like Jesse and like James Brown, I wouldn't impress it all that. I've been to the White House. I can think four years not going to the White House. But a lot of them had never been invited before. Understand that with the president,

it mean nothing to me. They're going to be a new president in four years. Joe Biden and I have talked, but Joe Biden will be gone in four years from the White House. I'll be out shopping as long as I live. I'm going to stand for what I stand for. I'm not going to give that up for some temporary photo up. And I tell a lot of those people that is don't play yourself like that.

They need you and will discard you when they don't need you. It ain't personal. The cause is bigger than all of us. Were there certain preachers or community leaders that you knew that were considering that, that you personally had to talk out of doing that? I talked to one or two that I talked out of and I talked to one that I couldn't talk out of. And I won't, I won't give up their name.

But I would tell them, I know Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a user and he will drop you and as soon as the photos of which he did. And look what he did in his own buddies. He let a lot of them get indicted. He paused some of them. I mean, that's who he is. And you don't ever deal with a guy like that.

He has no ethics. Reverend Al, can you please give us the backstory, your idea of the backstory behind some of these partons? I'm confused. I think that he felt that if he pardoned some of them, my honest to God belief is that he was looking out for him thinking that they would not sit up in jail and tell on him because now he can be prosecuted on a state level.

And I think he did it for him. I think he did that to come. the fact that he let he let little Wayne and Kodak go and then to let 20 of his boys go. So he was trying to act like he was being balanced. Ah, thank you. Actually, Laia, I guess I... Go ahead. I'm allowed.

Give it up. Give it up. Give it, give it. The Wayne situation was that, you know, he was on a private jet headed to Miami, and he had things on him. Right. Yeah. And, of course, the pilot went in Karen mode.

and kind of called the police ahead of time when he landed, like I'm with clients and they have guns on the plane. So, of course, he gets nabbed. He was already on probation. And what happens is his lawyer called up the governor of Florida and was like, can you do whatever you can do? Just help us. So the governor gets him off.

And what happens is maybe a month before the elections, Wayne pretty much you know Wayne's people got a call Trump had said like get me any celebrity

anyone anyone anyone Oh last minute I remember that force me like I need someone that's big in the black community and the and the governor remember what he did for Wayne and it was sort of like a you owe me thing

and what I believed happened was that Wayne went in thinking that it was a one-off photo op thing did the photo op thing and then it was sort of like the bait and switch will you travel with me and do the rest of the campaign? They were like, no, you said the one photo op thing. And then when that was broken,

Trump got on the governor and then the governor was like, well, I will just rescind your, you know, your part, your probation, whatever. And we've got to go back to jail. And, yeah, it was, it was, a it was a way bigger story. Always is. I was going to ask,

I was curious to know your work with younger activists and what are some of the differences that you see between your generation and the younger generation of actors, be it Black Lives Matter or just any of the youth organizations now? And what are also some of the, I guess some of the difficulties you have

in dealing with the youth activists. Are they more receptive to listen to, you know, to take advice from an elder? Or do they just seem to be like, oh, no, we want to do it our own way. How is that relationship for you? Some of them during the Trayvon piece was tension. You know, we don't want to listen to the old God. We want to make our name. And I kept telling them, I said, let me tell you something.

These cameras are going to leave and we have to be organized. And gradually we started getting together. The three sisters that started Black Lives Matter, Alicia, Gaza, Sister Colors, all three of them, and I started talking a lot. And they started seeing this thing was difficult. I started seeing their sincerity. So we worked together.

They do my TV show. We talked when I did a book last year. They did a book taught me virtually. Then you got some that's just out there that's totally wild. Then you have others that are censored. And I tell them, there's no difference in y'all wanting to do it your way. I want to do it different than Jesse. Jesse did it different than Dr. King.

That's part of life. But we are all in the same cause. And I must say, last year when we called the Big March in Washington, and we are in the middle of a pandemic, we had 200,000 people. All of them came. And I told them, I don't have to put no shade on you. You ain't got to worry about it. I'm going to be out shopping anyway.

I can help y'all. y'all can help me but you just can't do no violent stuff around me and most of them are not violent and i won't do i won't make you go to church if you won't throw a break let's make a coprovising we kind of get along like that i have a big youth department in my organization because i intend to somebody's going to take my organization and go forth so a lot of the thing i have my youth work with their youth they're the same age some of them are younger that are in national action network and there always been that you had to remember you had to remember in history, Jesse was with Dr. King. Stokely Carmichael was black power was on the other side of the King thing. They were all the same age. John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Stokely Carmichael, Rat Brown,

always the same age. There's always been differences in every generation. So a lot of the young actors say, we speak for the youth. No, you speak for some youth. Some youths still go to church. Some youth are non-violent. I don't speak for all the elders.

Everybody's got their peace, work your peace, and let's try to make sense. something happen. And my thing is that it's a big highway out here. And as long as we don't switch lanes without a signal, we won't have an accident. That's real.

Now, I was just going to say, remind me of that Malcolm X that the Rev was in. When they showed all aspects of what was going on. Sorry. I'll tell you about that scene. I know we got to go, but I'll tell you about that scene. Spike Lee called me and asked me to do that scene. And I told him, you know, that I was only

eight and nine years old when you got killed. I'm just going to put you up there. Because Spike Lee, Russell Simmons, and I all grew up together in New York, getting on it around the same time. That's our generation. Spike's my generation. Spike, about two years younger than me. So you see, I'm always mentioning Spike's movies.

Denzel and I are the same age. That's our generation. And I can tell you, Denzel, about, you know, John Davis getting more parts than you now. Because all of us are older guys. That explains you on the dance floor now. Now I get it. You was a whole. Okay.

All right. Right. I see you on a dance floor a few times. Get off. Well, yes, everybody leaves. Reth, I want to know, you know, we live in a time now where, you know, the audacity of white supremacy is kind of proudly, you know, rearing its head once again in ways that they haven't done since the 20s. My question isn't, did you ever think that it would ever come back to square one? I guess my question is, how can we finally nip this properly in the blood that we have not done?

Now that we're back at square one. I think that what we're seeing is a backlash like we never saw. There's always in history been a backlash after slavery, reconstruction, and the backlash was the clan. I think what makes this different is this the first time you had some. in the White House that actually fan the flame to make them feel like nothing would happen to them. The law was on their side. And I think that the only way you're going to dip this in the bud is you're going to have to have some strong laws and you're going to have to make examples of them to go to jail. They're going to have to do time.

And then the others that feel that way will know I may feel this way, but I won't be able to behave. You won't do that no more. Like black folks, like black folks. Like black folks. That's how do you stop crying? You start prick walking some of them, and they will start learning how to obey and act like they got good sense. And that's what you got to do.

And that's what I've told by, and you got to make examples. Can't be no, you know, let's join hands and sing Kumbaya. We got to do time. No, we ain't going high. We ain't going on. Look at what they did. They started with a George Floyd, or they start with demonizing somebody like me. They run up in the capital.

in the capital of the United States and was walking around looking, calling for members of Congress to hurt them. If y'all don't put this in a real focus, a penalty, they'll come after you because they don't care unless you make them care. Some of them will have to do some real time. Are there times like this, you know, even though you've, you know, work your career as, you know, a nonviolent activist,

are there times like this that really put that to the test? for you, like, you know, or if not this time, any other times in your career where your nonviolent beliefs are really tested. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You can test it. Meaning you're not violent don't mean that you are punk and that you don't get angry. But you catch yourself because I also feel like particularly like when we started this conversation,

if I'm out there representing families, I can't let my emotions embarrass them. So if I go off on somebody, I'm hurting Erdogan's family. They're not just hurting Al Scha. I'm hurting George Floyd's family. So I try not to misrepresent that. But my jaws get tight. There's a lot of times I won't even listen to talk radio because if I listen to some of the right-wing radio,

what they say, I'll get out the car and make my next speech. Cussing everybody out reacting to something they ain't heard. You're human, but you've got to try to discipline and keep telling yourself, You have for a reason not a season. You got to last that uphold these people. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you, Reverend.

I was curious. What was your relationship? Because I guess I'm, as I was born in 78. So my earliest memories of you, believe it or not, were from the Morton Downer Junior show. Ha!

Wow! Wow! Straight up. That's a name for a pair. You know, he'd come out. So, I mean, he was like, for the while I listened. Yeah, he would like, you know,

this is like, Jerry Springer, before. Oh, yeah. Whatever. But how much of that with him was that real? And because like you said, you know, in New York, I mean, you work the circuit. You see these guys all the time. How much of that of you and his relationship was like you guys really didn't like each other

and how much of it was kind of poor the camera? What was y'all's dynamic like? We didn't like each other at first. I think after a while we sort of understood that he wanted me on for controversy. And I wanted him on because the mainstream shows wasn't. booking us then. So it was me using him to get our thing out there. And I remember years later, Mike Wallace did a thing with me in the early 90s, I'm 60 minutes. And he asked me, why did you do Rodney? I said, because you wouldn't interview me. As soon as I started getting Main Street,

I left Bart Downey alone. But we started really not liking each other, but we kind of adjusted because I think it was equal use. Yeah, yeah. All right. My final question. I have to say that your health regimen has been very inspirational to me and watching you. What was the decision to really get your health game together and to, I guess, get your life right? And how you kept it off during the Rone? How have you kept it off this stuff?

Well, you know, at first, people used to do cartoons and all about me and the jogging suits and fat and all that didn't bother me. But as my daughters started getting older, I remember one day I was at the house, and my youngest daughter, she was about five, then Ashley. She walked over to me and patted me on the belly and said, Daddy, you fat, and that hurt me. And I started wanting to lose weight for her and I lost a lot of weight. Then in 2001, I went to let a protest in Puerto Rico. You might remember protesting the bombing and the behaviors.

And the federal judge gave me 90 days in jail. And I fasted 40 days. And I lost a lot of weight. And I felt better. And I started saying, you know what? I'm going to change my diet and keep it off. So jail made me go on a regiment. So I stopped eating meat.

Then I pushed back on starches and sugars. And then I started feeling that I get more energy. I worked 16, 18 hour days. And it just gave me more energy. And right now, I only eat raw vegetables, raw fruits. I may eat fish one day a week, but no meat at all, no chicken. It was hard to give up chicken. A preacher not eat chicken.

I used chicken free. You know, hard corn. But, I mean, how many fried chicken plays did you have to pass up? Jesus. I was like, wait a minute. From church, I ain't even doing that. What the hell? That was hard.

But, and then, you know, a lot of people felt I lost weight to do TV. I had already lost the weight. I had no idea I'd have a TV show. But it became a way of life and it doesn't bother me. I had that kind of will. I can sit down in front of people. They can have everything I used to love to eat. It doesn't bother me at all.

You are so amazing, man. That's what so. God damn it, Al Sharpton, you're the shit. I just, thank you. Thank you. I thank you for doing this for me. I know your schedule's busy. No, I thank you, man.

And I thank you for being you. You've been a real cultural influence, even though you hurt my feelings once because I brought my daughter, I brought my daughter to 30 rocks. She's in her 30 now. She had a friend with her, and I was getting in the elevator.

and her friend, her friend looked and said, that's Questlove and jumped up the elevator. And they never act like that around me, but they were trailing you. And I said, this Negro got some nerve that he's a bigger, a bigger act than I am at 30 Rock. That's Questlove.

When I first started coming there, I was all afraid, I'd be like, Reverend Al, you just walked by. I was like, oh, I'm not big enough yet. Thank you for doing our show. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Love you.

Thank you for being our ghost buses, for real. Thank you for all you're done, man. Oh, I was just going to remind everybody to make sure that they watch Politics Nation every Saturday and Sunday. Yes, on behalf of Team Supreme, I hear, Sugar Steve, unpaid Bill. I'll take a little. Yes, thank you very much, Reverend now. I appreciate it. This is Questlove Supreme.

We will see you on the next show round. We appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, this is Sugar Steve. Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at QLS. and let us know what we think, and who should be next to sit down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. Quetzelof Supreme is a production of IHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from IHartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeard Radio app,

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From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, for wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slice of Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target.

He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.

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