00:00 - Yes, just fine.
00:01 - Hi, my name is Amir Mohamed.
00:02 I do some freelancing and working with Essence,
00:04 which is beautiful.
00:06 It's amazing.
00:08 First thing I wanna say is that I didn't know
00:10 none of this stuff happened, like the back story.
00:12 So I was loved.
00:14 - Well, y'all get some love if you feel the same
00:16 so you don't feel alone.
00:17 (audience cheering)
00:18 - All right, so as I'm watching this,
00:20 I'm seeing the history.
00:21 So I know you guys draw inspiration from,
00:23 but now that it's the time of the Essence,
00:25 where do you guys draw the innovation from now?
00:29 What's the next step of actual innovation
00:30 and changing just everything of what Essence was
00:35 and just making it new?
00:38 - Emmett Dennis.
00:39 - Oh. (laughs)
00:40 - He wasn't expecting this.
00:42 And the reason why I'm gonna have Emmett Dennis answer,
00:45 and then if there's others I may pick on,
00:47 Emmett is, I'm gonna let him tell you what he did,
00:50 but if you wanna talk about one of the main players
00:52 in making sure that this story made it to this place,
00:56 this man's resilience and perseverance
01:00 is what kept this thing going
01:01 when things like pandemics tried to get in the end.
01:05 And part of why I want Emmett to answer that question
01:07 is because part of what fueled Emmett
01:11 was this idea of what we could now do
01:13 once people knew the whole story.
01:16 So Emmett, will you talk about that
01:18 through the lens of the innovation question?
01:20 You're welcome. - Thank you.
01:23 Great question.
01:26 Wow.
01:27 Like yourself, I didn't know none of this.
01:30 Quite honestly, I didn't know any of this.
01:35 But when you're part of the Dennis family,
01:39 the Dennis family leadership,
01:43 there are some imperatives.
01:45 We are value creators.
01:48 You saw that through the building of the Shea Moisture brand
01:53 and how that brand learned how to outpunch its weight class
01:57 because it completely dedicated itself to black women.
02:01 Unapologetically so, right?
02:06 But understanding the impact and the influence
02:08 in serving black women was serving everyone
02:12 'cause she was the epicenter.
02:13 So the journey here with, and the innovation,
02:21 it's a wonderful question because every generation,
02:25 and I think what we all saw and what you're gonna see
02:28 from generation to generation,
02:31 every generation has its challenges, has its problems.
02:36 From the '70s and civil rights to the '80s to the '90s,
02:43 has a challenge.
02:44 Every generation has a North Star
02:47 that we should be uniting and fighting against.
02:52 The Dennis family's fight
02:57 has been economic inclusion as a civil right, right?
03:01 And so if you think about the innovation
03:04 that's required from all of us
03:08 to continue to fight through all the shackles,
03:13 both mentally, institutionally,
03:17 that we're confronting,
03:20 that's a huge part of where the innovation is coming from.
03:23 Part of the motivation, I remember when we,
03:28 I shared with the team, in my house, essence was not there.
03:35 My mom was not pop culture.
03:39 Maybe we had an ebony, but it just was not there.
03:43 I was raised by the product of two Episcopalian ministers.
03:48 And I gotta tell you,
03:50 it wasn't until we sort of,
03:57 not even accepted, accepted the responsibility
04:01 to be stewards of this incredible,
04:04 as you call it, cultural artifact,
04:06 that we really had to dig deep to really figure out
04:10 what are the things that we could do to create that value,
04:12 tell that story, right?
04:14 Number one, essence is not an institution unto itself.
04:20 It's not a building.
04:21 It's not just a festival.
04:23 It's not just a magazine.
04:25 It's human.
04:27 It's humans.
04:28 Humanizing this journey was really important, right?
04:33 And it's the connection with other humans
04:38 that gave us the ability to say,
04:41 to get believers in how important it was
04:44 to tell this story, right?
04:46 You know it's not easy making television shows, right?
04:51 But fortunately, we were able to connect
04:54 with some of the best in the business, right?
04:57 And say, listen, as a family, we wanna create value.
05:00 We have the great opportunity to steward this brand.
05:04 One of the things we wanna do is educate and entertain.
05:08 Right?
05:09 And our believers at 51 Minds,
05:12 our believers at Banerjee,
05:14 we got such a wonderful opportunity
05:19 to sit in front of the people
05:22 that actually make the biggest shows in the world, right?
05:26 They understood that done well,
05:30 that this would be just,
05:31 it's not just the television show, right?
05:34 This is, in some respects,
05:36 it's a crowdsource catharsis, right?
05:41 This is a cathartic experience that we are going to see
05:45 and we've been witnessing, right?
05:46 And it's the connective tissue, right,
05:49 that we all believed in, right?
05:52 That we all fought for, right?
05:54 That we all pitched to networks
05:57 and as fate would have it, Oprah and OWN.
06:01 I don't know what you all believe in,
06:02 but that's destiny, right?
06:05 And so I say all that to say
06:10 that there's so many more stories to tell.
06:13 We were not able to get everyone.
06:17 I mean, there's so many more folks that have stories
06:21 and have contributed, not just to Essence,
06:24 but to this culture.
06:25 Essence is, and what Essence has been fighting for
06:31 is bigger than all of us.
06:33 Essence is just a platform, right?
06:35 And we're hoping that this platform continues to embrace
06:39 and continues to explode
06:41 and continues to excite and inspire
06:44 so that we all continue to outpunch our weight class
06:47 and continue to go towards the North Star,
06:50 which is our economic inclusion as a civil right.
06:53 We got a lot of work to do, right?
06:56 And by understanding these stories
06:57 and understanding the power of us individually
07:00 and what we're able to do and contribute collectively
07:03 is what this documentary, we hope that it does,
07:08 and it allows us to do more.
07:09 (audience applauding)
07:13 - I asked, the last episode, I'm asked the question,
07:16 what is the legacy of Essence?
07:17 And Emmett and I didn't practice.
07:19 And I say, because of what Essence did to highlight
07:23 who the black woman was, illuminate her, empower her,
07:26 we now have the privilege that the legacy
07:28 of this next stage of Essence
07:30 is to restore the economic value of black.
07:34 - Yes.
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