- 5 weeks ago
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, this is Charles Blood, my columnist of the New York Times, and today I am being
00:25joined by global creative artist, author, tech entrepreneur, and philanthropist Will.i.am.
00:32How you doing?
00:34How you doing?
00:36Glad to meet you. I have enjoyed your music for years and years and years.
00:40Thank you so much.
00:41You're welcome. So let's just jump right into it.
00:48I want to just know like how you're feeling about the current state of affairs that we're seeing
00:53today, people in the streets, protests about black lives and police brutality,
01:00and the whole political moment.
01:04There's so much happening at the same time.
01:08And this particular issue with Black Lives Matter has been happening my whole life.
01:15You know, police brutality, friends of mine killed by police officers.
01:27As a young kid in the projects wishing, I mean, witnessing your brother be thrown to the ground,
01:35get on your belly, hands behind your back.
01:37Just seeing that and wishing that it was the way it was for folks that I went to school with
01:46in their neighborhoods because, you know, kids that I went to school with in Brentwood,
01:50their brothers weren't thrown and pushed to the floor and get your hands behind your back,
01:54lay on your belly, thrown on hoods of police cars, shoved by the neck.
01:59That wasn't their experience growing up as a teenager.
02:02So we've been dealing with this in our community for your whole life.
02:10It didn't just come like when you turned 20.
02:13Like that's what you saw from two, you know.
02:19And then, you know, police officers in the 80s, they made an effort to pass out baseball cards
02:26to, I don't know whose idea that was in the 80s, passing out Dodger cards
02:34and the police officers would come to your neighborhood and try to do some like youth outreach.
02:40That didn't help.
02:42Because the people that were patrolling in our communities were not from our communities.
02:47You know, and they're trained to be forceful towards people of color.
02:58They're trained that way to assume that every person of color hanging out
03:05is either a criminal or about to do a crime or associated with the crime.
03:11So my mom made us wear suits.
03:13You ain't going outside with them play clothes.
03:17Even as a young child?
03:20As a young kid.
03:21As a young child?
03:22Wow.
03:24We couldn't wear play clothes at school.
03:26And we couldn't hang out on the...
03:28Boy, you ain't got no business being on that corner.
03:30We couldn't play dice.
03:31My mom didn't let us play cards.
03:35Couldn't sag up.
03:36Pick them pants up.
03:38My mom was like super, super, super strict.
03:40You know, you ain't got no business saying foo or what's up.
03:45Like my mom like, I mean, what's up?
03:46Ask the question.
03:47How are you doing today?
03:49Like my mom was super strict on like the words we use.
03:53And expressing ourselves and not following the herd.
03:56Ma, can I go outside and play with them?
03:57No, they could come play with you.
03:58What you know they playing with?
04:02You ain't got no business playing with somebody else.
04:04If they want to come play with you, they could come play with you.
04:06My mom was like super strict because nothing was safe for her.
04:10The police weren't safe.
04:13The, you know, the people on the block, that wasn't a safe environment.
04:17So, and then seeing, like I said, your family members be mishandled and mistreated
04:25and abused by authority in the neighborhood, that just made it even worse.
04:30So seeing what's happening right now just makes me remember growing up in the projects
04:36and the things that we were fighting for.
04:38But then there's a sense of hope and joy because when you were growing up in the projects,
04:43you were taught about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
04:46And you wondered like, where are they at?
04:48And Farrakhan, he was painted as, you know, a terrorist to the community by, you know, mainstream media.
05:06So hip hop embraced being Muslim because there was black organization.
05:12When you saw like the FOI and everyone in suits and they made fun of that in our community.
05:19Like, oh, you a bean pie, right?
05:22So if you wore a suit or if you were down with the Muslim movement in the 80s and early 90s.
05:31So I just, the hope that I see is how everyone is coming together and enough is enough.
05:37So all the, the marches and the protests and the uprising that, and then everybody joining in from
05:45far out places like New Zealand, you know, UK, Belgium, everyone, you know, rallying up and showing
05:55consul, um, um, um, showing how they are, are, are with the movement.
06:02And that, that's what's, uh, you know, makes me, makes the, the depression.
06:08It eases my depression and my angst.
06:11It eases my, the tension that I have, um, and the hurt of watching innocent black men, unarmed black men
06:19get choked, shot, kneed on.
06:24And then the hypocrisy of like, you know, our leadership tripping on people taking a knee,
06:31but then invisible when a police officer took a knee and killed someone.
06:36He showed so much passion for taking a knee and didn't even realize what we were taking a knee for
06:44and changed the narrative.
06:46So that just frustrates me and it irritates me.
06:48It just, it just makes me feel like, like, like it makes me feel like I'm my, my emotion,
06:57my intelligence is being attacked and undermined.
07:01And, and, and when everybody's out there protesting and uprising, I feel like I'm not the only one.
07:09And not just black people, but white people alongside Latinos, alongside Asians, alongside
07:15every, you have this unity of enough is enough.
07:19And when, when, when we have, when we see like the response of defunding,
07:25that that's awesome too, but that's a, that's a reaction.
07:30I want to see what the, what is the action now?
07:33Like, what are we doing about our communities?
07:34If you're going to defund the police department, how are we going to fund education?
07:39How are we going to fund, you know, preparation?
07:43How are we going to upskill?
07:44Because the world is totally different 2030, right?
07:49So we're seeing a massive job loss because of COVID-19.
07:55But then you're going to have this other wave of massive job loss
07:58that are going to come from companies that hit their numbers.
08:01The second quarter when no one came to work, Amazon hit their numbers.
08:08And then some, you know, all these platforms, zoom, everybody hit their numbers
08:14and no one had to go to the office.
08:17So we're going to see another wave around the corner of job loss
08:21because, you know, people that only pay attention to their stakeholders.
08:25I mean, to the shareholders are going to neglect that their stakeholders
08:30and provide jobs and opportunities and stabilities for communities and families.
08:35We're going to see a different wave.
08:36So that being said, what is 25, what is 2025 look like?
08:40What does 2030 look like?
08:42And how are we preparing this youth that didn't graduate this year
08:46that had to deal with like horrendous news and, and fear of not only
08:51not going to school, but hanging out wherever they can and get, you know,
08:56mishandled by this, this peace patrol that has been infiltrated by hate groups.
09:05And we're not educating folks.
09:08So our community, if, if we, if we don't pay attention to like proactivity
09:14and making sure our community is funded to prepare our youth for tomorrow, we're worse off tomorrow.
09:23Like we're fighting something now.
09:25We're fighting people being inhumane of people, but the machine is right around the corner.
09:33Right.
09:34The machine will be patrolling our streets.
09:38And if the machine is going to learn, because all the data is up, we have the data,
09:42but who's training the data.
09:45So if we're seeing cops mishandle blacks, what's going to happen when the machine is out there?
09:52The data is being programmed now.
09:55We're aggregating data for how the machine is to patrol now.
09:59And black people are not riding the algorithms for the, for the machine to behave.
10:05So yeah, defund.
10:06Cool.
10:07Awesome.
10:07Okay.
10:08Now, when you defund and then you start coming up with new protocols and how to police communities.
10:15Let's think about what the solutions might be.
10:19Right.
10:20Wait, there's self-driving cars.
10:21Anybody that's an Uber driver and a truck driver.
10:23Guess what?
10:24You ain't going to have jobs 2030.
10:26Because you are programming the car right now.
10:29Anybody with a Tesla and all these, these autonomous vehicles at around the corner.
10:34You're, you're going to render jobs obsolete.
10:40Drone deliveries.
10:41If you're a delivery person, you ain't going to have that job in 2030.
10:46So what are our jobs?
10:49During COVID-19, we saw essential jobs of folks that are working at the supermarkets.
10:54You know 2025, 2030 is not going to look like that.
10:56Everything that's happening right now is preparation for tomorrow.
11:02And we're still struggling off of stuff from yesterday.
11:07That's at the end of the day.
11:09That's where it's like, as hopeful as I am, there's this piece of me that's like, but we're not paying attention to the issues, issues.
11:17We're just tackling my grandma's issues.
11:21And her mom's issues.
11:22We're still getting over those issues.
11:28And what's around the corner is something, something we've never seen before.
11:36So do you think that people are thinking too small right now?
11:40If they're just talking about justice in a one case or, you know, body cameras or, you know,
11:47making records available for when police get fired, all of the proposals that I see both in the Democratic
11:55bill, one that the Republicans seem to be working on, stop working on, seem to be very narrow.
12:03They're not about structures.
12:05They're not about future that you were just talking about.
12:08They're just about, and they're not about even about police systems.
12:14It's just about accountability of individuals who do something wrong and asking police forces to make,
12:22to keep more records and share more records.
12:24You think it's too small?
12:25Yeah, because that's just fixing the Band-Aid.
12:28I mean, that's not even looking at the wound.
12:31That's fixing that bullshit ass Band-Aid that's there that's irritating the skin now.
12:37Right?
12:37So first off, fuck this Band-Aid.
12:43And let's look at the problem.
12:44Why do I keep getting cut?
12:45For us to even be worried about the Band-Aids and how the Band-Aid is applied with force.
12:53Why am I still getting cut to need the Band-Aid?
12:58That's the issue.
13:00So let's look at other communities where police officers aren't brutal
13:04to, or not, do not abuse their force.
13:07And what's happening there that's not happening in our neighborhoods.
13:10So wherever you have a kid that's getting $5,000 to less than $8,000 a year for their education,
13:19you're going to see strip malls and liquor stores and bullshit food and police brutality
13:28follows where there's a lack of investment for that child's education.
13:32Because business follows, it's business, follow the money.
13:36And wherever you have a child that gets $10,000 for their education,
13:41there are no billboards in that neighborhood.
13:43There are no strip clubs in that neighborhood.
13:45There are no liquor stores in that neighborhood.
13:48There are no bullshit foods in that neighborhood.
13:50There's fruit and vegetables in that neighborhood.
13:54And there isn't police brutality.
13:57Follow the money and make sure.
14:00And when you have $10,000 for your education, a teacher is getting, you know, you got the best
14:07teachers in that community.
14:09More people go to college and graduate that not only field jobs, but create jobs that come from
14:15that community.
14:17So our way out of our community is music and sports.
14:20That's it.
14:25It isn't this stuff.
14:28It isn't like how we are still having this interview.
14:31These platforms that change the world.
14:35Right?
14:36We have people that are in jail right now for selling a product that is now legal.
14:41And when they get out of jail, they ain't working for medical marijuana companies.
14:47They're not leading.
14:47They're not the top, the management for, you know, med men.
14:57Right?
14:58That's kind of, look at our setup.
15:00Look at how we've been set up to fail.
15:03Back to the lowest common denominator that we are neglecting.
15:07And that is how much a child's education and what their worth is.
15:13What they think they could contribute to society.
15:17And if we tripped and have been tricked
15:22in this past era, we're being set up to be
15:25bamboozled and fooled for this next era.
15:30The next era is more complex than the one that we're struggling to freaking fix right now.
15:36We're tripping off of people against people.
15:40Like, for example, somebody asked me in an interview today, they were like,
15:43yo, what's the future of music?
15:45And my answer was, okay, imagine it was 1800.
15:49And you asked me, what's the future of calculations and calculating?
15:53And as a futurist, I said, a calculator.
15:58A future of, the future of music is music, the machine.
16:03The machine coming up, half of the music we listen to is all machine-made and machine
16:08platform-based anyways.
16:10So the future of policing is what?
16:13Right.
16:14It's a machine that knows everything just based on my facial math.
16:17Or my facial math, meaning my skin and what it attributes to, what zip code I name.
16:23The setup, as far as data aggregation and the machine being able to predict,
16:31based on how it was trained now, the algorithms that were written now,
16:34how in the fuck are we going to handle that one?
16:40If we don't have the folks in the laboratory writing the code, like somebody was like, yo,
16:46NWA, niggas with attitudes.
16:48I was like, no, niggas write algorithms right now.
16:51Let's go.
16:54Yeah.
16:55Right.
16:55Shit's going to get hectic in a couple of fucking years.
17:01You said earlier that you were hopeful, in a way, on one hand, because of the coalition
17:09of people who were out protesting and marching.
17:13Do you think that holds?
17:15Like, you know, people have been cooped up for four months.
17:18Like you said, they couldn't graduate, couldn't go to school, couldn't go to concerts,
17:21couldn't go to bars, and all of a sudden, you know, there's a street festival.
17:29And, you know, there's a cool thing.
17:32Do you believe that that holds when everything opens back up?
17:35Or do you think it holds after, you know, the campaign kicks back into high gear,
17:40or some other news story happens?
17:43It holds, it has to hold with us first.
17:46So, somebody was like, somebody was telling me that other celebrities don't like saying
17:54the word Black Lives Matter, because they don't want to give power to other races,
18:04what that sentence does, as far as the sentence itself.
18:08Like, we're asking just to matter.
18:10And someone, other celebrities don't like saying that.
18:15I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
18:17We're not saying Black Lives Matter to average white people.
18:20We're saying Black Lives Matter to the architect.
18:25There's an architect that don't even see themselves as average white people.
18:31You got to know where you're, what you're saying Black Lives Matter to.
18:35And more importantly, we're saying, I'm saying that to me.
18:40As a writer, Black Lives Matter.
18:44So, I should uplift my community and uplift all the pillars that keep our community healthy,
18:51starting with the woman.
18:53So, I should not talk ill upon our females, our queens.
19:00They shouldn't be subjected to just strippers and hoes and bitches.
19:04So, we have to hold that first.
19:07Next, Black Lives Matter is, Black Lives Matter to the developers that are responsible for underdeveloped communities.
19:19I'm a developer, too.
19:21And I should be able to develop my community because eventually it's going to be gentrified anyway.
19:25Brooklyn, it's going to get gentrified anyway.
19:33You're speaking Black Lives Matter to the servers that are responsible for the underserved communities.
19:38Well, shit, I'm a server, too.
19:41I'm an architect.
19:42I'm a server.
19:42I'm a developer.
19:43Black people.
19:44Let's compete.
19:48And people are going to show up.
19:50They show up to our music.
19:51They like the music we make.
19:53They like how we dominate sports.
19:55Well, let's dominate this, too.
19:57The algorithms.
19:59Let's dominate this, too.
20:00Finance and business.
20:01There's lots of Black billionaires out there in the world.
20:06Right?
20:06There's a World Economic Forum.
20:09I was talking to, you know, Mr. Essence himself.
20:14The new essence.
20:15He's awesome.
20:17And I like the, you know, the Black economic forum.
20:24We need to all support that and hold that to the same regard as we do the world economic forum.
20:30Right.
20:32You know, so we need to do more of that.
20:35Like, imagine being a gay businessman in the 70s.
20:41You were in the closet.
20:43In the 80s, you were in the closet.
20:46In the 90s, you were in the closet.
20:48But something happened in the 2000s.
20:51And now the gay community, whoa.
20:54Damn.
20:56What they did, that's inspirational.
20:59We need to learn from that.
21:02Like, I asked Siri the other day.
21:06How many Jews are in the world?
21:11Just a sec.
21:14The answer is about 14.1 million people.
21:1714 million Jews.
21:20And in America, the Jewish community hold more than 30% of the wealth in this country.
21:28There's only 14 million.
21:30We could learn from the Jewish community.
21:33Very inspirational.
21:35There's other communities to learn from.
21:37Recent communities that they've empowered themselves, rallied together.
21:43Everybody came and supported each other.
21:46And in communities that also had, you know, genocide and abuse in World War II.
21:54And look how they came out of that.
21:56They phoenixed that.
21:58We haven't had our phoenix yet.
21:59We're still burning.
22:05So then what do you think are the best ways for people to take action and to
22:15make change in this particular environment?
22:17And how should they aim that?
22:19I mean, is it protesting?
22:21Is it voting?
22:22Is it all of the above?
22:23Is it or is there something or protesting and no protesting and voting?
22:31But taking action and keeping action are two different things.
22:35Let's say that we've took action.
22:38What you see out in the streets, we've took action multiple times.
22:41Every time there's like a new thing that happens, we take action.
22:45And then we go back to daily life.
22:47But we need to keep action now.
22:48And we need to be proactive.
22:53We take action, keep action, and be proactive.
22:58And proactivity is preparing and protecting our youth.
23:02Aiming our youth so we could build from that passion, from that encouragement and
23:12guidance and mentorship to do things that we vote on.
23:17You could vote for somebody to take care of your community or you could design
23:21your community to take care of your community.
23:24We don't do that as good as we should.
23:27Like think about it.
23:28You're Indian.
23:29If you were to ask an Indian family in the 70s, what do you want your child to be?
23:33We want our children to be doctors and nurses.
23:36And guess what?
23:37They became doctors.
23:39What do you want your child to be?
23:40I want my kid to be an engineer.
23:42Guess what?
23:43They built all of Google.
23:44They built all of Indians.
23:48Right?
23:48The head of Google's family is from India.
23:54Think about the discipline and the guiding.
23:56And that's a slum, slum country.
23:58They're dealing with black issues just like we're dealing with black issues here.
24:02The darker you are, the less off you are in India.
24:07They have a classist system.
24:08They struggle with their racism.
24:11But darn it, you can't find a tech company without an awesome Indian programmer, engineer
24:17that has helped change the world.
24:19The same is not for us.
24:22We need to, like I said, take action, keep action, proactively.
24:26And help design our communities ourselves.
24:30Yes, we need to vote.
24:32For the time being, that's how we need to do that.
24:33But we also have to aim our children to be in places of power even more so.
24:42Because we have people in power now.
24:44Yes, we sure do.
24:45And the folks in the past fought for that.
24:48They had that proactivity back then to do the impossible.
24:52It was impossible to think during Jim Crow that we would have a black president.
24:57But because of the work of our, you know, the Malcolm X's and the Martin Luther King's
25:04and the freedom fighters, we have had some great momentum.
25:11And now here we are at a crossroads where the world is about to change in ways that we've never
25:17seen before in the past.
25:19This is the fourth industrial revolution.
25:21How does kind of self-sufficiency, self-government, build your own, recirculate the money,
25:33defund the police?
25:33We can police a lot of our neighbors.
25:36So how much is that self-sufficiency part of what you are discussing?
25:41So in 2004, I went to Bandayache after they had that tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
25:58And I was like, I want to spend my birthday doing something.
26:02So I flew out and did tsunami relief.
26:05And when I was there, I was like, wow, there's a tsunami in my neighborhood
26:10every day.
26:12It's not water.
26:13It's no opportunity.
26:15I'm going to go back to my community.
26:16Like, why do I keep on doing things for other causes?
26:20Let me go back to my neighborhood.
26:21I'm going to go back to my projects.
26:24And although my projects as a black man, we were the only black family in my neighborhood.
26:27Everyone's Mexican.
26:29I just, that's my neighborhood.
26:32That's all I know.
26:33I don't know.
26:34That's what I know.
26:35So I went back to my neighborhood.
26:36I was like, yo, I want to, I want to, I want to help change my neighborhood.
26:41So it took me a couple of years.
26:44I was like, I want to bring robotics and computer science to my neighborhood.
26:48I'm going to start with 65 kids and see how that goes.
26:51I'm going to commit myself for 10 years and see what, what comes of this.
26:57So if I, and the reason why I was 10 years was, you know, if I start with eighth graders
27:03and I, and I see those eighth graders for 10 years, I'm going to see them through the rest
27:08of junior high school, through high school and four years of college, right?
27:15Now I have 700 and almost 800 kids in my program.
27:19Every single one of my, every single one of my classes that's graduated, we have a hundred
27:26percent graduation rate.
27:27Seventy percent of our kids go to school for computer science, bioscience, robotics.
27:33Some of my kids go to Brown, Dartmouth, UCLA, Stanford, studying computer science.
27:43And, and I'm speaking of it because I'm like, well, now I have to figure out how to take this
27:49to every single neighborhood in America and that type of stuff.
27:53I didn't have to vote for that.
27:54I didn't have to wait for some pile of fucking tissue to do that for my neighborhood.
27:58Yes.
27:58I still voted.
28:00Yes.
28:00I still pay my taxes, but do I know if my tax dollars are actually going to the things
28:06that I'm passionate about?
28:08No, I don't know that for certain.
28:11So I'm not going to rely and wait on folks to change my neighborhood when I have the ability
28:16to do that.
28:17And we need to do that together collectively.
28:20Like we should have a unit of folks.
28:23Like we should posse the fuck up.
28:25Sorry for my language.
28:26Like let's posse up and not in a militant way, but in a proactive way, in a, in a, in a progressive
28:33way, because black and Brown is suffering the same thing.
28:39They're suffering the same thing.
28:41Two years ago, they were separating, you know, Brown folks from their parents,
28:46just for trying to come into a country.
28:49That's similar to what we're going through right now.
28:53And still doing that, by the way.
28:55Yeah.
28:55Still doing that.
28:56And nobody on camera taking pictures of the ones that are murdered.
28:59We don't know what ice killed off and iced off a family or a child for wanting to come into a country.
29:07Right?
29:07So we don't know that.
29:08But all I know is that black and Brown, same thing.
29:11We fill up the prisons.
29:12And, and, and, but what I'm saying, what I'm, what I'm suggesting is not anti, you know, I'm not anti,
29:26I'm anti no opportunity for us.
29:28I'm anti, you know, I'm just tired of like, waiting for them.
29:39Oh, please help us develop us.
29:42Right.
29:43But if you, but what we need to do is we need to make sure that there is money, our tax dollars are,
29:49should be going to make sure that we're, that society is governed correctly with balance.
29:54Like why, why is it that the zoning is configured in such to where $5,000 for their education also
30:02allows strip clubs, you know, bullshit food, check cashing and motel to be on the same block
30:08where a strip club is two miles away from a school.
30:12That's not in Brentwood and Palisades and Beverly Hills.
30:15So why do they have zoning that is healthy for development?
30:18And ours is like, yeah, y'all could do that.
30:21Like how is, we know how detrimental that is for community growth.
30:26We know how detrimental that is to health and obesity and diabetes.
30:32Like in the name of all blackness, you were not going to Africa and getting obese, diabetic slaves.
30:40Like, how did we get to that point when we were the healthiest to work?
30:46That was planned.
30:47They, they, they set it up, set us up to now be unhealthy.
30:55Because our ancestors were not like that.
30:58Right.
30:58So the zoning, it's all in the zoning.
31:01That's why voting is important.
31:03But more importantly, what's more important than voting?
31:06Getting more folks to run for office that are from the communities that we come from.
31:12People that understand the needs for that community.
31:16Officers that are policing, you know, with compassion to help grow that community.
31:21Officers should be rewarded.
31:24The way they're rewarded for fucking bullshit ass tickets.
31:27For the health of the community.
31:29We need to reimagine policing.
31:32Not defund policing.
31:33Yes, defunding is important, but let's also reimagine.
31:38Let's have some protocols that if you have hate in your heart, you should not be patrolling the areas that you hate.
31:44If this motherfucking phone knows what I text and type to give me some fucking advertisement on my searches.
31:51Then you should know who the fuck is, has hatred and not allow them to patrol in areas around people they hate.
31:58Like, why is fucking Google so teched up but police office, police departments aren't?
32:03Get the fuck out of here.
32:06I think the reason why they're not is because they don't want to be.
32:09Why?
32:09Because our police department, our peace program has been infiltrated by a community and hate groups.
32:16That's like ISIS being like, yo, imagine ISIS like, yo, let's go to America and we're going to join the police force and we're going to inflict pain and terror to the motherfuckers we hate.
32:28That's like, let's go to America and become police officers.
32:59And infiltrate the police department and inflict pain and terror on the communities that we hate.
33:09Let's go to the police department and become police officers and inflict terror and pain to communities that we hate.
33:16That actually happened in America.
33:18A hate group has infiltrated our police departments to the point where they could, and not only just the police departments, they also became judges.
33:28They worked their way up to where they have a code.
33:33And we as a nation are not even looking at dismantling that.
33:39Right.
33:40Like defunding.
33:43That's great.
33:44But how we clean it up, though.
33:46Right.
33:47The technology is there to clean it up.
33:53Thank you so much, sir.
33:54This is a very enlightening conversation.
33:57Hopefully I get to meet you one day in person.
33:58Thank you so much.
34:02Sorry for talking a lot.
34:03No, you're fine.
34:04You're fine.
34:05All right.
34:06All right.
34:06Bye.
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