B Scar TV Podcast
Hi-Quality conversations with your favorite creators, thought leaders, and cultural tastemakers - hosted by Brennan Scarlett.
B Scar TV Podcast
S3E9: JT Flowers
What defines you? The titles you've earned, or the work you embody? In this powerful conversation, JT Flowers challenges conventional ideas about identity and success while sharing his remarkable journey from basketball at Yale University, his switch to becoming a community leader expressing his creativity, the impact of becoming a father, and much more.
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How do you define yourself? By what you say or what you do? Basketball star Rhodes Scholar rapper, community organizer JT Flowers has won the titles, but for him who you are is built through action.
Speaker 1:See, you don't just do the work, you are the work. I hope you all enjoy this episode of Beast Guard TV with our very special guest, jt Flowers. Rb, we good. Flowers, rb, we good. Alright, man, shit we're rolling. Appreciate you being here, appreciate you having me here. Man, this is a long overdue Beast Guard TV conversation. Hell, yeah, it's you, my friend, because we go way back and I want to get into we'll get into a history of how we met. But DSCAR TV is really a space to have conversations that can hopefully inspire listeners, viewers, each other, and so really a platform for inspiration. So to to kick off every episode, like to start with the question of what's inspiring you, um, whether that is what has been a source of inspiration, maybe just like over the course of your life, or you can bring that to like, maybe more recently, what's been inspiring you?
Speaker 2:uh, two things come to mind immediately. Uh, the first is we recently, uh had an event, um this summer. The organization I work for, albino visit trust. We opened our headquarters building and at that grand opening, our executive director, this woman there, went to Johannes. She said something that really stuck with me. She said we don't do the work, we are the work. And I think what she was trying to get across with that statement was that we are the living embodiment of the world that we want to drag into existence, and it reminded me that even in the most trying of times, we still have agency, there's still things we could do.
Speaker 2:I think the second piece that's really been inspiring me lately, bro, fatherhood Having a son Really recently, that is. Fatherhood. Having a son really recently, that is. I don't think there's ever been a greater inspiration for me as a human being. I think it's the thing I've always looked forward to most of my life. But being able to bring him into this world in this moment feels like, to quote Martin martin, luther king, a testament of hope. Right, it's a, a stake in the ground that says the future is still worth fighting for. Uh, it forces you to zoom out of yourself and completely reframe and recontextualize everything around you the work that we do, the conversations we had, the way we spend our time. Uh, yeah, what about you, bro? What's man? What's man? He's gone, man, um it's been inspiring me.
Speaker 1:I think, uh, consistency, I think that, uh, oftentimes, like, the way that we see our dreams come into realization, is one way. Yeah, you see yourself accomplishing a certain dream and you're seeing yourself this kind of like linear path to that dream, whatever those steps that look like in your head. Yeah, but it doesn't ever work like that and I think, and I think what allows you to go and achieve that dream isn't having your path right in the first place, it's a willingness to continue to show up, even when the shit hits the fan, even when there's adverse trying times, when you're questioning like damn, what the hell am I doing? You know what I mean. And I think that, like, when you look at some of my like biggest inspirations, whether that's in sport, in business, in the community or what have you, it's like the folks that continue to show up every day, every month, every year, you know, over a long course of time, and then I think that is what allows you to accomplish your dream.
Speaker 1:But that's also what maybe shares gives the space, the inspiration for others to go and accomplish theirs. You should say agency like gives other people to agency like. Yeah, okay, let me trust my gut, let me keep going. Yeah, so I think that consistency because I think you know something that's that's hard as a, as an entrepreneur, as a creative, as you know, somebody who, just like, has big dreams, yeah, you know, which we share that it's like sometimes, when that shit ain't hitting right, it's like they start to question. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, whoa, you have doubts. Yeah, and there's that, that tension between the hunger to get the work done and the patience necessary to be consistent. Those two things have to connect in order to sustain the type of work you got to do to get anywhere over a long period of time. I think that's something that takes time to understand in and of itself, especially like more younger you know, you're just trying to get a scholarship and trying to get to the league. You're trying to get a scholarship and try and get to the league. Yeah, uh, you're trying to, you know, accomplish some feat, and it feels like those things are like right at your fingertips. I think, as we get older, the things we start chipping away at are much bigger and make longer, yeah, longer, longer to achieve. Bro, they take decades instead of years, right, right. And when you zoom out and start thinking about life and the legacy that we're trying to build and leave behind for our kids and that framework, I think it almost forces you to slow down. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it's real. Well, I think, too, like I'm glad that you brought up sport and being an athlete, because it was a much more defined route to do what you know we wanted to do. Yeah, it's like we grew up hooping together. Yeah, yeah, right, and playing sports, and so, like, for me, it was always I want to go be a professional athlete. Yeah, I really didn't even care to sport, like whichever sport I was the best in. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I thought I was going to be a hooper, but then I capped out at 6'4". You know what I mean Stunted growing.
Speaker 1:And I was 245 pounds as a freshman in high school, so I'm like all I knew then in high school it was like, okay, in order to go and play pro, I got to go and play in college. Okay, I got to ball out in college freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, maybe a fifth year, like it was these steps that was defined. You actually I saw many people do it it's like what you did. Then you went pro. There's this linear path back to having a linear path that's defined that then, once you like, step outside of sport and now you have these dreams that maybe are less defined over and even in your own mind. Yeah, but definitely the path yeah, you know, is less defined, like to your point. You do have to have the patience to one allow it to become clear in your mind, but then definitely, too, to like actually manifest 100%, bro.
Speaker 2:My first memory of you was actually Whitaker Warriors. Bro, I remember those fourth, fifth and sixth grade that football team I played up. I think when I was in fourth grade I was on the fifth and sixth grade that football team I played up. I think when I was in fourth grade I was on the fifth and sixth grade team and, bro, you were a beast. In that context, I think that was the year I realized like football was not going to be my sport. Dude truck, sticking head, sticking motherfuckers. I was like, oh no, bro, I'm not built for this. Let me go pick up a basketball.
Speaker 1:Skinny bro, I got body slam dog.
Speaker 2:I remember going up catching a pass in the end zone, get my first little touchdown, and somebody came up underneath me, a safety just cracked me, lifted me up and he just bah right, bro, this is not for me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not built for this, bro. That is that play right there that turns basketball dudes. I can't. It's a real hoopers. Yeah, I'm not touching this game of football, no more. Thank you, bro. It is that coming across the middle and finding the consequence for coming across that middle. Yeah, bro.
Speaker 2:And you were what? 6'4" 240? I was like 6'4", buck 60. Like, so sweat, so good, weight bro. Different build, different build. So let me, just let me read the room here.
Speaker 2:Dog, I'm going to pivot, but no, back to your point about, like, the linear nature of the path. I think my path really, early on, diverged from the linear nature, right, because, similar to you, right, I'm racking up scholarship offers. Everything's going well. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go high major to play basketball. All of a sudden, did her scholarship offer start getting rescinded? I'm like, where am I going? Am I still on the path that I thought I was on?
Speaker 2:And increasingly the answer to that question became no. So I'm like, okay, what do I pivot towards? Can I even pivot? Right, and as a young kid especially, well, that's like a terrifying question to answer. You haven't even seen enough of the world to know what you're good at, what you're capable of, what paths might be available to you to follow. But I think it forced me from a super early age to think unconventionally about the way that I connect the dots in life. So, everywhere I've ended up in my mind is almost like a surprise to me, like I haven't had a crystal clear picture since I was maybe 18 years old, 17 years old of where I was going to go and how I was going to get there. It was always like, oh let's see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when did you first wrestle with that realization that, yo, I'm not about to? Sports isn't the answer for my career? Yeah Right, I'm not going to go and play pro.
Speaker 2:Bro, it was when my first offer for basketball was from Arizona State, when I was 15, right coming in my sophomore year of high school. I was like, okay, I'm set, bro. I thought I'd take a couple of years, do the thing, rack up a few more offers, keep it pushing right. But when I got hurt, kind of beginning of my junior year, going into most critical season, I never really got back to where I was at prior to that and I thought in the moment it was because I didn't regain the explosiveness, the athleticism I had prior. But in retrospect I think it was really more mental than anything. I wasn't able to regain the sense of confidence that I had. And you know, playing any sport at a high level, right, so much of it is a mental battle.
Speaker 2:I think I lost a mental battle at a young age and I didn't have the right folk around me to say hey, bro, like you got everything you need, you can rehab this injury, you can get back to being springy, doing what you do, but you got to get this right, yeah. So I was fighting the wrong battle in that sense, and in fighting the wrong battle I lost the war, you know. So these scholarship barbers start getting pulled off the table right as you like, ooh, I don't know if that's by still there. Right, yeah, schools that were recruiting me stopped recruiting me. And then I'm like, okay, well, where do I land?
Speaker 2:And I think it clicked for me super early, like if my trajectory and my freedom, my ability to like make my way out of my situation in life, was tied to my physical body. I'm probably setting myself up for a whole lot of risk and a whole lot of liability, but I didn't have an alternative to present until it kind of fell out the sky and into my lap right. Uh yeah, with a college coach calling me from New Haven, connecticut. He said, hey, this is Matthew Pienzo in Yale University, Bro. I said shut the fuck up. I hung up the phone, dog. I was like stop capping, bro, I'm high in my basement, bro, I'm high.
Speaker 2:One of the homies prank calling me what up. Bro Dude calls me back, area code 202. I was like what? I look up on my phone like 202, area code. It says New Haven, connecticut. I said Yale University. It said New Haven, connecticut. I said oh shit, I pick up the phone. I'm cooked, by the way, bro, I'm absolutely cooked. I said hello. Dude said this is Matthew Kingsley from Yale University. And, bro, he said you know where you go to? College isn't a decision about the next four years of your life, it's a decision about the next 40. And that was the first time I had ever thought about college in that way. Right, because we're taught to think about college as athletes, as a stepping stone to professional athletics. Right, yeah, it's a place you go for four to launch yourself into a professional career. I had never thought about those four years as a foundation for the rest of my life and I think that's the moment that shit started to shift for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you started thinking about like what, what is that going to look like? Yeah, so coach Kingsley kind of started. Kingsley stirred up the pot a little bit, shout out to that dude man yeah, yeah, yeah, Huh. No, it's interesting to hear, man, and it's we. Just, we had our big yard academy over the summertime which you pulled up to, and we have 30 middle school kids and a lot of what we do is trying to empower them, equip them with the tools and resources and support and the mindset to go and pursue their dreams, right? Yep, want them to feel empowered to do that and hearing many of their dreams, it's like I want to go be an NFL player. I want to go play in the NFL. Right, I want to play in the NBA. I want to do professional motocross.
Speaker 2:I want to you know it was hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was hard, yeah, it was hard. Yeah, yeah, the little homie blue, he wanted to go to do motocross and that like four bikes. But a lot of these, you know a lot of these kids I'm, you know, saying they want to play in the nfl. I'm like, got a way, a ways to go. Yeah, and I was in from, uh, just the numbers, you know, like it's it's highly unlikely.
Speaker 1:And, being somebody who actually went and did it when play pro, that moment of having to wrestle, wrestle with like okay, yeah, this is, this is no more. It's been interesting to think about how I would have wrestled with that earlier on in my life, or how my peers have wrestled with that earlier on in my life, or how my peers have wrestled with that earlier on in life, yeah, especially when they were elite, yeah, you know. And then some of these kids will get to a point, probably in high school, is like looking around, like all right, it's probably not for me, you know what I mean. And then they'll have to wrestle with it and but I do think like the more elite you are and the closer you get, the harder that think like the more elite you are and the closer you get the harder.
Speaker 1:That conversation with yourself is yeah, um, and so when you, ultimately, you were at Yale and you, you were playing on the team, but then there was a, there was a point where, like okay, I'm, I'm done with this sport and I'm curious, like that conversation, was that just a conversation in your mind or was that, you know, starting to like speak with folks? Yeah, and then what started to inform. Then, okay, what is the next thing? Who is jt without? Yeah ball?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I'm bro. It was like a an earth shattering conversation to have on an internal level, cause I had never thought of myself as anything beyond a Hooper, right? Uh, I think the way that I got to Yale informed the answer to that question. All right, I didn't have the grades to get in my senior year. Right, I had multiple failed classes. I had gotten decent classes. Uh, been getting suspended was skipping class all the time. Was Highland Cup games called? Was Highland Cup games called? All their class was I was quick all the time, dog. No.
Speaker 2:But I think that in order to get to Yale, I had to reorient my focus away from basketball. Like, basketball wasn't the thing that was gonna carry me to Yale. I was already good enough. You could get an offer from ASU, you could play at Yale. No disrespect to Yale, right. But it was like can I academically be up to par? Right, yeah, so I had to jump through so many hoops just to get to that college campus. Right, they were like we can't even get you in at the end of your senior year You're going to have to go in, convince your college counselor to track you into full IB classes.
Speaker 2:I went to IB school, not an AP school, because I had been tracking the mostly lower level classes, with the exception of English. They're like you got to get straight A's and full IB your senior year. All those grades are weighted right. They're worth five points instead of four. That'll drag your GPA up. We can use the weighted number. Also, you got to retake every class You've got a D or an F in online to get them grades, voided out your transcript and factored out your GPA. And then we can not get you in here but get you into a boarding school on the East Coast. That's an elite academic and if you could prove you could survive there. Maybe we can convince the admissions department to bail out here.
Speaker 2:So for me I was like, okay, school is actually the field of play for me now. Like I have yet to prove I can compete in this bucket. So I went, I did that, switched into 4IB Shout out to my counselor, annie Wow, I forget Annie's last name, she was amazing. Tracked into 4B, straight A's, retook three, four classes online, got them grades, wrote it on my transcript. Boom, I get to a school called Choke Rosemary Hall. It's the same school JFK went to, bro. Oh, wow, and I thought I was it leads to being a bro elite. I was like oh, but it was like crazy dog, like these are kids raising kids Boarding school? Never sends a kid to a boarding school.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Bro, crazy environment. Dog Kids is ripping hard drugs. Damn Cheating on tests.
Speaker 1:I bet it's like supervision only really happens in the classroom, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Good luck. And then they like flexing on each other, but it's not like, okay, like I'm nicer than you at sports. It's like, yeah, my dad, my dad owns the MGM Graham Sucker. Like, what's up, I'm trying to beat, I'm not trying to beat. This day there was no IK. Yeah, my dad just came and picked me up in a Rolls Royce. Oh, that Like it's a different level of wealth, bro. I wasn't used to it, so that was intimidating enough.
Speaker 2:And then you get into a classroom with these kids and, in the same way, you can tell the difference between an elite athlete on a basketball court or a football field, right? Or you could tell the difference between an elite student in a classroom, right? These kids is rattling off words I have never even heard in my entire life Like they. Outside of my little shrunken ass vocabulary. I'm spending probably 30% of my time in class is like literally Googling the words that people are saying. I'm trying to figure out how to keep pace with the instruction of the course and also with my peers in the course. But what I started to realize is oh right, these kids have just been treated in school like we treat sports. So if I were to shift the way I think about everything and pour all the time I used to pour into basketball, into school, like into, just like doing my homework and reading. Maybe I can compete in the same context. And when that clicked for me, I started going crazy in the classroom, yeah, and I was like, oh okay, these kids ain't no smarter than us. If anything, we actually have more to offer in this context than they do, because we've lived the things that we're learning about right in a classroom, right in a real way, in a material world. So if you can bring that lived experience and couple it with that kind of academic rigor and intellectual training, so to speak, yeah, I would say like the clothing of the mind is often used to disguise a lack of real intelligence, right, because there's people working at 76 gas station that are smarter than kids on Harvard's campus or Yale's campus.
Speaker 2:The difference is those kids on those Ivy league campuses know how to dress up the words that come out their mouth to make you think of them as not only palatable but intelligible, whereas folk in neighborhoods like the ones we grew up in are just like. This is how it's all. This is what I'm saying. You either take it on its merit or you don't, right? Yeah, so there's not that same performance of intelligence? Yeah, yeah. But once I started to learn the rules of the game, I was like, oh bro, we can play this game too.
Speaker 2:So by the time I get to Yale, right, I've already kind of gone through the ringer of thinking about the battlefield differently. I'm not even thinking about hoop as like my path anymore, right, I'm like, okay, my path is school. When I get to that campus, mind you, athletes and you know this, right, having gone to Cal, having gone to Stanford, I'm not sure if it's the same on those campuses I know a lot of Ivy League campuses people see athletes as folk who, like, snuck their way into the school. Oh for sure, right, ok, y'all are dumber than us. You didn't work as hard as we did, right, we're devalued intellectually. So, immediately off rip, I was like, bro, I'm joining a poetry group, I'm getting involved in the African-American Cultural Center, I'm going to start getting involved in student activism, I'm going to start broadening my interests so that I can be more than an athlete on this campus.
Speaker 2:Freshman year, freshman year, so much so that there's even tension with some of the homies on the basketball team. They're like, bro, you're not ever kicking it at the basketball house. And it's not because I didn't love them dudes, it's because I was really like fighting to try to redefine myself, as you're talking about. So then, by the time I get to the end of my freshman year, I was like did I come to Yale? To who I don't think I did? I'm the elder who I don't think I did. And, more importantly, they can't give athletic scholarships. They can only give need-based financial aid. Right, I'm on full financial aid all four years, because this is the one place in life where it really pays to be broke. My scholarship's not tied to my body, no more. Let me just go be a student for once and see what happens then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wow, you were really intentional about your transition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to join the student groups. Yeah, that's what I was like. I'm not gonna be hooping. What am I gonna be doing, bro?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, it's funny, man like my, obviously we, we we grew up together and and, uh, you know from elementary, middle school, high school, and would you know from elementary, middle school, high school, and would you know, see each other. But then when you left and went to the East Coast and I was down at Cal and the only point of connection was through Facebook, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, bro, I have vivid memories of seeing you post something and seeing how your swag had, like, had changed. You know, you was wearing these colors and spirit, what, like? Yeah, like the boat shoes, like showing those old side, the old time, but it was swaggy though. Like it was swaggy Like you thought it was in the moment. Yeah, I thought it was swaggy too. It wasn't just you, bro.
Speaker 2:No, bro, it was like rough era rough you bro.
Speaker 1:Oh bro Rough era, rough era, bro. But then also I was seeing videos links of you giving speeches, maybe reciting poems In front of folks. I was like damn, this dude JT is really balling. He's at Yale. It was a shock to me when I saw that you was at Yale. I was like Yale, like which one? Like which one? Me Yale, yale Community.
Speaker 2:College.
Speaker 1:Not because you're not. You know you're not smart. You already been an intelligent dude. But I was like you know, how do you end up hooping at Yale? I didn't know the back story of linking into boarding school, I didn't know that. So, just as an outsider looking in, it really seemed like you had taken advantage of the opportunity. Yeah, and you know, you see that a lot in sport and you talk about that a lot in sport, but oftentimes we don't talk about that, you know, in the context of other opportunities, whether it be career or educational, educational.
Speaker 1:And what I'm curious about is that you, you talked kind of about the quality of, like, this competitive nature that you have, that you have right of like, okay, it's one thing to compete on the basketball court, sure, and then being able to kind of translate that skill, that quality of being a really competitive person, okay, now I'm about to apply this competitiveness in the classroom. Yes, yes, yes, and I think that's a direct translation. But I'm curious what other qualities would you say have allowed you to unlock that high performance, starting with ball, then moving on to Yale, your college, you know educational experience, but then also into your career too? Yeah, like, what are those qualities that you think you know personally. When you look back like, damn, I really, I really been doing this shit. You know what I mean. Like not in a, in a, in a boastful way, but like like I figured out how to you've been accomplishing your dreams along there. Whatever you wanted to do, you went and done it. What's been the unlock Bro?
Speaker 2:I wonder if it's the same for you. For me, sports taught me everything about the way that I approach my professional life. I'll say the most fundamental thing I learned from sports was not just the value of hard work, but the value of being a learner. Right, in the context of any athletic endeavor you've got to coach, you have to humble yourself to the study of your craft. Right, and we were lucky enough to be brought up around coaches in our different sports. Right, that were not only knowledgeable about their craft but, like could break down and systematize the way you think about learning that craft. Right. My high school coach is now the head coach of the Denver Nuggets.
Speaker 2:Bro, like David Adelman, is a genius when it comes to talking about the game of basketball. So I learned how to study film. I learned how to analyze my own mistakes. I learned how to identify where my weaknesses were and then systematically target those weaknesses for improvement.
Speaker 2:Right, those aren't things that you just avoid. Right, you can't dribble with your left hand. You need to get in the gym and spend hours every day pounding the rock with your left hand. Right, like, I apply that same type of approach to my career now. Right, get in the gym and spend hours every day pounding the rock with your left hand, right like I. Apply that same type of approach to my career. Now, right, if I don't know anything about transportation policy, well shit, I should probably grab some books. I should probably pull some folks aside, I should probably watch some documentaries and, uh, read some research papers. I should learn about the craft that I'm participating in and fill those gaps in an intentional way. So, same exact system of learning, just different fields, but I would say sports taught me that, like school didn't teach me that.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, that's real. Yeah, it's real. So so, when you're now filling these like knowledge gaps, whether it be on a certain subject, whether it be about a certain subject, whether it be about a certain industry career, what have you, what are some of the mediums that you're using to fill those gaps?
Speaker 2:Anything I can get my hands on, like conversation with folks who are knowledgeable, right Pulling somebody aside and saying, hey, you've been doing this for 20, 30 years. What am I missing?
Speaker 1:Right, what is that? That's like outreach, you know. Hey, can we grab a coffee?
Speaker 2:Yeah, can we go sit down and grab a coffee. Can I pop up on you at your office? Here's this event Like. Is there anything you think would be worth me attending to learn more about this? Right? Can you point me to other folk who might be willing to share some of their time to help me get smart on this? Oh hey, I had this idea. Can you poke holes in it and tell me what I'm missing? Where, as I'm starting to feel like I'm getting my feet under me? Where am I still falling short? It's film study of the mind. Same exact concept, though. I got you. Yeah, I got you.
Speaker 2:So talking to people obviously reading literature, all the good stuff, but podcasts like I don't think there's any medium. That is inapplicable. The first step is identifying where you're falling short and then being willing to approach that learning process with humility rather than with shame. Like I think we have to do that as athletes. Right, if your coach says, be like your tackling form is off, you're not going to be like, damn, I'm a bad football player, right, we do that intellectually. Oh, bro, you don't know enough about x. Or maybe you didn't say this or articulate this in in a thoughtful way. People are like, damn, I'm not smart. Yeah, what?
Speaker 1:for or like you don't have the like, you're not justified to coach me up on that. Yeah, I think I feel like there's the ego piece of like I don't want to hear that.
Speaker 2:Not from you, bro, maybe for that guy. Not from you, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a weird sense of pride associated with it, but you see it in athletes too. Right, there are some dudes like derek, even at the highest levels, uh, and those dudes always have a ceiling. Uh, yeah, they always have a ceiling. But if you're willing to learn, bro, yeah there are a few things that you can't come to learn how to do. That's fire, that's fire I like that.
Speaker 1:I like that. We talked a little bit about your, your creative side, via, like, the poet poetry group and um, creative expression is something that you know when I think about you and who you are. Creative expression of how you dress. You know you always fit it. Creative expression from your music, which I feel like a lot of people aren't really privy to what you've done from a musical standpoint and in the research, ty and I was talking about it being the Pigeons and Planes one of their best new artists in 2021. Yeah, so, creatively, like, there's something that you're passionate about your expression. And yeah, I'm just curious, you want to talk about how your experience has been in the creative field and how maybe it relates to all the other things that we've talked about. A hundred percent, bro, I feel like I didn't.
Speaker 2:Music is always something I wanted to do, even in high school, first time I ever smoked. Everybody was trying to go like, oh hey, let's go to homecoming, let's go to this dance, let's go call up this group of girls, go hang out. I was like yo, is anybody trying to like listen to some, listen to some music? I was like I just wanted to create and I had never felt that urge before. But I came to realize that I really had a deep love for music. I think the thing that kept me from trying to make music in high school was and I had boxed myself in. I was like, oh boy, you're a hooper dog. Like don't be the hooper. Who's like out here trying to do this and do that? Like stay in your lane. Yeah, I kept myself swung in that context out of fear of embarrassment.
Speaker 2:End of my college trajectory I've won a bunch of academic awards and I ended up, you know, being awarded the Rhodes Scholarship. It's the oldest scholarship on earth and I was like, okay, I'm at the pinnacle of academic achievement. That's like going league for school. What am I leveraging all this privilege I've accrued in order to do? If I take all this privilege I've accrued in order to do If I take all this that I scrapped and clawed for and leverage it to do a bunch of the same shit that everybody else has always done like what a waste that is For folk who grow up like us working class backgrounds and not the nicest neighborhoods like we're really scrapping a climb for freedom in the most fundamental sense of the term, for the ability to move through the world without having to feel limited or constrained. So the question I asked myself immediately wasn't okay cool, what job can I go get? I was like in what ways could I be freer in the way that I pass through the world? I was like shit bro, I be freer in a way that I passed through the world. I was like shit bro.
Speaker 2:I've always wanted to create, but I'm being too embarrassed to right. At first it was because I didn't want to break out of this identity as a hooper. Then I'm like I'm on a campus where having tattoos is like something that I felt embarrassed about. I wanted to cover up. I wanted to be more buttoned up. I wanted to change the way I spoke. Literally, I did Like I coached with heavy. I changed everything about the way I present. I started severing parts of myself to assimilate into this space and hopefully rise to the space, which I did.
Speaker 2:But again I get to this pinnacle and I was like I don't even feel like myself. No more, bro, and music for me was a way back to myself, through through, like the reintroduction of this childhood passion. But in weird ways I feel like even there I overcorrected, right, almost created like a character that also wasn't me, just in the opposite direction. So over the lifetime of my creative practice now, you know, being at this point what, five years deep into making music and doing that whole thing, I think, weirdly, I'm landing in a place where the music I make now, even if it never goes out into the world like some of the older music did, is a reflection of all of the parts of me, of all of the parts of me. So the me that you see on a news camera is the same as the me that you hear behind a microphone, is the same as the me that you get when I step onto a basketball court. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, creative expression as a.
Speaker 2:As freedom, yeah, as freedom and freedom as consistency of being across spaces.
Speaker 1:Right, which that, like, is really difficult in the, in the spaces that you work and flow through hockey, you know when you're, when you're working out in a career in the creative field, you know, um, working in a career in the creative field, you know, and you're doing that as that being your nine to five, that's a different experience than working in politics. Yeah, in a space that is, you know, historically, like you got a suit and tie on, yeah, and it's a Navy suit, you know what I mean. And that tie is either red or blue, yeah, tie on, yeah, and it's a Navy suit, and that tie is either red or blue, yeah, right, yeah, and so you're having a, you're having a battle on that front of like this is actually what's expected. But then I've done all of these things. I've checked all of the boxes, from Yale up to Rhodes, scholar, truman, truman, scholar. You know, you name it, I've done it.
Speaker 1:So what has that afforded me? The luxury and the freedom to do? That's exactly it. Do I now have to follow the norms that have been built in this system? That wasn't built for me to plan. That's exactly right, bro, like the answer. If you're following an act of freedom and truly being you. The answer is no yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the answer is breaking away and trying to figure out how to be your full self. Yeah, spaces, yeah, and across time, right, and that's a privilege that we don't get afforded and that, oftentimes, once we acquire success, or achieve success we don't afford ourselves, right.
Speaker 1:Right, so are you pulling up to a meeting?
Speaker 2:in this bill, up to a meeting with the mayor, like this. I'll go sit down with the governor, her chief of staff, I'll sit down with our federal delegation, like this, but I think, accrued a certain sense of privilege, right? Because these fancy titles that now are attached to my name force people, when I step into the room, to be like, okay, this thing might be dressed a little crazy, but the world tells me I'm supposed to think he's smart, right? If I came into that same space dressed the exact same way, with the exact same ideas, but without those titles, they'd be like who the fuck get this dude out of here, right? So then again, the question becomes well, how am I leveraging that privilege as a person who didn't grow up with a whole lot of privilege, right? If I'm not using it to break down these barriers that these spaces have built to your point to keep us out of here, then there's no point in me swimming through this space to begin with. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It is the work. It is the work, bro, Pulling up as your full self who's went and said is the work. It is the work. You have to be the work rather than do the work.
Speaker 2:Be the work, as Winston said, it is the work, it is the work. You have to be the work rather than do the work Be the work.
Speaker 1:Be the work, bro. Obviously, we're both born and raised here in Portland, but you didn't have to stay here, especially after all of the accolades and things that you have accomplished. Why Portland?
Speaker 2:Oh man, we're from here, bro. I've always had this deep belief that the places that raise us turn us into the people. We are right, and I don't think that's a controversial or a profound thought in any way, shape or form, but it does have implications in my mind, right, it means that the places we know and understand most intimately are the places that raised us and in that sense, another extension of that same thought is the places where we can have the most impact are in the places that we were born and raised. I believe I'm just better suited to be of use to my people here than I would in a different city, different context, where everything is brand new, where you're learning secondhand from other people's firsthand experience of what it's like to experience a particular thing in that place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't, we don't have to do that here, right? We understand this place viscerally in every way, shape or form. So for me, not only is my family situated here, you know, not only are my roots here, but this is the place I believe in more profoundly than anywhere else on earth, like I believe, in the same way you do right, in the potential of what this place could be, and I think that we, as folks who've had the privilege of leaving here right, have a responsibility to take everything that we've learned, all the game we've soaked up, and to bring that back here to help move the work along. I mean, that's what our parents have been doing for generations. That's what our ancestors have been doing for 70, 80 years, right, been doing for 70, 80 years, right. They've been scrapping, clawing, fighting so that we could have the opportunity to one day leave and hopefully come back and continue to work. Carry on a baton, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's such an opportunity to build here in Portland and I think all of us here in this room are doing it in our own unique ways. Yeah, and I'm curious for you. I mean, you've touched on the work that you're doing with AVT and obviously it's been incredible, incredible work. What's next for you, man, like as you look towards big picture, continuing to build and grow and nurture this city?
Speaker 2:what's your path to doing that? Yeah, you know, my first job out of college was, uh, working for our congressman, for earl bloom and our and he held down this congressional seat for 26, 28 years. He was here for a long time, basically our entire lifetimes, uh. And then, working in that office, I learned this place from a different perspective, right, a lot of the times. These staff that work in these offices they're good people, they're smart people, but they're oftentimes forced to learn to work secondhand, right, they might know policy better than the average person off the street, but they don't understand what it's like to experience the short end of that policy, uh, as a person walking these streets, living these streets, uh, being a neighbor, a resident, a citizen of this place.
Speaker 2:Uh, for me, you know, there was a long departure from politics. I was making music, I was living in the woods. I ended up coming back to the city to work at ABT and, in my mind, what I was stepping back into wasn't politics. It was this generational effort to rebuild the neighborhood that we were pushed out of, and, over time, what that became is not just an effort to rebuild our little neighborhood here in Laura Albina, but to really fundamentally redefine a reimagined model of 21st century urban development, one where community is taken out of the passenger seat and we place ourselves in the driver's seat of dictating our own future, ourselves in the driver's seat of dictating our own future.
Speaker 2:And when that clicked for me, I was like, oh Lord, the personal, the political, all of it intersects and comes to a head in this space and what we build, how we build it and who benefits from us having built it and who benefits from us having built it. And in my mind, as I started to progress through this space right, I'm our director of government affairs. My job is to take this large scale, multi-decade vision and actualize it, advance it via policy and political strategy I started to realize that there's a way to pass through the political space that doesn't have to feel disconnected, that can actually feel deeply rooted and that can actually again position community in the position of agency rather than the position of consultation. Oh, these are the spokes we talk to to better understand how we serve them as folks who don't fundamentally understand what they're going through. Right, we could completely invert that paradigm and flip it on its head. I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not the most politically savvy dude.
Speaker 2:So, first off, I would push back against this idea that you're not politically savvy. I think too often we think of ourselves that way. Right. But, bro, everything that you've done, the way that you've navigated your professional career, the way that you've leveraged professional sports to then translate capital and impact back in communities, especially for young black kids who are at this intersection of student and athlete, the way that you're now branching off into the multimedia space as a creator, that's all. Political Politics is really just the business of organizing to advance a particular set of issues. Right, I would say you're deeply knowledgeable, super well-respected, super strategic and, in essence, super political. Right, you might not be involved in politics proper, but I would say everything you do is political and everything that all of us do is political.
Speaker 1:It's a good point. You know you, not only have you accomplished these incredible feats, you've been very open with sharing how you've done it. You know sharing, giving the game, and you're incredibly supportive to the community. You know what I mean. You show up to the events. You know, you're there, you know, always with a smile and a shake and a hug for folks, yeah, and so I give you flowers there, man, because I feel like it would be easy for you to you know that, like being that better than or higher than or you know what I mean, yeah, but you're not that way, bro, and so I love what you've done so far. Can't wait to see what you do. We're going to see Cheers man, Cheers my brother Till next time. Till Cheers man, Cheers my brother Till next time Till next time man.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you man. Yes, sir, all right, y'all. Peace. This episode of Beast Guard TV has been brought to you by Scarlet Creative. For the full length video episode and more content, find us on Instagram, youtube and TikTok at Beast Guard TV, and please leave us a review. Drop a comment. What do you want to see? What do you want to hear? Who do you want to hear from? We would love to hear from you. This is your host, with the most Brennan Scarlett signing off Peace.