Earl Sweatshirt x MOCA - Conversation with Cheryl I. Harris

what up the Chashma lead from people starting here at the mocha to bring you a very special interview with Earl Sweatshirt led by his mom acclaimed law professor Cheryl Harris we got a few minutes before the interview starts to ask our own questions so come on what's up what's going on I'm chilling here how are you doing I'm good I'm hungry and tired you're hungry or some high green means you need to smoke nam yeah me too I haven't had any all day so this is me sober it's a special day you're here with your mom so can you tell me what brings you to have a conversation with your mom are you excited what are you nervous about oh there's been a whole bunch of conversations involved with my mom and about my mom this game has to be a part of it so you feel like you need to have her defend herself or defend her no just speak first so whatever she want to say yeah and there's no parts that make you you're gonna make you nervous about this interview oh I'm credibly nervous about what um bringing the closest thing to me to public forum so when you keep secret yeah yeah but it already was Michael public thing mm-hmm has to get wrapped up but yeah he's better to control the narrative what made you want to come here today is calm it made sense you just felt it was time yeah it was time yeah cuz that's what I'm saying what I'm dealing with is like intense feelings of like not wanting to do this mm-hmm naturally but I also know that is something that is 100% necessary you mean not wanting to do the talk or don't ya just like make me nervous I want to know what it must be done yeah um you said your album you said this album was recorded from the death throes of in crumbling Empire and we put writer mr. Yadav yeah and we posted up like live from burning Rome what makes you feel like the American Empire is collapsing is what makes you feel that way these facts that it is everything the everything nothing is sustainable nothing that's happening right now is sustainable real [ __ ] I think it goes to my people in mass run out of food water and electricity and then I think what not happens then I think a lot of the minutia will go away and people will go get those things which is what you know happened across the world in places that have been in these tipping points mm-hmm and then people run out of bread so do you you talk about things being a sustainable do you have like your own garden do you you go your bro like my even a little Harley really cycle like I said really yeah I'm doing bad but I know what's going on what do you think would rise from these burning ashes if you could predict the future something else something new it's gotta change though like it will change whether people praise it or whether the earth perches is like it's gonna change I don't know I try not to look at the negative view because I feel like I like to look at the positive I like to believe in manifestation and I know that what you're saying it's like it'd be dumb to think that things are not gonna end because it's just gonna happen anyway but last I like to think about well what's gonna happen once we have a new world because once America is gone there's gonna be something else and you know I think it's very important to think about that and that if you have the ability to that you should and hopefully it's informed by like real life facts and everything but I can't even speak for the unknown mm-hmm which is but I can like SAR the science that makes sense to me is that this is not sustainable because the foundation is Ricky mm-hmm so in building a home or building anything you've got a tear down your foundation oh yeah so and then we could then people could figure out what the house looked like or what the next thing is gonna look like but I think as long as people are still and I think people are four years closer mm-hmm I think this is a lot less crazy for me to be saying right now than it was four years ago like I think everyone uh-huh thank you like bro what did y'all come did you notice did you do you ever have like a thought about life I remember when the earthquakes happen mhm it wasn't a moment during that where he was like here we go I would sleep I slept through every earthquake that has happened since I've lived here so I I never had a moment of this is the end not once but I'm also a super beyond positive person and like almost to the point where people might think I'm naive cuz I always like to think of the best of everything the best of every outcome and I feel what going oh I agree with you I think that that's important I had a friend that was talking about the importance of fantasy mm-hmm in terms of like liberation and like just what that means like thinking outside the box cuz you have to as your thinking has literally been put in a box on purpose so you have to you have to be fantastic you have to go see something that might not be there but I feel like any time that I've been less attached to the truth no matter what adjective comes before the truth whether the sad truth the unfortunate truth the fortunate truth whenever I'm not been attached to the truth then I'm really really sad dejected and lost but like yeah as long as I feel like I'm really looking at the fact then that's the closest I can get to like feeling good mm-hmm because I'm informed I know what's going on but yeah music makes you feel good yeah do you play other instruments besides rapping I'll used to play saxophone when I was younger I play keyboard but I just music is like where yeah it's my medium not your safe haven as yeah that's where I go to expand my consciousness we talked about being local out on People's Party and you talk about becoming walk and you know the story we were listening to Erykah Badu with your mom and she said you weren't woke and then you realized you weren't you were what was that realization for you like how did you realize that I think was dangerous yeah I think that is an identity as hello saturated now I think it was useful and I think it was cool I got a jump on the hipster train real quick right now I remember when what came out in the car when we was listening to Erica when the phrase came out free Twitter because Twitter didn't get woke till I became cool seven years after the the thing came out yeah I think that woke is is weird as an identity but I also don't want to be mr. like like I've been educated for so long I give you guys that think you you know I mean cuz that's annoying as hell as well I think that yeah like I said when you was asking me about what my hopes are it's like I hope that people get to a point where we can stop being so stingy with resources whether it be information or whatever it's like you got to share that you know what I'm saying nobody gives [ __ ] bro nobody cares if you've like retained all this knowledge that you it's not it's not like what's this utility if it's not helping some it's not beneficial yeah and that's why I feel like you know that's where I'll talk with my mom like you learn about academia and it's like it shortcomings because on the one hand it is its own language this is own arena that is and was and will continue to be incredibly useful resources but a lot of times it's like are you talking to mm-hmm like and you realize I'm talking to all white people like I am trying to break down crack blackness into morsels so that white people can understand that's not really the goal of and that's but that's some American [ __ ] though of like we as black American feel like we got a justify our humanity our existence our culture our everything you want to intellectualize it for what it's like what you don't need to speak about it like this is already this already exists and this we don't have to have a word for yeah like so yeah I think that should be the push for the 2020 I think walk was not necessary for what was happening cuz that was like people gotta stop being so embarrassed like all right like you used to straighten your hair used to listen to my Chemical Romance the Trayvon Martin video came out okay like you put on a dicey key yeah and you know what that's okay mm-hmm you can do both or I'm I'm just saying you could fall back you could stop trying to lead the conversation on things because that's what the issue is it's like that was very necessary welcome because people was like coming from where we was coming from in the previous decade trying to figure out what the next ship was gonna be and then people was like alright the next ship is being socially conscious and some people adopted it as an aesthetic which can be harmful and attractive but I think there's ultimately that can't be all bad you know what I'm saying like if the cool thing to do is to be socially aware and politically aware it can bring in math and pasta which is what I was saying mm-hmm well I don't think it's all bad and I think like I said five times 2020 sharing the resources we are very very honored and privileged to host this conversation between Cheryl and tibay today Cheryl is a member of the UCLA law faculty since 1998 professor Harris is the author of groundbreaking scholarship in the field of critical race theory very very important in the establishment of this discipline it's often that mocha hosts people from the music world in this space it's often that mocha hosts people from the academic world to give talks and readings and have panels and debates it is not very often that we have people from the music industry and the academic world on the same stage together and it is even less often that they are related this is a very it's a very special thing I think that we're about to witness Earl Sweatshirt you know one of the one of the great rappers here in LA one of the great rappers in this country one of the great rappers in this world not even the word rapper doesn't work artist works let me just welcome them both to the stage today [Applause] Cheryl tap a mocha [Applause] all right this is crazy as hell offenses be the first one to just say this is why this hell we both know this this is crazy like this is it's it's terrifying like trill this is wild so I just keep it simple my name is Earl Sweatshirt and recently I dropped out called feeling clay right [Applause] it was a whole bunch of stuff that I attached to it surrounded like late-stage capitalism the end of the world war times as we know it you know what I'm saying that I found out after I researched it but the person that gave me the phrase was my husband and she said it in the context of vulnerability because I was sitting there I guess complementing all being professional Sarah Harris and what came out was feet of clay you know holiday whiteness property everything feet and clay I don't know where to go for so that was a conversation at the kitchen table where a lot of them happened and he reminded me because I didn't remember but it was something along the lines of you know your work you really regarded highly and how that and I was saying to him that one of the things that I try to keep in mind is that people that are elevated for given positions or admired or put on pedestals that we have to remember that we all have feet of clay that there all is something some weakness some struggle something that we have to push against in order to realize who we are and a lot of times I think you know as he just mentioned the times that were in we are desperate to hold on to or to find something that can lead us forward and I think what we have to remember is not that we shouldn't admire people that accomplish things that we respect but that ultimately our our fight is ours it has to rest with us it has to be from us because inevitably we all have feet of clay and I think on the topic of vulnerability and feet of clay and everything I think that's the one that hit way more home with both of us because the whole world had didn't it ended up being more of like a backdrop for whatever each of us are going through individually you know what I'm saying that definitely informs it but our relationship as its played out has been incredibly burner of books as I was 15 and it became one that started happening in front of the world which is also part of the reason why I wanted to do this and say yes even though I felt like it was so soon you know I'm saying I wanted to prepare for this and like be some totally different type of person by the time has happened with a connected beard and like something hold up right Etan upset but I feel like this was incredibly necessary just to show y'all if I'm trying to show you all Who I am giving y'all really the complete picture so this is my incredible [Applause] I feel like I had to just come proclaim it publicly so with that being said I'm not gonna spend a whole bunch of time talking about things that I don't know very much about open turn the reins over to my incredible but that was a real slick pitch I got you thank you so let me just say I I think at some level this is a dream because it's an honor to be on the stage with my son I am incredibly proud of the work of his empathy of his willingness to confront the things that are difficult to confront and the willingness to develop you know it's really easy to stay where you're comfortable it's very easy to stick into something that's comfortable but Toby never lets himself get comfortable and I totally totally respect that because it's a lot of risk-taking involved and we never really know what's gonna hit or nothing right you never really know what's going to connect with people and I I just wanted to say publicly that I'm incredibly proud of you [Applause] he talked about you know the birth of Earl on the internet and you know there's a lot of conversation about the internet these days and there well should be because it's a kind of an interesting thing when the tool takes over the user you know it's like it was a tool but it's it's become its own thing its own space its own universe and it isn't always the case that we are in control we're not it's controlling and setting the terms upon which we interact with and understand each other and so part of one of the reasons that I agreed to do this even though I told him this is absolutely terrifying I mean I talk I talk a lot okay I talk for a living in front of students in front of people but this is very different and I'm completely terrified by it but it's okay sorry the the thing that struck me is that part of the reason that I agreed to do this with him is not just to be able to acknowledge him as the artist that I believe him to be but also because it was an opportunity to give some context to a relationship that had been you know kind of seeing through different ways different eyes and you know in different times and one of the things that I think is important for all of us is to allow ourselves and things to evolve right and so one of the things that this is done is it's opened up an opportunity for us to talk about how we talk and what it is that we are getting from each other and what kind of family support means in the context of a situation like that when you're growing up in the eyes of the world you know in the eyes of the world are sort of on you how do you hang on to who you are how do you come the man right how do you go from being a boy to man so that was one of the reasons that that I agreed to do it and as we were talking about the internet and this tool that is controlling the users I've been thinking about and reading a lot about the way that the architecture of some of the systems that we work in are built and one of them is of course the Internet is built around algorithms that attach words to images to ideas and what we know now a lot about algorithms is that they reflect the people that build them which is us right and they reflect all of those biases all of that racism all of that structural problems in it and so it's important for I think for us to keep it in mind that it that it has not only the capacity for obviously great interconnection with people but to understand why it is always falling short and why it will continue to fall short until we fundamentally transform the systems upon which it is built and the that has to do with you know the ways in which the built environment both the physical environment and the built environment of ideas is reflective of the kinds of ways in which going back to the times of slavery systems of knowledge finance politics and everything had been don't so that was some of what we were thinking about and talking about because of course when you started the internet was a thing but it wasn't even like it is now right I mean yeah the internet seems to be up much more the the echo comes back like really quickly now and I feel like one thing that might be frustrating everyone that's like my age right now is like how your computer will like assess you like very quickly like all of y'all smartphones computers have a read on your personality right now things you like to say which song you gonna play at like 11:00 you know I wouldn't like so yeah it's much more vicious it's faster it's faster and a lot of things that constitute a complete human experience get lost on the internet with the rapid horse you become the master of the two minutes but that's what you mean avoid of bars but yeah that's part of the reason why I actually though as people I started to care less about the third verse as people's attention span started to get shorter and shorter fine included well I know we had a debate about that when you first told me that you know you had these like two and a half minute songs Oh for some rap song you know for some rap songs and I was like I don't know man is that gonna actually give people enough and then the more you talked to me and explained it well first of all I had to stand down right because it's his project um but the second thing was that I remembered back when I was young we [Music] the songs we listened to the Motown songs were all two and a half minutes less than three minutes right and the way we learned them was we just put him on repeat right and that really helped me understand that there was a connection right and that there was even though something was driving it was different which is that the times are different that the understanding is that first of all if the music is good it doesn't matter how long it is and secondly we we actually do want and crave repetition sometimes the concept of the loop keep coming back to song so what have you been listening to these days ah what if I'd been listened to I've been listening to a whole lot of Billy woods I showed you that guy mm-hmm yeah he's great yeah listen listen I've been listening to the song that we made today I've been making a lot of music you've been listen to y'all yeah but this isn't Wow well that's a good thing that's a good thing yeah what you never I've been listening to a lot of classics I've kind of gone back into my classic mode so a lot of Nina Nina has been on my mind and actually for today when we were thinking about it and I was asking you like what do you remember when you were little listening to do you remember what you told me no yeah horns he said horns and I was thinking about one of the things that we did a lot when you were young is we listened to a lot of African jazz and so horns yeah so been listening to a little bit of that yeah so what else is new what's news they know us do with me what's good with you I tell you got a plug your mixtape mixtape hmm you want me to lob it to you yeah let me craft this up real good oh trying to figure out how we get to what we specifically what I want you to talk about uh uh oh you have an objective I do have an all right so there's no such thing as anything that exists without content we I'm in context sorry we can agree on this correct so a conversation I had over the summer we were kind of discussing that we were discussing on our own experiences as people and the context that informed it so we said and it was a conversation that started at cryptocurrency that in three smooth jumps had us all speaking about slavery in the direct effects they had on all of our families like because you go from cryptocurrency to capitalism then go to what is capitalism built on and messages very quickly you hit there like right here and we so we talking like this is a bunch of black dudes talking about they they fathers and they fathers fathers and ability to be there for them that quickly this is what I'm that is informed by how the [ __ ] you ended up you know I'm saying like this is not far away so with that Betsy attempt out of alley up it needs YouTube that on through for me with some more well it's interesting that you say that it just came out of a conversation that you were having with your friends because it speaks to the fact of the ever-present afterlife of slavery which is something that never gets discussed in terms of a constant I mean there's a constant kind of conversation about politics at one level you know this party that party this program that program but the fundamental architecture of the country was built around the protection of the institution of slavery and enslavement was both a system of labor extraction and property and it's the end property part that got I got stuck on when I first started teaching [Music] law school I went to read a case a very famous case called Plessy versus Ferguson which was a case from 1896 involving segregation on trains and it's the case where the Supreme Court said that that segregation did not violate the Constitution it was consistent with equal protection and even and basically that was the system the the legal system ratifying a system of oppression that already existed so it wasn't like they created segregation after the decision it already existed and the legal system was ratifying it anyway in this case the guy that was charging or challenging the rule Plessy was a very very fair skinned black man and according to the case he appeared to be white and so my question got to be well how did they know to arrest him if he looked like he was white and then that kept taking me down several layers into the case and learning that it was a case that was arranged between the plaintiffs and the railroads because the railroads were frustrated by the fact that there were different rules about who was white and who was black in different states so in some states it could be if you were 50% 51% white you were white in some states if you were a quarter black you were you could be considered white it just ranged from state to state and it wasn't that the railroads didn't want to have segregation because they wanted to please their customers and their customers that they were concerned about were white and whites wanted the sick the system segregated but they wanted to be able to do it on their own terms they didn't want to have to wrestle with this state's rules versus - state's rule so the upshot was as I kept scratching and digging and reading the whole case it turned out one of the arguments that plessis lawyers made was that because he looked like he was white he enjoyed the reputation of being white and that when the train conductor put him on the car reserved for blacks it deprived him of his interest in being regarded as white and that interest was property and I was completely taken by this horrified I guess hand taken by this argument but I it struck me that that was some of what we were still dealing with today in the sense that the existing way in which racial inequality is so both present and considered normal has to do with the way in which whiteness itself even though it has changed over time has operated to make this system appear to be normal that and any disruption any pushback against that is seeing problematic because that's what's putting race in the picture when you're pushing back that that's that's being racist because you're focusing on race the neutrality of the system is actually a mask for its whiteness and so I started tracing back to the dispossession of Native people the enslavement of black people the way in which property itself was defined as a right to exclude and I don't just mean that in a metaphorical sense I mean that in the literal sense right who gets to sit where who gets to own property all of that tied up the idea of property with whiteness itself and so to Europe to your conversation with your friends one of the things is is that if one simply stops and takes off the idea that followed the pain and the inequality that we see is normal which is actually what we've been encouraged to feel that we can actually start to trace these things back and it doesn't it doesn't go back very far it's it's not like it's a long distance trail the dispossession of native people is happening right now in fact where we're sitting right now right this was indigenous land and this is a present act of dispossession that's happening right now because nobody has asked them nobody has consulted nobody has said is it okay for us to use your land this way right that's not that's not even part of a conversation right so I say that to say that I I really do believe the presence of the past and part of the task of the musician of the artists is to really unburied that history and to bring it out it might seem strange for me to say about history because so much of tell me what you talk about is like what's happening in your life right now right and that might not seem to people like history but it is because if you actually look at how as he was saying look at how the relationships are look at what's possible look at what's not possible look at the ways in which there are certain kinds of connections that are interrupted or not permitted like what street you can walk down and feel free by the way what street is that that that those are those are reflections of an aspects of the legacy that we are living with right oh and on the cryptocurrency I kind of went way off on the other end the money one of the other things I think is has been part of what I've been working on recently is to really dig into the way in which the entire financial system as we understand it mortgages foreclosures currency money credits debt all of that is has its template in slavery the way in which the system kind of developed technologies of managing money and transmitting money and insurance and credit and all of that that all came out of enslavement that was the one of the first global financial systems right and so a lot of what we see today is a recurrence of certain kinds of patterns that got worked out then I'm not saying nothing changed you know we've gone to crypto instead of just currency but it's the same same patterns same pathways I guess I would say yeah remember when we was in a car it was Brandon it was like two years ago and I was like this was probably because we read year four of eight of 45 right now right yeah yes so this was probably like your two-hour represent the light you think like what do you think for America why not what do you think for America but it was like is this is it is this ships able yeah what did I tell you I don't remember I told you no yeah not the most easy answer to give you son but I think it's the truth I don't think as constructed this is this can't last the thing is is that it does a lot of destruction you know just in a normal course so when it's under stress in crisis it's real crazy real all the way crazy but I find that you know the honest answer is you know if you're looking at something they cannot be fixed then the answer has to be what do we build what what do we build and you know I won't be here to see all of that but I know that the people that mentored and taught me write like a grandmother like a whole host of people that that's something that was part of what they were transmitting right that the idea is that you have to be able to see past the things that you're in I mean if you think about it going back to this thing about slavery we're not supposed to be on this stage you know if sleep if if enslavement had actually done what was intended a we be dead we'd be dead we would not be here so the fact that black people live right in the face of black death that's been the whole time that's been the whole time and we we can and do in part because of what we do and that's where you come in with the bars with the bars exactly [Applause] [Applause] so one thing that I had to overcome that I felt like was very topical for all of us at a certain age was apathy in the face of everything and my brother just said being very apathetic once I pulled back what's the cognitive dissonance Machado once I started looking at things as they are I got very depressed I think it happens I think it's very horrible for everyone but I think if the world is a dumpster fire like you're gonna feel really bad if you're not taking you a bucket of water and throwing it on something whenever you can you know I'm saying so that's just for anyone who's figuring out that apathy their lethargy their frustration depression whatever yeah because apathy is one of the great tools of the ruling class yeah in fact you know so one of my favorite poets Jane Cortez yes hard Jane and you knew she had actually performed with her son did you know that hard [Music] Jane Cortez has a well she's an amazing point but she has a poem called there it is and the refrain one of the refrains is the ruling class will tell you that there is no ruling class and one of the reasons that I was sort of reacting to your apathy was not because I haven't felt it myself and not because I haven't been depressed myself and not because I wasn't at you know one time 22 and feeling like the world was just too much but because of you know what she what I read her to be saying is that apathy is really the tool of domination is it's one of the ways in which it keeps things down and apathy is really just a defense mechanism it's dissident and its natural is it's a defense mechanism against the assault right of too much I rather do nothing yeah I'd rather do nothing then yeah yeah but then you got to do something big you have to do something yeah right well you got to breathe right yeah gotta breathe that's what somebody told me today when I was telling them how nervous I was breathe so what's good all right well I'm not sure if we want to just keep talking [Applause] you got more fun effects fun facts my bags hmm know if I got fun facts well we could talk about back to the internet the other day I was telling today that I still don't have he knows us I still don't have a Twitter account or an Instagram account or things that super out best cheer don't get into the Instagram or Twitter so I was telling him that I went to a a writing retreat and some of the women there was saying no you gotta get you know you gotta get on your thing you gotta open up an account you know and so I came back to him and I said you know I'm they're telling me I gotta get an Instagram account and you're just like no no so I was wondering with us about how come you don't want me to have you are our liability on the Internet parents are the children's liability on the internet if people buy your parents Instagram is crazy mad selfies I'd be on FaceTime with you you get a grab live your best life grown in the ground okay but if we were to entertain this what should my Instagram name be I came with like three ten out of ten that everyday what was the center some crazy the first one was the real professional professor Cheryl Harris yes that's so boring they know that that's hard they voted the room for Angela share that's hard I know what I said but no but you said something else okay the real Earl's mom but uh not it was a heart I really did like a civil-rights flip it was hard what I don't remember I just remember them when I came up with cuz you were you were saying he was saying all these boring ones and I was looking for I was looking the real girl's mom or girls real mom hard yeah girls real mom the other one was oh I know what because I'm from Chicago I said Chicago red that was like Chicago red to these to these oh it could be it could be professor Chicago red what do you mean me they say he's brown and he don't like it no you know too much that's what I got excited all right well who knows maybe there'll be an Instagram to come Twitter a Twitter see I have to stay up on black Twitter is hard otherwise I have to act as it's Google stuff and part of the reason that I never did it though was because I was afraid why actually partly it has to do with him on the internet it's like he took up all the space looks like I do the Internet is said the internet was nasty and young when I first utilized the Internet to do whatever the Internet as a setup right now you will go crazy on the enemy if you go online yeah well see this do you know not the live feature I heard about it yeah you go go crazy well one of the reasons I haven't done it is because I'm afraid I'll fall in I know you are that's what I'm playing thank you you know I have it you know always here and she did you do it I think it's time it's time okay all right so maybe an Instagram maybe Twitter to come we'll see [Applause] so shall we dance play plays so okay I'll tell you something maybe you didn't know about him but it won't be embarrassing I promise at least I don't think it is he's an incredible comedian no really I mean like really like if he wasn't doing this he could be doing that and one of the things that my partner and I remember from when he was young we were talking about this the other day is that he would grab on to whatever tape or CD or whatever he could find of any comic and just dig into it and we're talking about like from the time he was six or seven and he would be grabbing stuff like Richard Pryor you know and I'm like no which it is my guy he's a genius but six seven what do we earn so the only solution because he was just driven he would not stop is to watch it with him right that was the only the only way and then he had a buddy and they got into money Python and that that was that was a real period that was a real thing [Music] [Laughter] you knew it had to happen but I sell that to say that maybe one day Earl will do an album of comedy out here spilling fun hug your mixtape alright so I think I'm good we did it the Chalkley something useful from it we did yeah we needed this maybe morning thank you you take you two questions is there is there a woman that has a question here she comes hi hi so my question was heavy you spoke a lot about the apathy that you experienced at a certain point and I'm wondering how the music that you're making now and the genre that you and your peers are kind of in right now works as a method of decolonization in the music world I think simply put sometimes it's not explicitly shiny or for sale you know what I'm saying it's like it comes out how I come out it is for sale you can obviously go buy you do that but it's gold when it comes out is it to sell the most is to get it off you know what I'm saying figured how rap helps me figure out life it's just the medium when I figure out life through all because that's close to me know that I spend most the day whatever we talking about I got a bar for like from someone else you know what I'm saying so for me that's just where I figure everything [Music] but you know what's funny is sometimes like if you know the spirit of figuring it out sometimes I'll record some [ __ ] and I'll be like damn like that was hard like I was super tired and then I I'll listen to it the next day and it'll be like like seven four or feet of clay or it's like I recorded it cause like very juice and then I listen back to it and it sounds like a funeral dirge you know what I'm saying [Music] [Applause] alright alright one more for I want to ask how much do you care for your work to be understood because I do research into black radical music aesthetics under the rubric of afro pessimism and one thing I see from artists like you and others is this sense of the black collective unconscious realizing that because blackness is always already illegible then there's less of a struggle to try to be legible to try to have these long drawn-out songs and verses that are super descriptive and try to fit into the narrative form so does that resonate with you rap music is slave music number one it's just the modern-day iteration of it so slave communication you know had to be encrypted you got a code you know what I'm saying so and then really if I understand it then it's like teaching if I understand the subject even if you don't know it off the bat I could teach it to you because I can paint this picture very clearly I if I know what I'm saying you know what I'm saying like all the way like oh yeah writing is a very meticulous process you crack up my own code I would come out garbled and I keep on taking thank you [Applause] [Music] did [Music]

Channel: Earl Sweatshirt

Views: 816,278

Keywords: moca, earl sweatshirt, cheryl harris, mother, mom, conversation, interview, feet of clay, east, mtomb

Id: gwgIWG6V3qk

Length: 58min 23sec (3503 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019