Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture
Welcome to "Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture," where we delve into the essence of branding beyond the surface sheen. A brand is more than just a logo or a slogan; it's a reflection of identity, values, and reputation that resonates within our cultural landscape. Enjoy as we peel back the layers to uncover the raw, authentic stories behind the people and products that shape our world.
This isn't your average corporate podcast. Join Tom Frank, partner and chief creative officer at Merrick Creative, Mickey Factz, Hip Hop Artist and Founder and CEO of Pendulum Ink, and Jeffrey Sledge, a seasoned music industry veteran, for "Unglossy" as they get to the heart of what truly drives individual and organizational brand . In a world where where image is carefully curated and narratives meticulously crafted, we're here to explore the moments of vulnerability, pivotal decisions, and creative sparks that fuel the relationship between brand and culture.
Get ready for a thought-provoking journey into the heart and soul of branding – the unscripted, unfiltered, and truly Unglossy truth. Tune in to "Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @UnglossyPod and join the conversation.
Unglossy is produced and distributed by Merrick Studios. Let your story take the mic. Learn more at https://merrick-studios.com
Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture
Lee Hawkins: Ancestry, Ambition, and the Art of Reinvention
This week on "Unglossy" hosts Tom Frank, Mickey Factz, and Jeffrey Sledge engage in a captivating conversation with Lee Hawkins, a distinguished journalist, author, and musician. Lee shares his remarkable journey from his early days in Minnesota, through his journalism career at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal, to his 19-year tenure at the Wall Street Journal. He highlights pivotal moments, such as the advice he received from Jimmy Iovine to prioritize his book, "I Am Nobody's Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free," emphasizing its significance over other projects.
Lee delves into his transition from covering business and celebrities to exploring themes of race, equity, and trauma. Inspired by a fellowship at USC, he examines the intergenerational effects of racism and trauma on Black families, sharing personal discoveries about his own family's history. He also reflects on his deep connection to music, influenced by his father, and his work as a musician, including collaborations with The Wiggles. Throughout the conversation, Lee offers valuable career advice, stressing the importance of preparation and strategic planning for personal and professional growth.
"Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture," is produced and distributed by Merrick Creative and hosted by Merrick Chief Creative Officer, Tom Frank, hip hop artist and founder of Pendulum Ink, Mickey Factz, and music industry veteran, Jeffrey Sledge. Tune in to hear this thought-provoking discussion on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @UnglossyPod to join the conversation and support the show at https://unglossypod.buzzsprout.com/.
Welcome to the "All About M.E. Podcast ," the podcast where music meets the...
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This week on Unglossy.
LEE:I got the book deal and then I remember I did an interview and it was one of my last and Jimmy Iovine was telling me about the deal that he was doing with Apple and Dr Dre and everything. And when we were talking he said so what have you been up to? And I said, well, I got this book that I'm doing. And then we were about to start the interview and I said you ready to go? And he goes wait, lee. And I said what? And he goes the book is all that matters. That book is going to be so critical. This is cool, but get that book done.
TOM:From the top. Yeah, I'm Tom Frank, I'm Mickey Fax.
JEFFREY:And I'm Jeffrey Sledge.
TOM:Welcome to Unglossy, to coning brand and culture. I'm Tom Frank, partner and chief creative officer at Merit Creative. This is Mickey Fax, hip-hop artist and founder and CEO of Pendulum Inc.
TOM:And that is Jeffrey Sledge, a seasoned music industry veteran who has worked with some of the biggest artists in the business. We're here to explore the moments of vulnerability, pivotal decisions and creative sparks that fuel the relationship between brand and culture. Get ready for thought-provoking journey into the heart and soul of branding the unscripted, unfiltered and truly unglossy truth. All right, guys, we have an interesting, interesting guy that we're going to talk to today. This guy grew up in Minnesota, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he started his journalism path as the editorial page editor of the Badger Herald School Paper. Early in his career he worked for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal.
TOM:As a reporter, we won a bunch of different awards. He went on to spend 19 years at the Wall Street Journal and then we're going to get really into what he did post-Journal as well as everything he did with the Journal. Right, I mean, this guy, lee Hawkins, is an impressive guy who's done a lot of interesting things, and I was blown away by the interview. I didn't know where we were going to go and where we did go was pretty exciting.
JEFFREY:And he's a musician.
TOM:Don't forget the musician, that's right.
MICKEY:I mean, I think it's just a powerful interview. You know, I think people are going to take away so much from this, right From all different walks of life, are going to be able to pull away from the things that he was speaking about. I mean, this guy is a well-traveled, well-known and well-educated Black man, you know, who not only wanted to service his community but also figure out and find out about himself, and I think you know that's pretty, it's pretty dope, if you ask me.
JEFFREY:Yeah, he's making me want to do ancestry now.
TOM:Is he making you feel like maybe it's not a scam anymore?
JEFFREY:Maybe, maybe, maybe Might be a light scam in there, I don't know.
TOM:It's a light scam, likely A light scam. I did find it interesting though that and I guess we all think about it, but until he really laid it out of how much of a profound impact your history does have on you today.
TOM:And even Jeffrey you even told an interesting story about just the way people act and that action, if people are laughing it off, how it's being allowed and it continues. And it's a way that takes violence and maybe some horrific things that have happened in the past and ladders it all the way down the line without really even thinking about the fact that you're passing on something that you're not even realizing what you're passing on.
JEFFREY:Yeah, where it's coming from, Yep.
MICKEY:This is great. I don't know if I'm sold on ancestrycom yet, so uh you know, it's one of those things where it's like I'm sure there's been popular and prominent people that have their DNA and nothing's happened to them, allegedly. So you know, maybe I'll think about it. But I know, jeff, why don't you do it? And if something different happens, you?
JEFFREY:know Now you're trying to put it on me. Come on chill. Yeah, I think.
TOM:Jeffrey, I think you do it, and then we'll have a whole episode on what comes out, or I'll take another route, maybe we go get the marketing director or a brand director or or one of the founders, and we get them on this show and we really grow.
JEFFREY:That'd be better, you like?
TOM:that better than you giving your DNA.
JEFFREY:I like that way better than me giving up the goods Pause.
TOM:All right With that. I hope you all enjoy a great conversations with Lee Hawkins. Unglossy is brought to you by Merrick Creative, looking to skyrocket your business's visibility and drive growth. At Merit Creative, we solve your brand and marketing woes With big ideas, decades of experience and innovative solutions. We'll draw in your target audience and keep them hooked. Remember, creativity is key to success. Partner with Merit Creative and unlock your brand's potential. Learn more at meritcreativecom. And now back to the show. Today we are excited to be talking to a former Wall Street journalist, four-time winner of NABJ's Salute to Excellent Award, podcast host and creator of what Happened in Alabama and author of the forthcoming book I Am Nobody's Slave. How Uncovering my Family's History Set Me Free, mr Lee Hawkins. How are you, lee?
LEE:Hey, good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on the show, hey man, we appreciate you coming on here.
TOM:I can't wait to get into everything there is about you, from your career to this upcoming book. Thank you, you've had an interesting ride and you'll continue to have that ride. But I want to go back to something. I want to start with how we first met. Do you remember?
LEE:We met through Lupe Fiasco when I was interviewing him as part of the upfronts for the wall street journal.
TOM:That is right. I'm going to tell you a little story about this, guys. So I had the. I had the great pleasure of meeting Lee, cause Lee wanted to interview Lupe. He was, he was. He was. He was a brand ambassador. I had worked with the brand. We came to the upfronts, which I was very excited about it. I got to meet you. I got to see all of this stuff going on and I can remember and I don't remember if it was you or if it was somebody who worked with you they took, they took me and Lupe into into like a green room area Lots of food and all that. We're sitting there.
TOM:It was a very rainy day. It was pouring down rain. I can remember I stayed very far away. Lupe stayed right next to the building. I was kind of wet.
TOM:We all got to the thing we're sitting in the green room and the door swings open and a guy comes walking in. He's all disheveled, he's irritated. It had been raining. The hotel didn't have an umbrella for him. He sits down right next to me on my right. I got Lupe on this side, I got this guy on my right, and so we start talking and we literally talked for about 10 minutes, until you came in and said, lupe, you're up, or whoever it was, came in and we left. And to this day I remember that because I smile so big, because it was Lupe Fiasco on my left and MC Hammer on my right and all we talked about was the weather. And it never even occurred to me to pull out my phone and take a picture, because I'm sitting next to MC Hammer and Lupe Fiasco. I mean, talk about just, and all we talked about was how much rain it was. And, if you remember, mc Hammer was there because he had started a, a search engine, wasn't it?
LEE:yes, he he's been heavily involved in the tech field and with silicon valley and everything, and I would have to say that that was probably one of the highlights of my career.
LEE:I've met so many people and worked with so many different celebrities, but meeting uh mc hammer that day was a big day for me because I was a fan of his yeah I know that he, if you look on instagram, um, there's some footage of some recent dance performances that he's done, for I think it was for an upcoming show that he has, and, man, he's still on point. So, uh, I can see why you were excited about that, because, not only just because of everything that he had accomplished in his career as a musician, but his ability to transfer his skills to tech and to not just be one dimensional, and even after he lost a lot of money as a result of the celebrity commitment, the celebrity lifestyle, he still was able to use his brain to figure out a way to get back on his feet.
MICKEY:You know what I find interesting about that, right, because you know MC Hammer. First of all, I'm a I'm a 90s baby, I guess. So I grew up around the MC Hammer Michael Jackson debate kind of thing and I was a big fan of Hammer at the time. And then the fall off happened and he kind of changed his style. But him being from the Bay, which is essentially Silicon Valley, it's kind of like a natural progression right for him to go into that space.
MICKEY:And when I found I think he had an interview on Good Morning America where they tried to kind of denounce him right and I followed him on Twitter from that and that was like early Twitter days and he follows me back and we kind of go back and forth Right, and he was one of the first kind of investors into Twitter, and to kind of find out that he just went from like this big superstar rivaling Michael Jackson just went from like this big superstar rivaling Michael Jackson falling off and then now being this tech guy, it's just like that's like the American dream. Honestly, it's like a great redemption story for him.
LEE:But what it tells you is that you could take a person. You could take a person who's broken, a person who's wealthy, and take away the money from the wealthy person and give both of those people the same amount of money and that wealthy person will probably be back on top. If they're a self-starter, if they're a person who didn't inherit the wealth but they made it themselves, they find a way. And I think that one of the things that a lot of rappers and athletes who I've worked with in my career miss out on is the understanding of the quality of the network, and not just who you know, but and it's not just what you know, but it's who knows you and what they say about you. That's number one. And the opportunity of the quality of being able to tap into that lawyer that you met, that accountant that you met, that brand person that you met, and to actually listen when they're in these meetings and to listen and to pay attention to what's happening and take control of your career and to then establish that relationship and keep that relationship. So, no matter what the negative things, what negative things happen in your career, you're still able to kind of rebrand and repackage everything and come back and figure out OK, now we're in the Bitcoin era, or now we're in the streaming era. How do I adapt myself to be able to continue to be as successful as I was, or to grow and expand?
LEE:And there are certain people MC Hammer one of them who have been able to do that. 50 Cent is another. I mean, he's a brilliant guy. People have no idea about the savviness of him. And J Cole is another one who I've spent a lot of time you know, I did an hour interview with J Cole and these are all people who, at their core, are really smart. They're just, they just. They're underestimated because of the fact that they're rappers, but they could probably succeed in anything that they do. Even Ryan Leslie, he's another one. These guys are all brilliant, they do. Even Ryan Leslie, he's another one. These guys are all brilliant. And MC Hammer just showed it and continues to show it with the success that he's having now.
TOM:So this is interesting because you're a kid that you went to the University of Wisconsin. Somehow you got from there to the Wall Street Journal, right, and this is where you started your career. Really it was interviewing and it wasn't just celebrities, it was celebrities that and correct me if I'm wrong that were part of more of this the business side of music. Is that right?
LEE:Yeah, it's not where I started my career, but it is where I started my career, where people know me as starting my career, because before that I was doing much more arcane work. I worked at two papers in Wisconsin before and I was just a business reporter. I covered utilities, manufacturing and technology and that positioned me. You know. I was able to break some big stories, win some awards and I got on the Wall Street Journal's radar and the first job that I did was covering General Motors out of the Detroit Bureau, which was a big responsibility, but as for a kid from Minnesota, it was a big. It was a blessing for me because it gave me an opportunity to see the world. You know, before I took that job I had only been to Canada. That was the only place outside the United States I'd been and then within a year I was going to China and Korea, switzerland, like all over the world, and I think that that really opened the door for a lot. But what it did mostly was for me to apply my skills covering publicly traded companies and to build on that. So from there I started being a guest on CNBC a lot, you know, because of stories that I would write for the Wall Street Journal about General Motors and that kind of got me on camera. And then eventually some people over at CNBC said, well, hey, we'd like to have this guy come on and speak and represent the Wall Street Journal on CNBC. There were a few of us who did that.
LEE:And then Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal. I think it was in 2009. When he purchased the Wall Street Journal, he started his own. They started their own Wall Street Journal network, which was primarily video, and so I stayed on TV. But I was doing more with Fox Business, and so when Fox Business News dropped, I was on TV and I did a lot of the Wall Street Journal's video work.
LEE:And also, when I was at CNBC, I hosted a special called the Rise of the New Black Overclass, and it was all about Black celebrities, mainly men, in the sports, entertainment and media industry, and it was all before all of this even became a thing for people to talk about and dig into the branding and the businesses behind these big celebrity brands. So I had LeBron James. I had LeBron James and Rich Paul and Maverick Carter and they were all in this special and Kirk Franklin and Torrey Hunter, the baseball player, and a lot of it was about wealth, sudden wealth at a young age, and that kind of was the thing that got me to understand hey, I can turn this into a franchise inside of a franchise. So they talk about intrapreneurs. Well, I guess I was an intrapreneur in the sense where I was like, well, how can I apply all of this business coverage to what I know? Because I was that kid from Minnesota and then I did move to Detroit, but then I moved to New York and I ended up being one of the few Black guys at the Wall Street Journal and I was a young guy.
LEE:So I went to a lot of parties and I ended up meeting a lot of people and they'd be like, what's up man? Hey, bro, you with the Wall Street Journal. Next thing, you know, this is Lee Hawkins. He's with the Wall Street Journal and I started meeting a lot of the people who I used to read about when I was a kid. I met Kedar Massenburg, who was a friend of mine, and I met Puffy. I met Mark Echo.
LEE:I met all of these guys and all of a sudden it was like they're right here. I met Kanye and I would have these conversations and start to, you know, just get underneath the hood in terms of management and how you know the problems that these guys had with having money and their families and all of that, and I started to think, man, this is a big thing, we need to start talking to people from sports, media and entertainment about their lives, but I need to do a lot of research before these interviews, and so that's what I did. I started a thing called the Business of Celebrity and I had bosses at the Wall Street Journal who were a little skeptical at first, but they were open and they gave me the chance to do it because we had a YouTube deal at the time. And once I started doing the interviews, it started off rough. The first ones were not good.
TOM:Who were some of your first ones.
LEE:Well, I did. Let's see, I did this thing first called Walk About New York. So it really was. It was walking around neighborhoods with people who lived in New York, who were celebrities. I think Swiss Beats was one of them. I think I remember Rohan Marley was one, peter Buffett, warren Buffett's son, who's a musician in his own right. So I went with the and the other thing.
LEE:That was powerful, which I didn't realize until later, because I'm always trying to keep everything simple and trying to do everything myself. A lot of that is because of the trauma that some of the trauma I've experienced in my life, which turned out to be a good thing. But I booked all my own guests and so my first two years in New York I got to be honest with you. I went out every night and I would get. I would go to all the parties. I would be up till three in the morning and then I would get up at seven in the morning and try to hit the gym. But the key was I pushed myself to make a lot of relationships really fast and I did it, and then that positioned me to be able to book these guests and then that really helped me in my relationships now.
LEE:So I think that my career probably to the public, for the people who know me because I'm not a famous guy or anything, but there are people who know me I do get, I do get stopped in airports and I can tell how and I can tell how in touch with the culture a person is and how long they've been in touch with the culture. Because if they recognize me and they're able to actually talk to me about an interview that I did, then that means they've been paying attention and it means a lot to me when young men, particularly black men, stop me and say, brother, you inspired me, because I think I wanted to show everybody, you know in the Wall Street Journal's world, that there were so many people, young men, coming up, many of them, who were Black, you know, the Nellies of the world, all of these guys who were just incredible, once again, just incredible business people, and not just that, but also making it a point, being passionate, if not self-righteous, about providing opportunities for other Black men as their lawyers, as their managers and, in my view, what I've seen, I've been around everybody and I believe that the rappers, out of anybody, are the ones who are the most committed to building Black wealth and entrepreneurship and providing opportunities and creating millionaires in the Black community. You can't take that away from them, because every time I sit down with a rapper, the people I deal with before I even see them are always almost always Black, and if they are not, they're situated close to it. They're guys like you who saw an opportunity and said I don't care what color these guys are, this is a business. The color that matters is green. I like these guys, I want to work. Mark Echo, lear Cohen, jimmy Iovine you know, yeah, they're in the room. Those guys have always been in the room and they've been wealthy as a result of it. But a lot of times it is another black man saying, hey, ok, mr Hawkins, thank you. This is, you know, this is J Cole. I want you to meet him, and always the highest professional and always the ones who are thinking so far ahead about how to not just be in the game but to stay in the game. Game but to stay in the game.
LEE:And I wanted the Wall Street Journal world and the people with the median net you know, even the average 52 year old guy with three million dollars to know about this group and you know I don't want to take credit for this podcast revolution that we're seeing, because there were other people who did interviews like this, but I would like to say that I saw it, I was among the first and I'm really proud of that and I actually wish that people would do well, I don't know. I mean, having the reporting background really helps and I think just coming into the interviews prepared and everything makes it so much of a better experience. And for me, I was blessed because a lot of times and then this will be the last thing I say on this, so I'll let you talk but a lot of times it was that I would interview the manager first and then the manager would say you know, like when you're trying to book like a really big interview, like I got an interview with the Kardashians, right, and that was. That was way back, it was before it was, as they were really starting to blow up 2012.
LEE:Um, but before that, I did the interview with Chris and we sat down and did a one hour interview. She made it happen for me to get the interview with her daughters and that um and same thing with Chris Lighty. Chris Lighty was the one that really opened up the opportunities for me to interview a lot of rappers blue williams because they knew this guy knows the business and he's coming forward to do a different kind of interview that we're not going to hear anywhere else how hard was it to convince, um, the wall street journal to let you do this type of stuff, because now I'm noticing a lot more, um, I guess hip-hop culture and stuff coming from forbes as well, like they listen stuff.
JEFFREY:like how hard was it to get these hard body? You know for lack of a better term white establishment? You know, um, you know magazines and whatnot, to let that side of the culture in?
TOM:That's 15. I mean when we first met I was trying to think about it it was 15. Is that 15 years ago?
LEE:Probably, yeah, yeah.
TOM:And so you were doing this way, ahead of what is happening today.
LEE:Yeah, you know, it wasn't't hard and it didn't happen overnight. There were times that were hard. There were times where I would try to explain to them um, hey, this person is a person we should really interview and we should really put the put forth the effort to travel if we have to, or, to, you know, have them in New York and to work around their schedule. And they would say well, who is this person? You know, and I'll tell you one example was Priyanka Chopra. Before Priyanka Chopra really blew up in the United States, you know, I was the first reporter on American soil to sit down and do a one hour interview with her. She was a huge Bollywood star. Yeah, and of course, you know, a lot of people didn't know who she was. I didn't know who she was until my friend, anjula Ancheria-Bath, explained to me that who she was and that she was managing this new artist who was going to take the world by storm in music and that she was a Bollywood star. But this is when she was working with Jimmy Iovine on a potential music career and she did some really good songs. She's a very good singer.
LEE:But my point is is that I remember, when I pitched, that they were a little skeptical, but they because I had had success on the YouTube platform. I mean, I've done over 100 million views on YouTube and I think that matters. You know anything you do, you know you could have haters and people talking about you and all this stuff and you think the bridge is burned forever and all of this stuff. But at the end of the day, when you have success, you will be surprised that people come around. And in this case, I got to be honest with you. I had a really good team of people. I was fortunate to have a boss at the time who was not a micromanager. He knew Hawk. As long as you know what you're doing, I'm going to give you the space to do it, and I was able to develop this franchise as a result of that.
LEE:And you know now, the Priyanka Chopra interview wouldn't have done well. Then you know, maybe that would have been the end of business, of celebrity. But the truth was this guy, raul Chopra, who was involved, who was an executive at the Wall Street Journal, knew about her as well and he got my back too and we ended up doing it and we were doing like one hundred thousand views a day that we just watched. It was like one of these counters where the numbers just go up. The numbers are going up in real time. I mean this interview just exploded and I think that was the last time I was ever really challenged. I think the other time I was challenged was when that's equals trust.
TOM:I mean, at the end of the day, the more success you've had, the little bit more trust you got to the point where they're willing to let you try some new things, because look at the success he's had.
LEE:Yeah, and I think the J Cole interview was another example, because I was supposed to sit down with J Cole and probably just cut like a 15 minute interview, but when he started talking I was just like yo, this this young man is, is special, you know, and I mean in a good way. What ended up happening was we just, I told my camera guys keep rolling. And we just kept rolling and we ended up talking for over an hour. So I remember going back to the office and saying, hey, you know what? This was a special interview. This guy has a lot to say. He's had an amazing career.
LEE:I don't think we should just make this a 15-minute interview. And I remember my boss kind of exploding on me and just saying oh no, we can't do this. How are we going to cover this? We got to find all of these different photos and video to go with it. We're not going to do it.
LEE:I said we don't need to cover it, just put it out there. We'll do your 15 minute one. And we did the beautified 15 minute thing. And then I said just put, trust me, please just put out the raw video of me talking to J Cole. And once again, I mean, even to this day, if you go online, it's that long interview that got the views. It's not the beautified one, isn't that great. Well, you know, being right is great, but you know I'm sure there are plenty of times where I wasn't right and so, but yeah, the Wall Street Journal incredible brand, best financial newspaper in the world. I think the challenge for me was wanting and we'll talk about this but really wanting to get more into social justice issues. And you know, even there, with the Wall Street Journal, I was able to do to be a reporter on the team of reporters who did a series on the Tulsa massacre of 1921, 100 year anniversary, and we were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
TOM:I was going to say want, you're a finalist for a very major award.
LEE:Yeah, I can't.
LEE:You know, one thing that I I think a lot of people like to do um is to criticize the journal because it's owned by murdoch, but murdoch my experience with murdoch is that he is very aware he cares more about his brands and making sure that each of his brands are on point with the audience that they're meant to serve.
LEE:So you know, you have to remember, he's owned Fox and you know a lot of the original Black sitcoms that really blew up in the 90s were on Fox. And he owns my publisher, amistad, which is primarily black American books, had the number one book, barracoon, just two years ago. And and you know I mean Amistad is a black publisher owned by a very conservative, ultra conservative multi-billionaire that it is a publication that does not lend itself to to write about people of color and to do podcasts about people of color. That's not the place for me to do it, because a lot of my work is long form now and I'm going in a totally different direction. But it was a great opportunity and I encourage everybody who gets the opportunity to do well in corporate America to go into corporate America, learn as much as you can and then get out and do your own thing.
TOM:Good advice. So how did that transition happen though? I mean, here you are the top of your game, you're interviewing all sorts of interesting people I mean you did one with Mike Tyson, I believe you were, ryan Reynolds, lady Gaga I mean the list goes on and on and you made that transition to then start covering topics on race equity, child trauma. What made? Why did you decide you could have easily went down this path and continue doing this, probably for a long time?
LEE:I think what made me start to transition was I did a fellowship at USC made me start to transition was I did a fellowship at USC. Usc has a childhood trauma reporting fellowship and I was able to do that through the Annenberg USC Annenberg, and it was a week of training around adverse childhood experiences, the role that racism can play in that was. You know, some of the experts talked about that childhood PTSD, a lot of those things and, once again, the way that my brain works is that I'm able to take these experiences that I see in the world because I've been in a lot of places.
TOM:I'm a musician, you know, and being a musician is- we're going to get to your music talents, don't you worry.
LEE:But what it does is it takes you into a lot of different worlds, and you know that's the power of every journalist who's good at what they do is to be able to not live inside a bubble but to have an experience beyond their own. And so, for me, I had a lot of curiosity about my dad, because my dad, who was very close to me, grew up in Jim Crow, alabama, but he would never talk about his experience in Alabama. He left when he was 12 years old and a lot of my friends who have relatives in the South when they did that great migration. People have to understand Black people's families weren't just split up. We weren't just split up during slavery. We were split up during Jim Crow and part of it was, yes, people wanted a better opportunity, but part of it was that people had had experienced trauma in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and we're trying to get away, whether it was a bad sharecropping deal or, in my dad's case, his mother died of a kidney infection and he was 12 and he had a sister and her husband who were in Minnesota, so that was how he ended up there, but I had seen how trauma that I wasn't sure about all the trauma that my dad had experienced. But there were things that I had seen, mainly that he had nightmares when I was a kid sometimes, and you know my dad wasn't a punk, you know, he was a strong black man and in the morning, a lot of times I would, a couple of times I would ask him. You know, dad, what were you dreaming about? You know you had a nightmare last night and all he would just say is Alabama, son, alabama.
LEE:And you know, for me, I experienced a lot of corporal punishment as a kid. I got the belt over a hundred times. All my friends got the belt and I was one of the Black people who really didn't like it. You know there are a lot of Black people who celebrate it and say, oh, I needed that and if I could go back, I would want my parents to beat me more. I didn't want my parents to beat me and you know I understand where it comes from and that's what my podcast is about.
LEE:But you know, when I was in my early 30s, I started to have nightmares about some of the, some of the attacks that happened, you know, when I was a kid, because of my, you know, with my dad and my dad's fear of the world and his fear for me, and I started to really think about, I started to study. Now, how does this idea that Black children are beat disproportionately at home and in school right In 17 states where corporal punishment is legal, primarily in the South, and Black girls are three times more likely to be hit with a paddle you know, three times in each instance than white girls how is this affecting our children? What kinds of things are affecting our children when they see shootings? You know I had four friends murdered in high school freshman year, sophomore year, junior year and senior year.
LEE:There were a lot of things that happened and so I started to really be interested in childhood trauma when I did that fellowship and the effects because it shortens life expectancy, and that was what I learned. And once I started to make that connection between childhood trauma and life expectancy and I was able to think about my own life and all of the friends I had whose fathers died in their 50s and people who would have heart attacks and strokes and diabetes disproportionately high levels of diabetes and all of that, and I started to learn that food is a way that people cope with trauma, in addition to alcohol and the different coping strategies, I started to just really feel like I needed to pay some rent on the planet, not because I wanted to save the world, but because I was really curious and I wanted to help my dad and I wanted to help myself. And so, you know, it just turned into this whole thing and I think the primary thing that really really led me to do this was Ancestrycom.
TOM:I was going to ask how you started that journey of starting to discover all of this information.
LEE:Yeah, my friend Katrina Hoskins, who was a Wall Street Journal staffer, came up to me in the newsroom and she said Lee, come here, Look at this. And she showed me her Ancestrycom and she was able to trace where her family was in West Africa.
TOM:It just blew my mind man, have you guys ever tried this? Have you ever tried it?
MICKEY:I thought, it was a little skeptical. Yeah, I was a conspiracy theorist.
JEFFREY:I don't know what to do with my DNA, so I ain't fucking with it.
JEFFREY:Lee have you ever heard of? I'm sure you have the book All God's Children. All God's Children, yeah, who wrote that, though? Who was it? It was written by Fox Butterfield. The book is very similar to your thing. The Baskets are a family. Their family, live in Harlem and one of the kids, his name, is Willie Boscus. He's actually still alive, he's in jail. He's been in jail forever and they kind of did a study on the Boscus Willie in particular about like his you said trauma and why he acted out, because you know he was a very violent kid and it's a thick book too, and in the book they travel all the way.
JEFFREY:They travel back to South Carolina. That's where they're from, the family's from, and they do a whole historical research about. South Carolina was technically the most violent state during slavery and Jim Crow, I mean, they were all violent, but South Carolina in particular was supposed to be super brutal because South Carolina had the most for lack of a better term white trash people. So they use the psychology well, as long as I'm better than so. They put the crazy white trash people to look over the black people and they were very violent to them because they were like as long as I'm better than you, then I'm better. And so they take that trauma from that and they travel all the way through to discover why Willie and his brothers and sisters were so violent. Because that was passed down from the 1800s to the 1980s or 90s is when Willie got arrested.
JEFFREY:It's a very interesting book, so it's kind of when you talk about your stuff. It immediately reminded me of that book. I read that book years ago. It was a very interesting thing, like how all that trauma and that violence is just passed down, you know, from white folks of slavery all the way through. And so our parents, grandparents, whatever, did the same thing to us that got done to them. And it just keeps going and going and going, even now when I look online and I'll see somebody post their grandmother and their grandmother's yelling at the kids. Y'all sit the fuck down over there and people will be laughing. Oh, grandma, I'm like that's not funny to me, bro, that's not funny at all. She obviously is traumatized or something. For her to even talk to little kids like seven-year-old kids like that, and what is she passing down to them? And the fact that y'all are laughing at it is condoning it Like, oh, that's just Aunt Tracy, that's just how she is. Nah, that's not. I mean, I'm on the years again, tom. Girlfriends right, always talk about girlfriends.
TOM:Always with the girlfriends Over my girlfriends right.
JEFFREY:Always talk about girlfriends, Always with the girlfriends I've had over my time. I've had a few, I guess, run-ins with girls' mothers because they thought they could talk to me like that, because that's what they knew. And I'm like yo, who are you talking to? I'm not your child, Respectfully, I'm not going to curse them out or anything like that, but I'm not your child. Who are you talking to?
LEE:Respectfully, I'm not going to curse him, I don't know like that. But like I'm not your child, who are you talking to? You can't just talk to me crazy, just because I'm younger than I traced my family 400 years back and I started sharing the information with my dad, and I think the impetus of my dad opening up and giving four years of interviews was the fact that I, in the process of my research, discovered that my grandfather, his father, was murdered and he had never told me that. And my grandfather, his father, was murdered and he had never told me that. And my grandparents, his parents, both of their fathers were murdered in Alabama when they were nine and five years old, and since 1837, I've had a murder in my family every generation through 2015.
LEE:And you know, I'm one of the few Black people who have had the privilege and the blessing to be able to have these skills and go back and actually have the time, or make the time to do this research, and so I don't know how different my story is from the average Black American descendant of slavery and Jim Crow survivors, which I believe that Jim Crow was a system of apartheid. It's not acknowledged as such, but we have never America has never acknowledged that millions of black people, for 100 years after slavery, went through a crime against humanity that was committed against our families, Because in my case, in my family, my great grandfathers who were murdered, the white men who murdered them were never brought to justice and our crime was always entrepreneurship. In many cases and I think that you know the Tulsa Massacre too their crime was entrepreneurship and building wealth. If you go across the country and you look at our history, you know we have these, all of these podcasts and everything about branding and entrepreneurship, and you know, when you see Black people who have done this work, you've got to understand these Black people have slayed dragons because the reality of the situation is they were under great pressure to. You know Byron Allen, you know Oprah Winfrey, and I use hypothetical examples you know Bob Johnson, Robert Smith all of these people we had an idea that you know, yeah, they're no longer being murdered for their ambition, but it's not that different. I mean, we still. There's still a lot of, you know, insidious resentment of black people who are, who are upwardly mobile and I've always strived to be an upwardly mobile person and an outspoken young boy and all of that and I think that I would say that a lot of the whippings that I got as a kid were because of that, because of asking questions and silence Black children at a young age to teach them to comply, in the same way that Kunta Kinte was beaten into submission and told to comply when he wanted to have to keep his name and his heritage. And so I just became, you know.
LEE:All of this information came flooding to me and I kind of decided that I was going to try to shift my career and write a book on this, and so I researched for three years. I had to determine what the book was, and then I submitted the proposal for Nobody's Slave. There was an auction for the book and HarperCollins won the auction and I was able to. You know, took 10 years to write this book and it comes out in January. But but knowing that I had a book coming out, you know I'm not going to say that it was all about altruism, it was also about capitalism, which I believe in. I'm passionate, if not self-righteous, about the idea of black people, you know, owning their brand and and also in prospering and, you know, continuing to pass down generational wealth based on their intellectual property I got the book deal.
LEE:And then I remember I did an interview and it was one of my last. It was probably one of my last like in real interviews and I interviewed Jimmy Iovine and Jimmy Iovine. So we're just sitting around. We did the interview in a studio and he said how are you doing? You know? Yeah, I remember you know we talked before a couple of years ago with Priyanka and everything. But then he was telling me about the deal that he was doing with Apple and Dr Dre and everything. And when we were talking he said so what have you been up to? And I said, well, I got this book that I'm doing and hopefully, you know, maybe one day it'll be turned into a movie and it's kind of a route for the 21st century and all that. And then we were about to start the interview and I said you ready to go? And he goes wait, Lee. And I said what? And he goes the book is all that matters. That book is going to be so critical. This is cool, but get that book done because that's your plan.
LEE:And at that point he helped me understand that you are in a pivotal, pivotal time in your career and this is a time now for you to to start to be more about what you're trying to do and your vision and your people and what you want to leave the kind of mark that you want to leave on the world. And that made a tremendous impact on me because I felt like I needed to hear that. I think all of you probably have dreams, and it can be very lonely when you dream because you could be working on this on the underground A lot of times. You don't want people to know what you're working on, but it would be nice to get some reinforcement from people who you trust and who you admire, who you know. And so when I got that reinforcement, then I started to think more consciously about what I was doing, because I didn't want people to think well, isn't this the guy who was writing about General Motors and doing celebrity interviews?
LEE:Now, all of a sudden, he's writing about intergenerational effects of racism and childhood trauma through Jim Crow, slavery and integration on the black family. How is this possible? And so I did that fellowship and I did a Logan nonfiction fellowship, and then I now I'm a fellow at the Carter Center in mental health journalism, and so I really made it a point to get the training to be able not just to to write about this but to be able to interview people with about trauma, with the level of compassion that we need to, Because I've covered murder, suicides. You know a black man who was killed like six weeks before he was to get his PhD from Columbia and you know I had to go down and interview this guy's grandmother and all of these people. And I feel like, even when I was doing that interview, if I could go back over and do it again, I wouldn't do it the way I did it, because I felt like I might have even re-traumatized certain people in the process with some of the questions that I was asking in the manner in which I was asking them. So you know I'm a student, but that was how I did it. I did it gradually, it wasn't like I just popped on the scene.
LEE:And my last assignment at the journal I ended up covering education assignment at the journal. I ended up covering education, so I went back into writing and I switched to the New York Bureau and the pandemic happened. And then I ended up covering the effects of the pandemic on the million children in the New York public schools, which is, by the way, 85% black and brown kids and so I learned a tremendous amount of that and, you know, I was able to, I think, start to work on my compassion and my empathy and making sure that I was kind of rooting myself in the experience of these young children who were trying. You know, I had one young student who I just to this day she's one of my heroes. She was, you know, worried about whether she was going to be able to still be the valedictorian and graduate at the top of her class because she didn't have a computer at home and that was hard for her to not have that computer and that was a level of anxiety and stress that people can't relate to. So I tried to write about that young lady and you know different people like that, but that was really what positioned me and made me feel comfortable. And so, probably about two years before I left the Wall Street Journal, I started planning the podcast for the creation of what Happened in Alabama, the series that I just dropped with American Public Media, and I started shopping that back then. And so when I left the Wall Street Journal I had that deal in place and it wasn't quite in place, but we were almost done with the deal and it was, you know, a real opportunity for me then to transition into the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism, which was behind at Marquette University, which was behind the what Happened in Alabama project, and so I think it's important for people when they talk about corporate, when you're in a corporation and you kind of feel trapped in a cubicle, we all get into these situations where we can get frustrated and we might even.
LEE:You know, I had a lot of my friends who were I mean, I was happy where I was, but I had a lot of my friends who were in the music and entertainment industry who would say, man, you need to quit that job, Quit messing around. Man, you have so much more to do, You're so much better than that. And I wouldn't say I would never say that I was better than that, but I would say that I kind of need. I was never going to be reach my full potential. Some things run their course and, as an employee, you're always going to be limited by that.
LEE:Now, the one thing that corporations do for you, however, is they enable you to save money and to grow money. To grow money, If you're not hopping from company to company, and you're aggressive as an investor, as a young person, then you get yourself into a position where, by the time you leave, you won't have to worry about money, about retirement, because you'll have all that in place. And so I think I had gotten to a point where the timing was right and I'm a man of faith. So, you know, I prayed a lot and I meditated a lot, I talked to my dad a lot. My dad was a big supporter and you know and I just think that I didn't know my dad was going to die shortly after I left the Wall Street Journal and all that. But I certainly or actually before I left the Wall Street Journal, but I certainly had him in my corner enough to make that decision and to go forward.
LEE:And that's what I always tell people Don't leave your gig until you have your other stuff in place. Now, if something happens and there's a layoff or something, you can't really control that, and there's a layoff or something, you can't really control that. But if you can get a buyout, that's even better, because then you can apply that money to your new situation. And so I always tell people that, yes, work your nine to five, but make sure you work your five to nine, Because your five to nine is you. If you're going to go and you're going to work hard and nobody works nine to five, let's face it, You're working. You know you're working 18 hour days a lot of times in corporate America. If you're trying to make a difference, but don't shortchange yourself Make sure, if you're working that 18 hour day, that you put yourself through hell on the weekend If you have to to work the whole weekend for your dream, for your company and what you're trying to build. Take that experience that you got from them, take the context that you got from them and put it and pour it into your dream. And so I had already had a lot of things in place.
LEE:I always tell people that Don't not have stuff in place because then you're going to a way party. It's much easier to be chill and smile and just sit there. Thanks a lot. What am I doing? Well, I have this thing that worked out for me or whatever, and it's much better to do that. I think people don't have patience and they're not strategic and they don't think about how do I build this, and I think the only reason that I was able to really know. That was because I studied all of these celebrities and I saw how they were able to do it, and then that gave me almost an intuitive understanding. There wasn't a book that somebody handed me. It was life experience and I was able to figure that out. That was how that worked.
TOM:A counterpoint to that, though, I would say, is, sometimes you can't hold back, though, because you could always talk yourself out of not following the dream. You can always talk yourself out. You can over, always, overthink, and I think each of us and I know myself, you know, when I just jumped out just more recently, like most people to your point said yeah, that's a no brainer, you should have done this years ago. And I know Mickey, you have a great story. I mean, mickey was working at a law firm until somebody finally told him you got to follow your passion, you got to follow your music. You got to follow that, and I do think we all have those people in our lives, and it's a really tough decision, because you got to know it's not always crystal clear when the right moment is, and you got to trust yourself sometimes, and you got to trust the people around you that are giving you good advice to make that leap of faith.
LEE:Yeah, one thing that I learned recently and it was a real painful lesson is that if you have people in your life who are giving you constructive criticism, that's what you want it to be constructive criticism criticism when you're trying to build this stuff. You'll know that it was constructive if, when you actually achieve the stuff that they were saying that you so importantly had to do, that they actually are engaged with that and they actually are happy when you achieve your goal. Okay, because I have a couple of people who were like when is the book coming up? When are you going to do the podcast? You got to hurry up. You got to get this done. Man, what's going on? Oh my God, you can't be such a perfectionist. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
LEE:And then when I hit 25 on Apple Podcasts top shows, I didn't hear from when are you at Bruh? Right, you wanted to talk to me about Getting my stuff together and what's Going on with my book. And when I got the book deal and we're putting Out excerpts, we're putting out Seasons and you know you Haven't heard the podcast. You were so concerned about it back Then, but now you can't Listen to it. What do you think about it. Let me know if I, if I did what you were telling me that I should do. Yeah, and so you have to really look at the people who, who really a lot of times are telling, talking to you in your ear and interfering with your self-talk at the time, and you have to understand that not everybody who's talking to you is really genuine with that.
LEE:Okay, and I don't mean to be negative, but I'm just trying to share with you this idea because you know haters, you know are no matter what you do, you're always going to have haters. But the truth is you got to get it from here. Always going to have haters, but the truth is you got to get it from here. The good and the bad Hear it, but get it from within. It doesn't matter what people think. A lot of times what matters is the result and what is the quality of the stuff that you did.
TOM:Yeah, it's great words. All right, we're kind of heavy. I want to get a little light for a second, because I wouldn't be telling your whole story if I didn't ask about music. I got some music guys on here and I mean, when I talk about music, I joke with these guys that I'm going to win a Grammy one year. But you actually won a Lennon songwriting contest in 2011. You released an album, among other things, in 2015, about your dad. I mean, when I say you're into music, it's not just on the side I mean, you are truly a musician.
LEE:Yeah, I did an album recently, 2021 as well, and I have done work with the Wiggles, the children's group from Australia. Yes, that's right, and you know I grew up around music. I'm from Minnesota, so you know I grew up on the street from Prince's guitar player there you go.
LEE:My dad played the guitar and played a song. He played the Cross, the song the Cross cross, in the private ceremony of Prince's family, the Christian side of his family. My dad sang at that funeral. My dad played guitar with the sounds of blackness and sang with the sounds of blackness and was in sixties do out groups when he was growing up. And, but most importantly, he was a music. He was a musician for 30 years at our church, mount Olivet Baptist Church, playing the guitar and singing in the choir, and so I grew up singing and playing the drums behind my dad and I was lucky to be, or blessed to be able to play, you know, with a lot of those guys and just kind of, when I was a kid they used to call it keeping time.
LEE:You know, keep time, lili, you know. And so I would keep time, you know, from the time I was about nine years old and I just grew up on a lot of like the Isley Brothers, and then, you know, my music. I came in with the hip hop and everything. My dad was kind of kind of humored by hip hop. He thought it was a theme and then later a trend, and later on he was like man, you know you kept telling me that this hip hop thing was real, you know, and so I grew up singing in a lot of churches, but I was blessed that I didn't have one of those.
LEE:Like parents, my parents were not against secular music and so I sing in bands. When I was a kid, when I was 12 years old, I was in a band and we performed all over and we sang like the modern hits, you know, and we also sang some songs from the 60s and stuff. And then I just kind of grew to the point where I think from that point forward I always had a band, even when I was a reporter. I stopped really having bands when I left the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel but I think one of my last shows was opening up for Common at the Summerfest Music Festival. And the reason I stopped having bands and moved more into songwriting and recording and then the stuff that I did with the Wiggles was because it became too hard to manage the career with the newspaper career with the music I just really have had.
LEE:Music has been a big blessing. It is because that's another thing that you can't really divorce from who you are. It helps you in so many ways on knowing music. You can connect with people and music in the same way you can connect with someone you don't even know. A Black man could connect with a KKK member talking about sports or music.
LEE:Because it is that universal Sports and music right there, there it's just universal and uniting, and so it's been a blessing and it also helped me a lot as an interviewer, because when you you know you got lionel richie sitting in front of you or you got paul stanley from kiss sitting in front of you and and they know, when know music, they know you know music, and then they start to open up more because then they're like man, I love this, I love sitting here talking to this guy who just talked about this. You know very you know this, this rare Jimi Hendrix song, or the riff on the minor key melody on this song, and how did you come up with the hook for this? And you know, those kinds of questions are questions that musicians love, but they're also questions that usually only musicians will ask.
MICKEY:I mean, for me, I've learned a lot here and you know, as someone who is a musician, entrepreneur and who wants to push forward the culture in terms of art and finance, right, so it's a speaker at Earn your Leisure Conference. You know I'm very into finance rap, right. Like I talk about credit and real estate and the stock market, I rap about these things Music, finance and even entrepreneurism. I think it's just fantastic. Along with the basic history of you know, you looking to figure out and find out the path of your ancestry is just. It's just been an incredible conversation. All in all, Thank you.
LEE:You know, I really appreciate that, and I feel like learning about my ancestry, for what happened in Alabama and for I Am Nobody's Slave changed me profoundly, and the way that it changed me most was understanding that, yes, my family went through trauma, but my family and all of our Black families were resilient. All of our Black families were resilient. They were determined, they were patriotic, they served their country even when they didn't get the GI Bill. They loved America when America didn't love them back. We are the most committed to capitalism. We are the most committed to free speech. We are the most committed to activism, to pushing America to reach her potential, and we're still doing it. And so that is why I'm this way, because of those ancestors.
TOM:Lee, it has been an absolute pleasure to reconnect with you. Thank you, I'm glad that. I mean we met 15 years ago. I'm honored to say I would be one of those guys that when you came through the airport I'd recognize you. I would be the first one to come up and talk to you, but reporter, podcaster, author and musician, lee Hopkins, tell us one more time the name of the book, when and where we can find it.
LEE:Yeah, the book is available for sale now. It's called I Am Nobody's Slave how Uncovering my Family's History Set Me Free. Please preorder the book so you don't forget. It comes out in January, but you can help me with my sales now. And then the podcast is called what Happened in Alabama. You can find it at whathappenedinalabamaorg or on Apple, spotify or anywhere like that, so in everywhere where podcasts are sold are published. So, thank you. God bless you, man. Thank you for having me on the show. It's an honor and a privilege, and just keep up the work that you're doing. I appreciate it and I hope to run into you guys down the line. Maybe we'll do something together, but that's how this happens. You know, this is how people come together in the culture, exactly what you're doing now, and this is a credible platform because you're helping me reach the people who I really want to. I really want to read, so I really appreciate you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
TOM:That's our show. Tune in to Unglossy, the coding brand and culture, on Apple Podcasts, spotify or YouTube, and follow us on Instagram at UnglossyPod to join the conversation. Until next time, I'm Tom Frank.
JEFFREY:I'm Jeffrey Sledge, smicky that was good.
