T.I., Killer Mike, and David Banner Break Down the Power of Hood Economics | Complex Current

even on the dog, thank you all for coming to

complex

9 because the sneakers are great and they are fun, but more than that, the new ideas from the artistic and business perspective are also fun. I would like to introduce you to a brother who has given success to others. people, as a producer, has had his own records, has transitioned, not only is he one of the fiercest MCs and producers in the south, but also as a community activist, advocate and businessman who not only riots in Congress when It tells you what we need in our neighbor

hood

but it provides real jobs in places like Atlanta, where Bama's vision was born and is now spreading around the world, so let me introduce you to my colleague, my friend, my brother, first David Banner, then to a friend of ours, a young man. man who brought trap music to the world fresh out of Bankhead catching meaning sign up to now become a father a husband and one of the examples as a black man I would like to see the world recognize more of him he is a friend he is a Grammy award winner it's a hit song because he wakes up in the morning he feels like he's making one and he's one of the best human beings a business partner and business people in Atlanta his name is tip harris guys please give him a hand , yes, oh, yes, I would like that. to talk to these gentlemen today about some ways we build community, buy back the block and can transform as a community and hip-hop culture, so thank you all for being here, man, it's good to be here, this is great, No? no, Hennessy Wayne smoking a week, yes, that's you, just a few days before.

You are both my friends and we have been friends, associates, brothers for a long time, we have been on a kind of 15 year journey to discover who we are. they were in the context of music and they were bigger than music, but I wanted to ask you both this, when did you realize that you had a responsibility to invest in and build your local communities? It came after the rich and famous settled in Yes, around the year 1213, yes, you know, then I began to see the transformation of the neighbor

hood

in which we were young. You know, I'm saying when we were running through the streets, Bankhead was full of black businesses, yeah, and you had everything. types of examples of entrepreneurship and people owning houses had been there for generations, everyone knew each other on the streets, you know, I mean, now or at the time when I noticed that there were more people walking up and down the street Street, we never win. about who, one day, yeah, they're standing, who else, oh, she died, damn, it's different, the house era could now, yeah, and they have no incentive, you know, to keep the community revitalized , so it just starts to deteriorate, so what are you talking about?

It's about when we grew up and I grew up with streets from each other, so at one point people were in their houses, they were maintaining their gardens, they were taking good care of this while they were taking care of their neighbors and those. people dying, this whole thing went from being a neighborhood of ownership to a ship of tenants, and with the tenants there were people, the landlords necessarily didn't treat them well, they didn't treat the house as well, they didn't take care of the neighbors and then the influx of things like crime and stuff start absolutely, got you, so

banner

, when did you do it, when? in reference to Atlanta or Jackson, you realized it's time for me to be part of the community, well, with Mississippi, that was always the case.

You know, my impulse was said since then. I became a soloist. I realized that no one really cared where I was from. Yeah, you know, I watched people. When I went to other cities, spaceships would come down and come to Mississippi. And I saw everyone always saying like David Banner. why it's so cool why you treat people the way you treat people because I used to remember how it felt when people came to our land and how they treated the kids so that Mississippi would always be, you know the drive and my motivation for Everything I did musically I think that personally, although it went to another level when my choice of spirituality changed, I realized that, especially in dealing with our people, I think we are looking for God in the wrong place.

I think the answer to every question. in your life is internal, so in order for us to change our community, the people that have put us in the situations that we are in are never going to change historically, we see that, so everything you want in your life, if you want even if you remember when we were trying to get record deals I noticed in Mississippi when I was when I started no one wanted to sign me until they saw how much money I was making independently on my own homeless in a van when I had more tours than a lot of artists at Universal so people I was interested not because of the talent but because of what I had done for myself, so I think that for me the key to everything, any answer you have in life is always me and I don't think that anyone is going to take care of us in our community better than us, yeah, I mean, yeah, just Justin, more to my brother's point, like we understand that we were born free, yeah, we were. born equal equivalent to another human being based on you know biology, you know organs, skin and bones and you know it, you too, so we have to stop asking people for something they don't have, yes, they don't have our freedom.

You can't ask for your freedom, you can't ask for equality, yes, come on, by oppressing yourself, you use oppress yourself to benefit yourself, so you basically go to him and say Amen, please don't benefit yourself by making me less than what you allowed me to be in the same level than you so that you can have less and I can have more you can't ask not for not asking yourself - you don't say that an airplane window in the pound has a quote that I tell myself and I tell my children, I tell them To my friends and family, you are now free, now act like it.

Well, you know, Banner has always acted like I was already successful. He was even sleeping in a van where Jordan, can you explain how you found success building your local communities? worked well and what didn't work so well, so I was asked about half a year ago this question. I hear this question all the time what's the biggest accomplishment I've ever had in my life and I used to do it you know, produce for this person and make this amount of money. I can now say that I have been able to make payroll for five years consistently for my staff and have an international staff with better vision.

I am your. everyone go to the website, check it out and that makes me feel better than anything else in my life. There was a woman who works for me. Regina Davenport, you know, waves, laughs. I saw her fight and I saw her help so many people. When I first came to Atlanta, they wouldn't let me into the studios. I was a little upset about it when she saw the tape. I arrived at the tipping studio. Tim had a studio in the back of a barbershop and I was there. I took out my things, I said brother, let me help you and he lay down inside my tec-9 in the truck.

He said, "That's my kind of person, let's make some music, but I think my greatest achievement and what I wrote is learning the best way to help black people or anyone is to get them a job, yeah, the people are tired, these kids, most of these kids don't want to sell drugs, but they know that they will get something if they do, yeah, if you tell them. To go to the university world, what they will definitely get is to die, not to say that's what not to do, but these kids know better, so we have to give them and stop talking and give them theory.

The biggest mistake I made is trying to help everyone, you can't help everyone, everyone doesn't want it the same way you want it and a lot of times when I look at people, even family members, whatever we've given someone on the plate they'll never fully do it. respect it, um, the other thing that I will say is trying to do. I think I tried to take responsibility for the world. This preacher once told me that you're always trying to be Jesus and I wonder why you keep ending up. on the cross that hint and I never thought about it before you know he said do what you can for your people and go home and get some rest 'cause you know me man you talk about it outside we still had a problem with not sleeping who are you the empty cook, you know, so I guess that's my answer to the question what about you too? what worked what didn't work what's okay so I guess the most gratifying thing I could say was that it was okay when I got my first one.

The first thing you know is a signing bonus in your face which I thought was a lot of money. Subsequently, or should I say simultaneously, my uncle was being released from prison, so he stopped. You know, you know that doing something stupid for quick money is acting? he'll calm down you know what I'm saying and he said hey man listen man give me 20,000 I'll eat come down oh you just got here you say man you're not going to be able to count the money anyway J give me $20,000 man Yeah I mean I worked on yeah I say man , man, so I gave him the $20,000 and we moved on to raise the rest and by the time I wasn't I was out of that money and I had to figure out other sources of income, probably.

About eight months later, he put me in his car and drove me down the street to a house that I was very familiar with, but it looked very different than when I met her and he said, see, I said yes, I used to. Say I don't like that house, there's a Jimmy Jam house, what's up? He said no, no, no more, that's what we did with the $20,000 you gave me, we bought this house, we rehabbed it and that's it. you know, now we started a family and that made me feel good that I was able to undo some of the damage or fix some of what I had done, no and you know, I mean because at the time we turned to the means that we were turning to to survive, at this point refugees, you know we're refugees from the war on drugs, yeah, you know what I'm saying: survival from crack terror okay, so at that point survival is your top priority, you're not thinking about the deficit or the detriment that it has on the community in the long term, but if you live to see the long term, then you will feel somewhere behind, so for me to be able to undo some of the damage that I do and we will probably be one of The most rewarding things I feel like I've done in the community now the flip side of that is six to eight months later when I went back to the same house that we rehabbed and saw that it was a crack house again.

I say, well, we got together. We have to change our strategy, oh you know, I mean, we have, we're not going to make a dent in it like one of the. I guess one of the most failed things I can remember is waiting for someone else to see my vision first. I act accordingly, you know, I'm saying that normally we will have an idea, we will have a thought, you know, an inclination, something will move within us to say this, what we should do and the first thing we do, we will go. Give someone a good look that we didn't think about doing and the first thing they say is you can, okay, what are you doing?

Nobody did that before, why would you do that? Well, you see, I figured out if you agree with everything. what I thought or imagined for myself so that means you could see where I can see at the same time you could see it with me I'm not seeing it for you you know I'm saying it like part of being a visionary is being brave enough to face it to all the other naysayers and skeptics in the world. They say that I believe in myself and my ability and everything that moves within me. Enough to go out and do this even though everyone else says you can.

In closing, I had to learn that you know all the way, speaking of which, I'll take you to my next question. My next question is that people know well, some people know, some people don't know that the three of us are friends, so we sing. We danced, we rapped but we also talked on the phone and we just talked about our community, we talked about the possibilities of things, we talked about doing interesting things together, you and I had a conversation that was like, oh, kill, I didn't know, use it in the real estate stuff and I was like, wow, I didn't know you were either and then I was like, man, if you figure out something else to do together, let's do it and you know you say a lot of things, club talk and then your college partner.

About a month later I needed $150,000 because I got a deal and then you say I can't buy that Benz I was looking into. We bought a famous 50-year-old restaurant in Atlanta called Bankhead Seafood, we bought it together and we're in the process of bringing this to market, but I wanted to ask if you can talk about what your thinking was about why you brought me on board or why you thought I was a good idea that we did it together and why it is important. not just for us but for the community at large why is it important for that to happen on the west side of Atlanta um well first of all where we stayed is probably the last big bang yeah of gentrification that's the west side of Atlanta, that's the west side and that's No, I'm saying that we injected ourselves with pills so that the drugs ran away from the police, he was grateful that he did that, yes, here, now we saw what happened in other areas of the city, like Grant, Paul KurtI wouldn't cheat, I would try hard, I didn't say it.

We watched how all of a sudden what used to be a dangerous drug hole, yeah, has turned into prime real estate, yeah, and you know what you see, gay people gardening and a little white lady walking the dogs . Some changes, but it didn't really impact me. I didn't really feel anything when it happened in that neighborhood, yeah, because I went from there. I don't really have any real dogs in that real fight, but when I saw what was happening on the Westside, what happened? They were building the dome, the new dome, yeah, and they were talking about, you know, buying X amount of X amount of people outside so they have the space.

I said well so you can tell me that these people who bought this building years ago met a guy, they make exponentially more just because they get in the way, yeah, hmm, I need to get my ass in. The path and from there came a mentorship for those who may not know that Atlanta was built in part by a black developer named Herman Russell, yes, he mentored a young man named Noel who is now an older black gentleman and saw Tippin guard the mayor's transition team. Mm-hmm, just two rappers who don't have an agency decided to go into real estate and we have a photo of him as a mentor and business partner, yeah, so I guess to expand on the question, how did the business community receive you and the rappers who are that kind? who are trying to be job providers, creators and entrepreneurs in Atlanta.

Sincerely I dont know. I mean, you know, because all people will show you is what they want you to see. You know, I mean what's said. I thought about going out. room can you finish laughing my hand smiled on my face you know me but guess what I don't care I have oh God we didn't go and ask anyone to give us any loan for nothing now we brought it we came in cash yeah this is it mine, here's your money and now let's get on with the rest of absolutely, oh, so I think that makes us stronger, you know, and that's another reason when you say what made me think of you, two things, one, because it just I had the conversation at the club, yes, two and two.

I don't really do loans, so everything I get I get in cash. I could do most of it, so if I include other like-minded people, then it's just me trying to do everything. on my own and had a bunch of other deals in the works. I had a lot of money tied up in my liquid, so cooperation is Karen and group

economics

, that's something that black people don't do enough and really think it's not like that. I really discovered a way. I want to make a very quick comment and I want to say this in front of everyone for a reason.

One of the reasons I consider these two men my friends is because they are men of honor and men of their word like yeah, some things that Tip told me 5 to 10 years ago that he said he would, actually when we decided to do a rubber band, rubber band man, I brought him the beat and everyone always asked me, you know? Wasn't it a rubber band? The man wasn't here, I was like, no, I was rapping too, if I knew what that drug was, I would have used it, but uh, the advice has always been, your advice came to me and he said

banner

, I know that you're coming out right now like a producer, he's like bro, he just turned down a record deal, how many rappers do that and he came back and went back to what he ended up becoming and said, listen bro, I'm taking care of all my friends, I got $2,500 to you.

Give me these, give me this rhythm. I'm going to make it the number one hit in the United States. He said no. He said I will make him come back a thousand times. Damn, he came back a million times and kept his. Same thing with Mike, we talk all the time like people are always shooting you because that's one of my biggest problems in our community: we always say we have each other, but no one does and you can't depend on people. when you call them. I think one of the most important things we can do in our community is keep our word to be honored again and these two men and what I like most about them is that they don't have to be, you know, they choose to do things that our grandparents like, like it reminds me of my grandfather, they remind me of my uncle, yeah, every time they talk, but every time it comes to business, it's not about not having music, it's about being honorable and what I think we have.

We've all come to terms, we have some issues with ourselves, but you know who we are, so we deal with it, we listen, man, we are denizens of extreme trauma. You didn't say that if you sin, the average person who grew up in the church. In the suburbs they had a care in the world, they got a mom, a dad, a dog and a car, you sent him to Iraq, Afghanistan, you put him in the middle of a war zone, let's say for five six years, he will come back and he won't come back. . I know the same thing, you know, I'm saying it's the same thing that all of us are dealing with, we have traumatic experiences that we've endured and overcome, but it's left something that stays with us that we can't necessarily erase as easily. as it was obtained, then I think that when we understand that man will be able to begin to unpack and grow, that brings me to this question because we talk about business, we talk about capitalism, we talk about compassionate capitalism.

I do a lot, but I have a saint like when I see these brothers. I have a habit. I got it from Reverend James Orange, who appeared in the movie Selma. He was one of dr. King and one of the main organizers are right and he called, he hated my name, the murderer Mike, he never called, but he called me a group of Crips and Bloods and Gangster Disciples of Els who he talked to, organized, taught, called us a leader and when you involved them, you know they were walking wrong, what's going on leader, how are you David, you just pushed a line for us and our people in a way that I don't think is due recognition of the path to Shu, so the question is written you know you spent a lot of time speaking in communities doing your lecture series on the guard post.

Can you explain the types of messages you're trying to convey at those conferences and what you think communities need to hear? I've heard a Some of them I love them, but these are the cool kids, so in shorthand, what is the most

power

ful message that you think of besides looking inward or besides looking inward for solutions and answers with the series of guard boxes you have? I have, I know I walk away feeling em

power

ed and transformed every time I hear you speak, but what is the crux and core of the message you would like to convey to him?

When I speak I always speak for my people and I simulate what Tim said we are the most oppressed people on this planet so everyone can take a lesson from black people no matter what color they are so when I say I speak for my people, I think there's a message in everything. That's what I say, but what I will say is that I think the biggest psychological problem when it comes to our people is that most black people don't like being black, so it doesn't matter what we teach them. , most black people don't like to be, but I like it. chicken and I like to dance and call people, people like the things that come with us until it's time to go to a barbecue, then you're fine, so without what I learned, this is that we have to make our people love themselves again, I understood you like it doesn't matter what I teach you, if you don't want to live next to a black person, the group economy and the fact that we are together won't work, yes, if you don't trust the blacks.

I do, I do this, I do this every time. I talk, I make our people close their eyes and I said: how do you really feel about yourself? And since we are not real among certain people, I will tell you all the answers, but sometimes I don't trust my people. I am disappointed in my people, so I ask you to open your eyes. I said, well, if you don't trust and you're disappointed, then you would buy. You know one of the things, even with music, if you look at Justin Bieber fans, Justin Bieber. Bootleg fans aren't going to be late because they really love Justin Bieber, yeah there's nothing wrong with rap, it's the way we perceive ourselves, your self worth, so what I try to do with the guide box.

The lecture series is to teach our people that they are the absolute of God, that they are literally gods and that if you knew this happened to me in college, I learned that black people created mathematics and science, so what we are implementing? Math is difficult for our big kids. great-great-great-grandfathers created the mathematical society absolutely trying to give the credit for the pyramids to all Africans. I'm talking about aliens, yes, people who no one except Africans, so, for me, I think before we get into any of these hard topics. Great concepts, first we have to learn to love each other and that was one of the things I liked about us and one of the things that you and I talked about before we could tell these kids to start with each other .

This first time I went a little. I introduced myself and we were able to show how many of you watched the India.arie video I was in that hurts me so much. No, you were a job. Don't give what belongs to calling me Sabra, you with a money dog. I want to say this because it is important. One of the reasons I decided to make this video was because we tell these boys to love our women and we tell these boys to love each other, but they don't know what it looks like, yeah, so we have to give them, we have to show them the movie, we literally have to do it in real time, yeah, so I said, let me partner with India, she needs me, she wants me to do this.

We enjoy the process, but we definitely have to stop talking and show these kids what it looks like in real time, so the divine box next to the series that I was able to do every time and what I mean by that is that, in addition to the white, all the colors disappear because even in the deep south, in the middle of slavery, there was a class of planters, meaning that the people who actually owned the plantations treated the poor whites who worked for them like those whites poor and then, in turn, they treated enslaved people and people of another color like us.

We have a problem in this country where people who are not working class, people who are poor, lower middle class working class, they get kicked around and treated like that, what they do is they treat each other like that, whether you're talking of North Little Rock. Chicago, whether on the west side, south side or north side, human beings pass on the trauma they suffer, so I'm not as hard on my people because I understand that it's a learned behavior and just as you've learned it, you can unlearn it and that's it. brings me to our last question: our last question is as we get closer and a proper election cycle, so elections matter and we're all going to argue about national elections, but national elections don't matter like local elections.

Local elections are what transform your Schools are what decide where the money goes locally, they decide where resources are allocated locally and a lot of people can tell you something about Trunk or who's going to be against him, but they can't. They can tell you who their school board member is and who. The leader of his particular war is who are his county commissioners and I think that is shameful, what can we do or as young people, what can they do? The young people who want to be in business, because the first thing those people do is gentrify.

The first thing they do when they move to that poor neighborhood is they start going to the Neighborhood Association food and they start telling me we want to change the name of Malcolm X Boulevard, it's an ABC street, if you don't think there should be Frederick Douglass High. School, it should just be freedom school three and so, what could we do? Yeah. I was on Jamel Heel showing it every time they had a stream in Savannah. Fugitive Carl Black Creek. What you think of that was like she ran, I guess. her, that accomplice in my slavery, that was very like, yeah, we got out of there, but what would you advise young people who were entering the business world to do now that we've all found ourselves in the blues? testifying before Congress we helped the mayor get elected it's all in vain it still doesn't make sense to do it at the local level okay now you know if you tell us how we're going to do it in the elections so no no no that would be stupid , okay, okay, because I'm still not going to wear this, yeah, although my wife, do you care what Gucci I bought on a cruise?

This is useless, we don't need it, that shouldn't be necessary. We're absolutely fine, like that, like that, the question and that's a great question. Local politics with politicians. We often feel that we need them. Should we transform our appearance? Do they need us? Are we perceiving it wrong? I mean, I think there has to be a balance. of power by just giving some influence and the ability to do more together than you can pause, I mean, but just the answer is what do I think we could do first of all, we can't keep expecting our oppressor to educate our children.

What I mean bythat's that the public school system is only going to inseminate the type of information that they need people in the public schools to have to benefit the system, so I'm not going to, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to wait for you to teach my kids something that I know would be a real benefit to them and allow them to disrupt the operation. Do you remember we were in eighth grade? We had something like Georgia history, yes. George, okay, now I know them, I mean, they probably don't know it to me, with the Georgia story, they got involved, so, okay, great, well, you'll have to let me tell you what he was able to do and David got something .

You have to stop my wedding. oh yeah, so the Georgia story, basically, where they gather a group of eighth graders, some black eighth graders, in a room and tell them how these Confederate soldiers who raped, murdered, looted, and enslaved the their own species, how they were heroes, yes, yes, yes, today it is theater, so how? Hell, can we expect anything positive to come out of his house? They would never let any Jewish child go to school and be taught how Nazis were heroes. They wouldn't do it at all, so why do we allow it to be done and they wouldn't allow it and they would do it?

Let's not let the Nazis teach your children and I heard someone say, "Wait, well, most presidents were run by slaves as slave drivers, so if I mean if you're really baffled, look at your damn money bills." a dollar, I mean, let's be real." If we are going to really talk about politics now, this is what I have learned. Politicians are and have nothing to do with men or women, I mean, prostitutes are prostitutes, you sell well, so we are going to have to start buying politicians and when they don't do what we ask of them, one of the reasons is that simple.

The reason why politics doesn't work for us is because we don't know what politics is really based on, we have to prepare the politicians and we have to give them an agenda. No, in most cases, if you look at any other group of people and ask. they what they want those same people who come in and out of our neighborhoods who gentrified the neighborhoods have a specific desire need and demand from politicians we are going to have to develop an agenda push the people who are part of that agenda fund them and then keep carrying them to court and holding them accountable for what they say they were going to do the same way we used to do in the past is no different.

I was with a young man named Antonio Mora and we will conclude it at an event, Carnell, the two of us. The leaders of a movement called the American descendants of slavery the United States. movement and support for Bernie Sanders, they're not his biggest fans, but I congratulated him on this show because I said in 60 days they managed to get a politician to stop saying well, I don't think that's appropriate right now. The terms of reparations I don't think are possible because he knows they have more Mitch McConnells in the House and Senate who are not right, but in 60 days he had them because of pressure from working class Black people and their allies.

I have to say, when I'm elected president, I will sign HR 40, which Connors has been pushing since 1989 to do a reparations study, that's the power of local politics, that's the power, so even If I don't agree with all the tactics, even if I don't agree with those waves or the freedom that you reach, I'm always willing to show up, learn and get over the line, so I have to congratulate you because you showed me in 60 days that they can get a politician and then, obviously. He kept me there because I'm like, hey, if he's listening to them, yeah, I know he's still listening to me, so I appreciate them for toeing that line.

I appreciate both gentlemen for toeing the line in terms of showing men of honor, men of Men of character and courage doing good business with the community and men who are redeeming sales and the past. I like that you thank them for specifying them, thank you very much. Let me see by looking at other stairs.