1 00:00:01,170 --> 00:00:05,857 "My Air Jordans cost a hundred with tax. 2 00:00:05,857 --> 00:00:10,405 My suede Starters jacket says Raiders on the back. 3 00:00:10,405 --> 00:00:13,395 I'm stylin', smilin', lookin' real mean, 4 00:00:13,395 --> 00:00:17,309 because it ain't about being heard, just being seen. 5 00:00:17,309 --> 00:00:19,446 My leather Adidas baseball cap matches 6 00:00:19,446 --> 00:00:23,065 my fake Gucci backpack. (Laughter) 7 00:00:23,065 --> 00:00:25,614 Ain't nobody who looks as good as me, 8 00:00:25,614 --> 00:00:27,990 but this costs money, it sure ain't free, 9 00:00:27,990 --> 00:00:29,843 and I gots no job, no money at all, 10 00:00:29,843 --> 00:00:32,215 but it's easy to steal all this from the mall. 11 00:00:32,215 --> 00:00:35,052 Parents say I shouldn't, but I knows I should. 12 00:00:35,052 --> 00:00:37,743 Got to do what I can to make sure I look good, 13 00:00:37,743 --> 00:00:40,734 and the reason I have to look real good, well, to tell you the truth, man, 14 00:00:40,734 --> 00:00:45,723 I don't know why. Guess it makes me feel special inside. 15 00:00:45,723 --> 00:00:48,607 When I'm wearing fresh gear I don't have to hide, 16 00:00:48,607 --> 00:00:50,538 and I really must get some new gear soon 17 00:00:50,538 --> 00:00:52,509 or my ego will pop like a 10-cent balloon. 18 00:00:52,509 --> 00:00:56,414 But security is tight at all the shops. Every day there are more and more cops. 19 00:00:56,414 --> 00:00:58,937 My crew is laughing at me because I'm wearing old gear. 20 00:00:58,937 --> 00:01:01,790 School's almost over. Summer is near. 21 00:01:01,790 --> 00:01:04,283 And I'm sportin' torn Jordans. 22 00:01:04,283 --> 00:01:09,583 I need something new. Only one thing left to do. 23 00:01:09,583 --> 00:01:13,343 Cut school Friday, catch the subway downtown, 24 00:01:13,343 --> 00:01:15,726 check out my victims hangin' around. 25 00:01:15,726 --> 00:01:17,766 Maybe I'll get lucky and find easy prey. 26 00:01:17,766 --> 00:01:19,952 Got to get some new gear. There's no other way. 27 00:01:19,952 --> 00:01:22,310 I'm ready and willing. I'm packing my gun. 28 00:01:22,310 --> 00:01:24,766 This is serious business. This ain't no fun. 29 00:01:24,766 --> 00:01:27,334 And I can't have my posse laughin' at me. 30 00:01:27,334 --> 00:01:31,089 I'mma cop something dope, just wait, you'll see. 31 00:01:31,089 --> 00:01:33,674 Come out of the station, West 4th near the park, 32 00:01:33,674 --> 00:01:35,911 brothers shooting hoops and someone remarks, 33 00:01:35,911 --> 00:01:37,373 'Hey homes, where you get them Nik's?' 34 00:01:37,373 --> 00:01:41,767 I says to myself, 'Yeah. I likes 'em, I likes.' 35 00:01:41,767 --> 00:01:44,535 They were Q-tip white, bright and blinding my eyes. 36 00:01:44,535 --> 00:01:47,215 The red emblem of Michael looked as if it could fly. 37 00:01:47,215 --> 00:01:49,649 Not one spot of dirt. The Airs were brand new. 38 00:01:49,649 --> 00:01:51,369 Had my pistol and knew just what to do. 39 00:01:51,369 --> 00:01:54,556 Waited until it was just the right time, followed him very closely behind. 40 00:01:54,556 --> 00:01:57,159 He made a left turn on Houston, I pulled out my gun, 41 00:01:57,159 --> 00:01:59,905 and I said, 'Gimme them Jordans!' 42 00:01:59,905 --> 00:02:02,175 And the punk tried to run. 43 00:02:02,175 --> 00:02:04,937 Took off fast, didn't get far. I fired,'Pow!' 44 00:02:04,937 --> 00:02:06,855 Fool fell between two parked cars. 45 00:02:06,855 --> 00:02:09,974 He was coughing, crying, blood spilled on the street. 46 00:02:09,974 --> 00:02:13,759 And I snatched them Air Jordans off of his feet. 47 00:02:13,759 --> 00:02:15,872 While laying there dying, all he could say 48 00:02:15,872 --> 00:02:20,935 was, "Please man, don't take my Air Jordans away." 49 00:02:20,935 --> 00:02:23,664 You'd think he'd be worried about staying alive. 50 00:02:23,664 --> 00:02:27,278 As I took off with his sneakers, there was tears in his eyes. 51 00:02:27,278 --> 00:02:30,176 Very next day, I bopped into school 52 00:02:30,176 --> 00:02:33,582 with my brand new Air Jordans, man, I was cool. 53 00:02:33,582 --> 00:02:36,070 I killed to get 'em, but hey, I don't care, 54 00:02:36,070 --> 00:02:40,239 because now I needs a new jacket to wear." 55 00:02:40,239 --> 00:02:49,048 Thank you. (Applause) 56 00:02:49,048 --> 00:02:53,979 For the last 15 years that I have been performing, 57 00:02:53,979 --> 00:02:58,709 all I ever wanted to do was transcend poetry to the world. 58 00:02:58,709 --> 00:03:01,165 See, it wasn't enough for me to write a book. 59 00:03:01,165 --> 00:03:03,765 It wasn't enough for me to join a slam competition, 60 00:03:03,765 --> 00:03:06,237 and while those things hold weight, 61 00:03:06,237 --> 00:03:09,925 it wasn't the driving force that pushes the pen to the pad. 62 00:03:09,925 --> 00:03:13,813 The hunger and thirst was, and still remains: 63 00:03:13,813 --> 00:03:16,741 How do I get people who hate poetry 64 00:03:16,741 --> 00:03:19,629 to love me? 65 00:03:19,629 --> 00:03:21,928 Because I'm an extension of my work, 66 00:03:21,928 --> 00:03:23,832 and if they love me, then they will love my work, 67 00:03:23,832 --> 00:03:27,099 and if they love my work, then they will love poetry, 68 00:03:27,099 --> 00:03:30,245 and if they love poetry, then I will have done my job, 69 00:03:30,245 --> 00:03:33,352 which is to transcend it to the world. 70 00:03:33,352 --> 00:03:38,207 And in 1996, I found the answer in principles 71 00:03:38,207 --> 00:03:42,858 in a master spoken-word artist named Reg E. Gaines, 72 00:03:42,858 --> 00:03:47,717 who wrote the famous poem, "Please Don't Take My Air Jordans." 73 00:03:47,717 --> 00:03:51,762 And I followed this guy everywhere until I had him in the room, 74 00:03:51,762 --> 00:03:54,104 and I read him one of my pieces, 75 00:03:54,104 --> 00:03:56,350 and you know what he told me? 76 00:03:56,350 --> 00:03:58,307 "Yo' wack. 77 00:03:58,307 --> 00:04:01,341 You know what the problem is with you, homie? 78 00:04:01,341 --> 00:04:03,781 You don't read other people's poetry, 79 00:04:03,781 --> 00:04:06,911 and you don't got any subordination for verbal measures 80 00:04:06,911 --> 00:04:12,636 to tonal consideration." (Laughter) 81 00:04:12,636 --> 00:04:15,833 Now he kept on rambling 82 00:04:15,833 --> 00:04:20,638 about poetry and styles and Nuyorican Friday nights. 83 00:04:20,638 --> 00:04:23,490 Now I could have quit. I should have quit. 84 00:04:23,490 --> 00:04:26,970 I mean, I thought poetry was just self-expression. 85 00:04:26,970 --> 00:04:30,355 I didn't know you actually have to have creative control. 86 00:04:30,355 --> 00:04:34,338 So instead of quitting, I followed him everywhere. 87 00:04:34,338 --> 00:04:37,755 When he was writing a Broadway show, I would be outside of the door. 88 00:04:37,755 --> 00:04:41,135 I would wake him up at, like, 6:30 in the morning 89 00:04:41,135 --> 00:04:43,611 to ask him who's the best poet. 90 00:04:43,611 --> 00:04:47,851 I remember eating the eyes of a fish right out of the sea 91 00:04:47,851 --> 00:04:50,379 because he told me it was brain food. 92 00:04:50,379 --> 00:04:53,235 Then one day I told him, 93 00:04:53,235 --> 00:05:00,571 "Reg E., what is subordination for verbal measures to tonal consideration?" (Laughter) 94 00:05:00,571 --> 00:05:04,691 And he handed me a black-and-white printed out thesis 95 00:05:04,691 --> 00:05:07,619 on a poet named Etheridge Knight 96 00:05:07,619 --> 00:05:10,036 and the oral nature of poetry, 97 00:05:10,036 --> 00:05:11,575 and from that point, 98 00:05:11,575 --> 00:05:14,063 Reggie stopped becoming the best to me, 99 00:05:14,063 --> 00:05:17,091 because what Etheridge Knight taught me 100 00:05:17,091 --> 00:05:20,997 was that I could make my words sound like music, 101 00:05:20,997 --> 00:05:23,907 even my small ones, the monosyllables, 102 00:05:23,907 --> 00:05:26,007 the ifs, ands, buts, whats, 103 00:05:26,007 --> 00:05:30,529 the gangsta in my slang could fall right on the ear, 104 00:05:30,529 --> 00:05:33,699 and from then on, I started chasing Etheridge Knight. 105 00:05:33,699 --> 00:05:35,931 I wanted to know which poet he read, 106 00:05:35,931 --> 00:05:40,027 and I landed on a poem called ["Dark Prophecy: Sing of Shine"], 107 00:05:40,027 --> 00:05:44,667 a toast signifying that got me on the biggest stage 108 00:05:44,667 --> 00:05:47,251 a poet could ever be: 109 00:05:47,251 --> 00:05:49,843 Broadway, baby. 110 00:05:49,843 --> 00:05:53,187 And from that point, I learned how to pull the mic away 111 00:05:53,187 --> 00:05:57,023 and attack the poetry with my body. 112 00:05:57,023 --> 00:05:59,731 But that wasn't the biggest lesson I ever learned. 113 00:05:59,731 --> 00:06:04,105 The biggest lesson I learned was many years later 114 00:06:04,105 --> 00:06:08,923 when I went to Beverly Hills and I ran into a talent agent 115 00:06:08,923 --> 00:06:11,374 who looked at me up and down 116 00:06:11,374 --> 00:06:14,371 and said I don't look like I have any experience 117 00:06:14,371 --> 00:06:16,729 to be working in this business. 118 00:06:16,729 --> 00:06:20,798 And I said to him, "Listen, punk fool, 119 00:06:20,798 --> 00:06:23,908 you're a failed actor who became an agent, 120 00:06:23,908 --> 00:06:25,472 and you know why you failed as an actor? 121 00:06:25,472 --> 00:06:28,682 Because people like me took your job. 122 00:06:28,682 --> 00:06:31,450 I've traveled all the way from Cleveland and Essex 123 00:06:31,450 --> 00:06:34,841 in East New York, took the local 6 line up to the hookers of Hunt's Point 124 00:06:34,841 --> 00:06:38,877 who were in my way on my way to master the art of space, 125 00:06:38,877 --> 00:06:41,192 and the one-to-infinite amount of man, woman and child 126 00:06:41,192 --> 00:06:43,370 you can fit in there only so I can push them 127 00:06:43,370 --> 00:06:46,161 to the back of the wall with my experience. 128 00:06:46,161 --> 00:06:48,240 People have bought tickets to my experience 129 00:06:48,240 --> 00:06:50,945 and used them as refrigerator magnets to let them know 130 00:06:50,945 --> 00:06:53,125 that the revolution is near, so stock up. 131 00:06:53,125 --> 00:06:55,505 I'm so experienced that when you went 132 00:06:55,505 --> 00:06:58,148 to a privileged school to learn a Shakespearean sonnet, 133 00:06:58,148 --> 00:07:00,713 I was getting those beats kicked and shoved into me. 134 00:07:00,713 --> 00:07:03,513 I can master shock of "The Crying Game" with the awe 135 00:07:03,513 --> 00:07:07,449 of a child being called an AIDS victim by a bully who didn't know 136 00:07:07,449 --> 00:07:10,442 that it was his father who gave it to my mother, 137 00:07:10,442 --> 00:07:12,294 and that's a double entendre. 138 00:07:12,294 --> 00:07:15,537 I'm so experienced that when you went to the Fell School 139 00:07:15,537 --> 00:07:17,908 and all the rich little fairy boys decided to sponsor a child 140 00:07:17,908 --> 00:07:20,232 in it, that was me, but kicked me out when I was caught 141 00:07:20,232 --> 00:07:23,908 teaching the fairy boys how to rob the PATS off a pair of Lee Jeans 142 00:07:23,908 --> 00:07:27,252 and bring them to VIM. Let me see Chekhov pull that off. 143 00:07:27,252 --> 00:07:30,306 Sanford Meisner was my Uncle Artie yelling silently to himself, 144 00:07:30,306 --> 00:07:32,604 "Something's always wrong when nothing's always right." 145 00:07:32,604 --> 00:07:35,268 Method acting is nothing but a mixture 146 00:07:35,268 --> 00:07:38,204 of multiple personalities, believing your own lies are reality, 147 00:07:38,204 --> 00:07:41,292 like in high school cool Kenny telling me he wanted to be a cop. 148 00:07:41,292 --> 00:07:43,388 Dude, you go to Riker's Island Academy. 149 00:07:43,388 --> 00:07:44,855 I could make David Mamet 150 00:07:44,855 --> 00:07:47,296 psychoanalyze my attack on dialogue, 151 00:07:47,296 --> 00:07:50,895 Stanislavski be as if he were Bruce Lee 152 00:07:50,895 --> 00:07:54,202 kicking your roster of talentless students up and down Crenshaw. 153 00:07:54,202 --> 00:07:57,191 So what, your actors studied guerrilla theater at the London Rep? 154 00:07:57,191 --> 00:07:59,935 Let me tell you an ancient Chinese Saturday afternoon 155 00:07:59,935 --> 00:08:02,399 kung fu secret. 156 00:08:02,399 --> 00:08:04,236 Boards don't hit back. 157 00:08:04,236 --> 00:08:06,474 You think black entertainers have it hard finding work 158 00:08:06,474 --> 00:08:08,837 in this business? I'm a suspicious mulatto, 159 00:08:08,837 --> 00:08:11,903 which means I'm too black to be white and too white to be doing it right. 160 00:08:11,903 --> 00:08:14,799 Forget the American ghetto. I've cracked stages in Soweto, 161 00:08:14,799 --> 00:08:18,943 buried abortion babies in potter's field and still managed to keep a smile on my face, 162 00:08:18,943 --> 00:08:21,358 so whatever you curse at me to your caddyshack 163 00:08:21,358 --> 00:08:24,023 go-for-this, go-for-that assistant when I walk out that door, 164 00:08:24,023 --> 00:08:27,727 whatever slander you send my way, 165 00:08:27,727 --> 00:08:29,847 your mother. 166 00:08:29,847 --> 00:08:34,047 Thank you. (Applause)