"Walking In The Footprints of Fame"

Welcome to our Brothers in Conversation podcast, powered by Jesse and Shondell. Shondell, you are from Bed Stuy do or Die Brooklyn.

That little town.

That's a little town. That's nothing like Hawthorne, Nevada, population 5,000 cats and dogs. Now, Craig, I don't want to create a competition, and the show's not getting ready to start. Can start in a minute. But between you and Shondell, who's the best looking dude on the screen? Well, no, this is. No, this is a great question.

It's a great question.

No, it's not great. It's a Craig Knight question.

Oh, okay. Let Craig have it. How about that one?

Wait a minute. Shondell, did you. Wait a minute. Wait, Craig, you don't need to answer. You just did. Craig's like. Craig's like, wait, wait. Am I gonna get in trouble if I tell the truth and it's me? You did not know which way you were gonna go with that one, Craig Knight. Okay, well, look, let's get it started. So welcome to our Brothers in Conversations podcast. And this is gonna be awesome. Walking in the footprints of fame. Walking in the footprints of fame is the topic. This is June 4th, and this is episode 27. And special guest is Craig Knight, which both Shondell and I are super excited about. This is one of Shondale's. There's a thing called just talk isms, and then you got shondellisms. Craig Knight is a shondelism.

I received that meaning.

He whispered in the ears of Jesse and Lisa. I think Craig Knight would be a brilliant guest. And we bought it. We bought it. So. So welcome to the program. Craig Knight. How you feeling?

Oh, man, I got mixed emotions. But first, let me say I. I'm grateful for being here. Thank you for inviting me. I've been. I had a chance to check out your. Your show, and I think it was great. And I was honored when Shondell asked me to be on Nice. You know, and. And thanks. And I commend you for doing this because it's much needed in this time. But to answer your question, I have a lot of mixed emotions at different times. You know, some is one moment I'll be sad because of what's happening with the protesting and, you know, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. And those are just the latest. And then you have David McAtee. David McAtee was the barbecue restaurant owner feeding the protesters, and he was killed.

Wow.

Yeah. So another lost one in the hands of law enforcement, unfortunately. So you'll probably be hearing his name more soon, but. And then I get mad and angry because it's the same thing over and over and over and over again. And it just seems like we don't get justice, but they want peace, you know? And then. And then sometimes I feel good. I feel glad because I'm grateful that I'm still alive, my family's doing well, and we live to see another day. And then. And then I feel. Sometimes I just. I just feel, let's see, Sad, glad, mad and hurt.

And so these cycle. These things cycle in and out depending on what's going on or what your disposition is or. Or what else is coming out. And the challenge with all this, too, Craig, is. And I don't. I know this won't be new to you or Shondale, obviously, these are extremely tragic circumstances. And we'll get to our title feature title in a second. So I appreciate your organic sharing. I appreciate that. Organic sharing. The challenge here in all of this is this is a people matter. Yes, this is a people matter. This is a universal, global people matter. This affects all of us.

It does.

And one of the challenges that a lot of people, I think, forget is these atrocities have been going on for eons and eons of time, at least.

400 years in this country.

Come on. I mean, so. So it's really. It's really, really, really unfortunate that you want to believe that we are making advances or have made an advance, and then something like this or circumstances like this is almost like a backlash sort of thing. So it's. So I'll let Shondell weigh in, and then we'll pop over to the subject title. But. But we. I do appreciate your expression, and I have a funny feeling that a lot of people out there resonating with. With those words. Go ahead, Shondell. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that, you know, I.

Why.

Why I always appreciate Craig because he comes from a position of facts, and he comes from a position of really understanding both sides. And one thing that's important for people to really, really get is the fact that many of us are feeling those same emotions many of us have. And we've talked about it on our show before, Jess, is we feel.

A.

Touch of emotions when it comes to discrimination or any type of disparity, no matter where it comes from. And there's a lot of that that happens. And even like somebody put on official black Las Vegas on Facebook, they said, where are the black leaders? I said, well, you are a black leader. If you here talking about it. You need to be a part of the leadership. Don't look for somebody to tell you how to lead. And also embrace leadership no matter which way it comes from.

If.

If I'm not the person out marching and protesting and I'm the person behind the scenes helping to create new legislation to change everything, then you respect that person as much as you respect the person standing there going to jail. Because all of us can't go to jail. All of us can't be out marching. Somebody gotta be doing some work for permanent change. So I always look at it that we all have different gifts and talents. And one thing Stephen A. Smith said this morning on espn, he said something very, very interesting. If you actually have white friends around you and they're not educated on what we're going through and what we do, and then they say something that's ignorant, if they say something that's ignorant around you and you don't correct them, you're just as bad as they are.

Right, right, right. And what's interesting about hearing the two of you intelligent gentlemen speak is both of you. And I'm not sure if the listeners are catching this, but both of you. The key thing that I heard both of you say was couched in feeling.

Yes.

Craig talked about how he was feeling, how these things leave him feeling his feelings about it all. And then when you went to do your speaking, you begin to talk about feeling as well. And I'm not going to oversimplify the situation. It is definitely. It has created tons of challenges for many. But I really believe this also gets down to Occam's razor. Occam's razor is from the theologian from the 1300s that said, typically, the simplest solution is typically the best. And if we could do exactly what Craig Knight launched his thought pattern from. And you follow with feeling. I'm going back to the book, how you leave them feeling.

Right, right.

If we were to focus on the one single concept in my book, how you leave them feeling.

Yeah.

If you were to focus on this, just how your actions and interactions, or leaving others around you feeling, that police officer would have never made that tragic mistake. If he would have thought about what his actions were, how it was going to leave others feeling, I think he would have made a different choice.

Yeah.

And so I. There's a friend of mine that was a copy editor on the book, and she pointed out something that I had never even seen. It was just a statement to me, me. But she says, well, who made this quote? I said, well, it's not A quote. She said, well, no, I think it is. I said, no, it's just a statement. She said, no, this is a quote. And the quote was, be careful of the people you surround yourself with because your quality of life depends on it.

That's good. That's a fact. And that's a fact. Yeah.

Be careful of the people you surround yourself with because your quality of life depends on it. Those additional officers that stood by and did nothing, they were surrounding themselves with that negative, terrible action that the person took.

The culture.

Right. You see what I'm saying? So with that being said, that's my point. I'm saying that if we were to reduce this whole chaotic challenges down to one simple notion of how do my actions and interactions leave others feeling, we all might make better choices. What do you think, Greg?

Absolutely. And going back to what you just said about the. What the officer did and how he was just. He was relaxed and he was comfortable with what he was doing. And. And I want to correct something real quick because I. I thought about this too. We all thought he had his hand in his pocket, and actually he didn't have his hand in his pocket. He was wearing black gloves and he was using. He had his fist balled up, and he was using his fist to put more pressure on his leg.

Oh, wow.

If you. And if you.

The.

The picture, the still shots of him with that look on his face like, yeah, I know what I'm doing.

Wow.

I don't care. Because I've been getting away with this type of attitude.

It wasn't out of the ordinary. Your point is, is it wasn't out of the ordinary. That's your point.

Right, Right. And that's why it was upgraded to second degree, because there was some premeditation in there. He knew at some point in that eight minutes, he knew what he was doing. Plus, you had Mr. Floyd begging for his life. You had witnesses telling them what was going on. So no one can say they didn't know. They didn't hear. They didn't. They was being told over. I had to. I watched the video again last night because I think this is important. I know it was hard to watch the first time, and I know people say, oh, I can't watch it. But you know what? You have to watch it, and I'm gonna tell you why. When you watch that video, you really feel our ancestors speaking. You really feel everything. The ones that are not here, the ones that are still here, but are too old to protest and get involved, but they did their part. You can feel them. You can feel the civil rights movement. You can feel Jim Crow. You can feel Emmett Till. You can feel all of that. Right.

Because it's all about how you leave them feeling.

Right.

Right there.

You spot the feeling again and I get your words. And let me stack with you on this. Is that the reason why you're making this request, Craig, is not just for the watching purpose. The reason why you're making this request is for the internal reality of it all. If you just simply hear the words. Our minds, we don't think in words. We think in pictures.

Yes.

So you're asking us to see the pictures so that we can feel the feelings. That's the point.

You need to experience that moment. And then that way you can be that much more empathetic to the family.

Exactly.

To everyone. And what I also got with that, when I watched it again, the reason why it was. It was easy for that. That ex officer now to do what he did, and the reason why he was so comfortable with doing it and immune to doing it pretty much is because to him, black lives don't matter. Black lives don't matter. It's easy to do that when something doesn't matter to you. It's easy to do that when there's no value Right. In people. That's why he was able to do.

It, when there's no value in people. And you have distorted internal values, right?

Yes.

It's interesting because, you know, I remember my grandfather telling me the story of his walk in the south in the 1940s.

Right.

And so it takes you back to those times when my grandfather was saying, I just want you to understand, grandson, that when I walked in this town, when I was in town, I couldn't look anybody in the eye, because if I looked them in the eye, there was a chance that I would end up on a tree. Now, on my way home, walking down the road, I walked past all these trees. Now, remember, this is North Carolina.

Yes.

I'm walking past these trees and I could smell the stench of black people when they were lynched. Because what most people think is they just lynched them and hung them from a tree. He said, I want you to understand they burned them. So you smell the burning flesh, and those things rear up in you and give you an emotion. And guess what? Most people will have an emotion of anger. And they're gonna have emotion of anger towards people who look like the people that did those things. So that's where all of that rage comes from. Now, where. What I try to do is educate people on this, though, is one thing that I've learned is many people have came back with anger, they've come back with frustration, they've come back with killing, they've come back with burning, they've come back with looting. And that solves nothing. That just didn't solve anything.

No. Because two wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Now, if you take your anger and you take that anger to the polls and you take that anger to the census, and you take that anger to the legislators, and you take that anger and guess what? If we can get protesters to not only show up when somebody's killed, but if they can show up at city hall, if they can show up at the lvcva, if they can show up at the state legislature in Carson City, if they can show up to all of those places, we'll have permanent chains.

Well, that's pretty powerful from the two of you. And with that being said, that's an excellent segue. Both Craig and Shondell, I like the way you started out by talking about the walk. You talked about the walk. So let's slide into the walk of the footprint of fame. And when we talk about that, walking into the footprint of fame, what does that sound like that actually means? When we talk about that as we get into the subject matter, walking into the footprints of fame, what is that like for you, Craig, as we just launched the subject of that, what's that like for you?

Wow. Two things. Okay. I've. I've had the. I've been blessed to live and experience both sides of the fence.

Okay.

And what I mean by that is that I was born in the Bronx, New York in 1964.

Okay.

And I have a family that's, that's famous and legends in the music business.

Okay.

So growing up in the Bronx, my mother raised me and my younger brother. I had a stepfather for a moment and then it was just us. Right.

But my mother taught. But most of the time your mom was the, she was, she was the 100 parent and you had some part time parenting here and there from on the father's side, Correct?

Okay, Correct. So growing up in the Bronx, she taught me to be independent. I had to be strong. I was the eldest in my generation. So my aunts and my aunties and all that they gave, they, they were, they trusted me with the responsibility of my little cousins.

Wow.

And their nieces and nephews. Right. So I would always, always had that to be that mature Adult in the room, even at 9, 10, and 11.

Right.

And then with my father's side, with them traveling and building their career in the music business, living in Atlanta and then Detroit, you know, during the Motown days and all that kind of stuff, I would visit, like, in the summertime and stuff like that. So I would see that side of it, you know what I mean? It was pretty cool and everything. And I wanted to always stay because I thought it was cool. But my mom was like, no, you gotta come back and go to school. You know? And so I'll go back and forth to New York, Detroit, and then also through my life, I've had. I started out in public school and kindergarten in first grade. Then I. And this is in New York. Then I was in Catholic school from second, third, fourth grade and half of fifth grade. Then we moved to Roosevelt island in New York. And that was in 1976, 75, something like that. So I was. Then I was back in public school for half of fifth grade, sixth grade. And then we moved to. Back to the Bronx for the seventh, eighth and ninth grade. And the seventh grade, it was in 1977. And then that's when hip hop was real. Before the world knew about it, you had a choice. Before that, I was into playing drums. I was fascinated with drums.

Okay.

So when hip hop started really developing and coming out, there were four things that you had to choose to do, pretty much based on your talent and your gift and your passion.

Right?

And I'm gonna get to that later in this. In this conversation and see how that connects. And so I chose dj. And the reason why I chose dj, because the dj's job was to catch the break beats in the record, the intro, the break beats, and keep it going. So the DJ actually became the drummer for the rapper. And when a rapper's rapping, the B Boys start breaking. So usually the dj, we called it MC back in the day, Right? Right, mc. Cause you MC the party and you rap two in there. Then you had the break dances. That was the visual entertainment. Then you had someone who would capture all of that nostalgia and put it in a piece, which was Graffiti.

Okay?

So they would capture the moment in graffiti. So those were the four main components in hip hop in the very beginning.

Right?

All right, so back and forth with that. Then again, I was in junior high school, seventh, eighth and ninth grade. Now eighth and ninth grade, I was visiting. My family had moved to Vegas by then. And this was, like, in 78 and 79, because they were doing a residency at the Aladdin Hotel, I think it was at the time, the Desert Inn, the Hilton, you know. So they moved here because they had those different residency, and that's when residency was becoming a big thing. So in visiting Vegas in seven summers of 78 and 79, I really liked the mountains. It gave me a different experience from the East Coast. Right. And I was like, wait a minute, there's no humidity out here. Snow out here, and you see mountains instead of buildings on. I mean, it was like laid out. It was more laid back and spread out. So when I graduated junior high school and I was going into the 10th grade, because in New York, high school pretty much started in 10th grade grade. And I told my mom when I visited the summer of 80, I said, you know what? I want to stay here and I want to stay with my dad and get to know him more. This, that, and the other. That's how I ended up being a vague in Las Vegas.

And what age was that?

That was in 1980. So I was. Okay, 13.

Okay.

14.

Okay.

And that was 1980. And all my, I had cousins, brothers and sisters that was already going to Bishop Gorman High School when it was on Maryland Parkway.

Wow. All right, that's a big deal, because they were definitely the minority going to Bishop Gorman High School back in that period.

Absolutely, absolutely. So I, I, I, they put me in Bishop Gorman High school for the 10th, 11th, and the 12th grade. So now I'm going from public school back to Catholic school.

Wow.

You see what I mean?

Dude. Dude. You'd go in like this. Yeah, yeah.

And it was a blessing.

No, it was a huge. But you didn't know that at the time.

No, I didn't.

You didn't feel that at the time?

Craig, can you. Because I don't know, I don't know if you stated who your family was, because I think you, you went right into it, but tell everybody who you're talking about.

Okay. And the reason why I don't.

Okay.

The reason why I don't lead with that.

Yeah, I got you. Okay. So let me, let me tell you this because, you know, I, I was so determined because of my upbringing. My mother raised me to be independent and didn't want me to get caught up in the entertainment industry and music industry, in that whole lifestyle. You know, I, I, she embraced in me to make a name for myself and to do for myself and not use my family to advance.

Nice. What, what age did she do that, Craig?

Far back as I can remember.

Oh, my God. Wait, wait, what's your mother's name.

Mary Smith.

Mary. Let's, let's give a whoo, whoo, whoo for Mary Smith. Let me tell you something before you finish your story. Let me just tell you something that was cutting edge thinking and philosophy now, and certainly back in the day, it would have been much easier for her to have you link on to the status of the family, with the family before he had already built. She's telling you, no, no, no, no. You make your own way. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You got the same last name as what you bought, ready to get into it. It tells. But. But at the end of the day, you're not living by your last name. You're living by what you build, by what you grow. You need to grow your internal fortitude, not. Not what others think of you because of who you're related to, because of who you are in the world. So your mother, we. Is she still surviving, your mother?

Yes.

Okay. I hope she listened to this and I hope she doesn't take this disrespectful. Your mother was a badass. Because, Craig, that was very, very impressive for her to take the opposite notion from human nature. Human nature is to grab on. She says, no, you can still be connected, but you need to make your own way. So I'm very, I'm very impressed. Tell.

Tell us more than I thank her for that. And I'm blessed because it full circle, me being general manager of a radio station and throughout my life being that DJ piece is what actually the reason why I am who I am and where I am right now. And to show you that.