State of the Black Union

And You don't need to be around black music for very long until you're introduced to the black church and black Christianity and sort of the social conscious of that music.

And so an exciting night for me growing up was Watching the State of the Black Union, which was an annual event that Tavis Smiley used to put on and listening to Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West.

And so that was all formative.

And I think because I had that line, when I became a Christian myself, I was also familiar with this deeply civic perspective.