WF Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond - Revolutionary Optimism Despite It All

Um, so, you know, I went to an HB, well, let me, let me go first to, cause I was going to skip a big part.

So I was all, I was always an artsy kid, always a performer.

That's why I'm interested in Amy's, um, in Amy's instruments behind her.

But always an artsy kid, always a performer, in the choir, in church, in community theater.

And me and some friends started a hip hop band in junior high.

And then the hip hop band got a record deal.

I'm so excited

that you're bringing this up.

I was going to save

it for

later,

but yes, please,

please, please, please.

Yes, I was like, should I just skip over that? That would be weird.

But no, I, you know, I came up doing the golden era of hip hop, you know, very much Tribe Called Quest and Jungle Brothers and uh peak queen latifah where people were afrocentric backpackers um that sort of thing and i loved it so much and that is what i considered myself although our record deal was with someone who did more pop dance type version of rap but anyway We got a record deal.

Everybody wanted to get a record deal.

There was no such thing as streaming.

There were some notable independent rap artists, especially in the South.

But, you know, we wanted to be on MTV Cribs.

So you had to get a record deal.

And I got a record deal with my group.

We were called One Cause, One Effect.

It was a male-female rap duo before the Fugees.

Um, and I mean, we became like so many other groups, we, we became a tax write-off, um, MC Hammer and his brother who kind of ran the business because it wasn't, of course, MC Hammer, you can't be a global star performer and also like be reconciling books at a record company.

So it was mostly his brother who ran the record company.