April 17, 2026
Georgia Anne Muldrow On The Personal Origin Of "Stay Woke"
This segment from the Questlove Show was so powerful, we had to share it on its own.
Georgia Anne Muldrow breaks down the deeply personal origins of her “Stay Woke” lyric from Erykah Badu’s “Master Teacher Medley" over 18 years ago, and reflects on how its meaning has evolved—and been distorted—over time.
Questlove and special guest Open Mike Eagle share their reactions to her story. Please make sure you've heard the nearly two hour conversation between Georgia and Ahmir that published earlier this week.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:00
Speaker 1: The quest Left show is a production of iHeart Radio. Okay, I was going to avoid this question, So here's the thing. Like I initially, I initially had so many musical questions, but because I didn't know you as a human being, I wanted to go through that route and just ask about your life as a human and a creator.
00:00:41
Speaker 2: But I'm going to close on.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: This last question, which is, how does it feel well to see something that you created, as in three words, that suddenly becomes all my It's like you you named this period like when we look at the time period when we speak of, uh, the Jim Crow period, when we speak of the civil rights period, when we speak of the reconstruction period, we will probably call the twenties. I don't know, but I know the word woke is going to to enter the lexicon when it comes to like describing it. What point did you realize, Holy shit, this like when I realized that, you know, white political pundits were now using it, when our enemies were using it especially I.
00:01:48
Speaker 2: Kept saying, right.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: But I kept saying, like God, I pray to Guy that Georgia like trademark that word so that it stays with her. When did you first coin the term was it when you were doing Master Teacher or like how did it?
00:02:07
Speaker 2: How did it come to be?
00:02:08
Speaker 3: It's so interesting, right because just even with Massive Teacher, right, like that song, like that was a day before I had a nervous breakdown, Like if I meant anything, I said it that day, do you know what I'm saying? So like if I meant anything, if I was like about it, like so many times I be so cringey about that song because like of what would happen the day after I made that song, you know, and it and I think that that's something so beautiful because it's like when you mean something so much, anything can happen. When you're actually cheating yourself, anything can happen. And so the state of Walk came from me and Lakeisha Benjamin being in New York in school trying to figure out how we're gonna get it out through the music like Cold Trane and and like you know, getting it out through the music, finding language for what it is that we're experiencing, you know. And at that time, Lakeisha Benjamin, I, like you know, we were jam session mates, you know, because I decided to drop out of the jazz program to just go learn by just being put in the blender, you.
00:03:18
Speaker 4: Know, and.
00:03:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but she graduated.
00:03:26
Speaker 5: I ain't graduate.
00:03:28
Speaker 3: So it was just like those things was just like it was wild because there were certain things that the composition teacher didn't know what to tell me what my chords were, and it was all types of weird stuff going on like that. I'm just sat in the stage for coming from a community as you well know, like being from Philly. You know what I'm saying, Gamble up, somebody got a coofy on. Like it's like it's like somebody got consciousness, you know what I'm saying. Oh, Jay's got animal rights songs, they got chugarhoy, they got branded. It's like they're going through the whole gamut of like every walk.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: A lot, you feel me.
00:04:01
Speaker 3: So I'm just saying it like because you're on my side, you feel me, decided to put you there. But like coming from the Mert Park where it's like like coming from the world stage, like my dad owned like a coop for every day of the year. Jazz or it's so called jazz right was never not an afrocentric expression in my whole life. It was always an afrocentric expression. It was always a diaspora, you know, a gem of the diaspora. It was never a question of is jazz even black. So when I go to school and they go like, jazz isn't black at all, I have to stand up and be like, sir, you lying. Children are from Japan and different parts of the world because they want to learn the truth. They're paying you to tell the truth, and now you're not telling the truth, so and.
00:04:49
Speaker 5: I have to tell you the truth.
00:04:51
Speaker 4: So it's like this was woke.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: Okay, this was the same thing as not pledging allegiance in school, you know, and like it was like the build up of that time at the time going to MARCHI again's occupation in Palestine as a child in elementary school, junior hi, you know, all of that kind of stuff, like being politically active since birth, right, going like, well, how does this translate into tones? Right? So we're like talking and talking for like a long conversation like this one, but even longer. Yeah, like marathon conversation. I'm going to see her tomorrow, but we're trying to get to the bottom of it because it was like there is a translation for this and so but we couldn't get down to the bottom of it in the night, so Keisha, of course would be the first one to fall asleep, and then she'd be like, yo, I'm trying to stay woke.
00:05:43
Speaker 5: But yeah, I'm trying to stay woke, but I'm I'm passing out. I'm like, yo, I'll trying to stay woke.
00:05:52
Speaker 3: And for me, I was in the thing just as a visual I've been always been a visual artist. So what I would do is is somebody said something cool like it was like my it was like my visual Prince Paul, the way I could take a snapshot out of something I love so much, I write it on my clothes, just as like it's like I write on my clothes, or like if like my roommate say Dancy Dancy and I wrote it. I wrote my clothes Dancy Dancy, you know. And I remember she's like, heyo, you're making me cringe with that shit stopped that ship.
00:06:23
Speaker 5: I'm like no, no, like no, this is part of my thoughts, Like shut up, you're right.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: So it was like that's what it was. But I remember very vividly I wrote stay Woke with a kiddie marker on this old white t shirt, you know, and it was just right there over my heart, and I remember I wrote it as a reminder not to kill myself, you know. I wrote it as a reminder to like survive the day that, don't kill yourself yet you know, stay woke. Like yeah, it was definitely like during those moments, like you know what I mean. And just the sheer amount of volume in my lifetime of these black student union programs having their fundraising T shirts be saying stay woke, and it's like the NASA logo and they sample, like they sample and logos and then say stay woke. The amount of stay woke shirts, like even before the politicians did it, it was the student the students that did it, the black students. That when I saw that coming back at me, I said, whoa, it was real like there had been a transmission made, you know. And that's where I just have such a love for like being kind of person what concepts me more than me than like than exposure. You know, I care more about what people care about themselves. I care more about what people think about themselves than I do. What they think of me or if they know me. I want to know that if after I've been here on this planet, that they people have strived to know theirself more that they know who they are. They they value that they're special, that their uniqueness is intrinsic to the elevation of us coming together as a whole in a permanent, conscious, every day, every moment kind of way. Well, if you don't love yourself, you can't do that as a group, you know. So I care more about that, you know. So in that care when you see there's flashes of that kind of care, that just like thing and it really happens that way. It's wonderful. And then when people who are subscribed to whiteness as a religious spirit, you know, with the religious spirit of whiteness, when they say that they hate me, then I'm like, that means I'm doing everything right.
00:08:50
Speaker 4: This is great. You know.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: It's the new nigga where it's like they could say woke. They call somebody woke and wokeism is killing America. I'm like, this is one Like I love that like for me, because the deal is, you know what, for me, it was too for real mirrors Like yo, I got songs about Venezuela that's like, you know, seventeen years old, like you know, I really do. So I went through a lot of intimidation under like behind the radar. I went through a lot of different things like that, you know, but I still get small because I'm still alive. They can't do nothing to me, you know. So it's like going through those things, right when they say that, that verifies those things like yeah, yeah, you can't even hold that back. Oh I do scare you?
00:09:39
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:09:40
Speaker 3: And and the part that's scaries that there's more of me everywhere. There's more people who have taken creative licenses to be all of who they are, you know, and to not withhold their blackness for love, you know, not with their self love right, the love of themselves so that someone else can love them. Because now it's all following apart. It's like, you know, if everybody focus on loving themselves more than we wouldn't have this drama. People wouldn't be hurting other people. You do your personal growth exercise, you know, you figure out what's wrong with you. You know what I'm saying, And sometimes you got to call for help and get to figure out what's wrong with you. But that's a way of loving yourself instead of hurting people. And so I just always hope that for me, woke mean to be undomesticated. You know, your awareness is undomesticated. You know, there's something of a bit wild and feral about you that hopes for good things.
00:10:55
Speaker 6: So I heard this clip of Georgia Animaldreaux and you're asking her about coining the term woke. Yeah, the turn has become so synonymous with our age and just how she feels about the scale that that's taken on and the story of the the original Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that answer, and you know, because I'll admit that.
00:11:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:11:26
Speaker 1: So oftentimes the gatekeeping issue of like this language.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: Of black folks, like once it enters the.
00:11:36
Speaker 4: Mainstream John for instance, Yeah, then.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Suddling, it's over, Like it's over, you know, close the shop up. But now I feel like some sort of like renewed sense of purpose of keeping it in with purpose, you know, now that I know her definition of it, of it all and of course at its ugliest, currently being used as a way to weaponize or to describe, you know, I.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Guess the coloquialism of just what we're supposed to.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: You know, you hear woke politics or you know, but.
00:12:15
Speaker 6: It's interesting too, because what when people are railing against woke politics, they're like railing against humanism. Yeah, liket, they're railing against caring about people who don't look like safe.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a safe way.
00:12:30
Speaker 6: It's the new inward right. I mean what in word was for the nineties or whatever. Now it's like woke politics, which you know.
00:12:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again hearing her describe what that means to her and how that like saved her life, like.
00:12:47
Speaker 4: Kind of literally saved their life.
00:12:49
Speaker 6: And I know Georgia personally, she talked in that clip about running around in the Myrt Park. I used to run around the Murt Park with her, Like we go back years and years and years. And when she said that about like she wrote that to like stay alive. She wrote that to give her fuel to not kill herself. Like I felt that so deeply because she's she's like that kind of person. Like you know, there are people in life that are just fireballs, like they are just made of energy from somewhere else and they don't belong here on this plane in this time. And a lot of times, like people like that, with that purity of spirit, they struggle to exist in this world. And it's amazing that in her challenge to stay connected to people, she comes up with a term like that, captures it and gives it to the world.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I you know, she gets all the gratitude for me for that. And again, normally slang, especially now might only slang used to last.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: For two years.
00:14:00
Speaker 6: When's the last time you were at six seven? So well, I watch a lot of NBA basketball. So whenever they still doing that, whenever they cut to the to the little kids at the.
00:14:10
Speaker 4: Game, they they don't like, they don't, they don't know.
00:14:14
Speaker 6: It's like how they used to floss dance ten years ago just because they didn't know what else to do with their bodies. It's like that kind of thing. Now that's what they're It's a default. Got you Yeah, so for you, what does the term mean now?
00:14:28
Speaker 2: For you? Personally?
00:14:29
Speaker 6: I only see people saying it now in a negative connotation. I only see it on Twitter. I only see it like or hear it when somebody who I don't agree with is talking about politics or media like it's a terrible sort of claiming that they've made of It reminds me of like hotep, like that term used.
00:14:53
Speaker 2: To miss Chicago.
00:14:55
Speaker 6: I don't know if it's Chicago. I first started hearing it in college. I went to Southern Illinois University, so it was people from Chicago, people from Saint Louis, but it was just a type of person like the hit.
00:15:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: But I remember Erica playing it for me maybe two months before the album came out, And you know, there's there's two parts of that song. It's a six to seven maybe six or seven minute song, and initially when she was playing it, like I was totally missing it because the first half of the song is just chaotic in its arrangement, like you know, Erica Georgia creative Partners like that whole creative circle.
00:15:42
Speaker 2: Yeah that that that that system.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: And of course the second half, which is just Erica James Poyson Blaw doing a slow down somba version of it, That's when I really like locked into it, yeah, and and then absorbed the song that way. It's you know, Master Teacher used to always that was like my favorite cut on that record. It's weird, like I don't think anyone has We're not mating people credit that song or Eric Abadu as the originator behind it.
00:16:16
Speaker 6: I mean, but it's much like six seven in that way, right where it's this cultural language that everybody's using, but nobody even questions where it came from most of the time.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think people know.
00:16:28
Speaker 1: I'm very slow in trying to not make it like the self congratulatory thing.
00:16:33
Speaker 4: All I do know is that.
00:16:35
Speaker 1: You know, it had a life of its own, like at the height of Okay players powers as far as the boards are concerned, like it lived there. And then, of course two thousand and six to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight was around the time when people started migrating from Okay Player and just going to Twitter, which really starts the genesis of what we now turn.
00:17:01
Speaker 2: Black Twitter or whatever.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: And so yeah, once I saw used outside of the Okay Player circle, that's when even I was amazed that, like the viralness of it, because I just thought it was just inside speak that.
00:17:16
Speaker 6: But then and then the Childish Gambino song, Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that I think that really puts I.
00:17:24
Speaker 2: Totally forgot about that part.
00:17:25
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, that put it in the stratosphere. And then everybody was like whatever that moment was, everybody glombed on to the term I feel like after.
00:17:36
Speaker 1: That, right, oh yeah, well then it got nashed on and then overused and whatnot. Do you find yourself using it ever and just your everyday talking vernacular?
00:17:48
Speaker 6: But I'm not sure I ever did, though. Do you feel like you have permission to use it or not? Well, I feel like if I'm using it, then I'm using it in that intentionally political way that sort of removed from the original meaning, Like like the original meaning was just kind of like stay away, stay aware, yeah, stay aware, right, you know, But like now it's got all of this, it's got different levels of culture all rolled into it now, so that when you say it, it now touches on the way that most people use it now, which is that negative connotation that political. So in this tug of war, should we try to hang on with all of our might or just like that's that's And that takes me back to the hotep thing where I remember I had an argument on Twitter with somebody.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: Someone call you a hotel.
00:18:39
Speaker 6: No, nobody eould call me a hotel. But I was arguing with somebody on Twitter. And this had to be like twenty eleven, twenty twelve or something like that, when it was first being introduced to me that some people within our community that had values that I didn't align with were calling themselves that like they were they were claiming the negative common connotation of it and calling themselves that.
00:19:07
Speaker 2: Do you know the origins of it?
00:19:09
Speaker 6: I don't know the actual I know how I first heard it, I don't know the actual origin.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: The first time I heard it common rhyme on it.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: On Ghetto Heaven, he said, hoole tep.
00:19:23
Speaker 1: That's the first time I heard it used in the second verse or the last verse of Ghetto Heaven. Actually, I thought he was just calling somebody a Hoe's Rasha's world famous for subliminal dishes.
00:19:41
Speaker 4: Back to this day, people don't know.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: I still when I see like seven or eight figures, if they don't respond negative to me, I'm like.
00:19:52
Speaker 6: Okay, you still have nothing. It went over your head, Like twenty seven years later, you still haven't listened to.
00:19:59
Speaker 1: Like Wanted for Chocoal the album, been like, hey wait a minute, but yeah, that's the first time I used it, and I.
00:20:06
Speaker 6: And that was when that was when I was in undergrad and that's when people were using it very sincerely as a way for like afrocentric people to communicate with each other and like greet each other on the yard or at the coffee shop or at the open mic like and it was it was like a term that people were using to try to point back to, like our africanness.
00:20:27
Speaker 4: Right, it was seen as like, oh, this is cool, like.
00:20:30
Speaker 2: But then it almost leads into corniness.
00:20:32
Speaker 6: And because and and it's funny because the negative aspect of it, a negative way to look at it to me, is crystallized in Fonte's verse on Yo Yo, right, and he describes that that that coffee shop doing trying to stop him from eating bacon or is talk down to him morally and ethically, but he's still all about the holes or whatever.
00:20:56
Speaker 2: To me, it.
00:20:56
Speaker 6: Literally ended to me like, oh he fined. He didn't use the word, but he defined the whole TEP and the whole TEPS politics and the things that were negative around people using that term and what And it was really what women were trying to call out about people like that, right that they presented this sort of cultural uniform. They was on some bullshit.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: So WHOTEP is quasi an afrocentric hypocrite?
00:21:28
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's afrocentric hypocrite.
00:21:30
Speaker 6: It's like a wolf in Sheep's clothing in some senses like.
00:21:34
Speaker 1: Like but not to be confused with well right now, like we have our own level of podcast bros who you know for the offering their word salad kind of.
00:21:51
Speaker 4: Gibbering manisphere right stuff.
00:21:54
Speaker 1: And but not coming in the name of a koofi or that sort of thing.
00:22:00
Speaker 2: Damn. I just remember Jim Jones coined the term koofy smack, So I actually had to look on.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: Urban Dictionary to see what the proper so the original meaning derived from ancient Egyptian word meaning to be at peace or contentment, used as a greeting amongst.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: Black people since the nineteen seventies.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: Even then, when Tarik said it, because I'm not well versed in Marvel DC comics thing, I thought he was just referring to some sort of character that I'd never heard of. So to Wreek somewhere in between a pretentious, a pretentious Afrocentric and the brainschild of the most dangerous man in comedy.
00:22:52
Speaker 2: So there you go.
00:22:53
Speaker 6: But I say I bring up Potep just to answer your question because I was thinking about when I had an argument on Twitter, I was I was offended that people were trying to use the negative aspect of potep is like a term of endearment among themselves. Like basically that was like the death knell of the original meaning. Was these people who were like, yes, I am like that, call me hotel please, Like, oh, that's horrible. And I think we lost that fight, and now I'm thinking we're woke. I don't I don't know if we need to fight for the term. I don't know if we need to fight for I don't know if that's where our effort is best used, because culture and language is going to do what culture and language.
00:23:33
Speaker 4: Does, So we should just let it go and see what happens.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: I think, see if the body.
00:23:38
Speaker 6: I think we always have to strive for new ways to expressly by jack and sink.
00:23:43
Speaker 2: Into the water or hang on to the door.
00:23:46
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, now that I truly know where.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: Georgia's heart is, i'd say, you know, I'm why should.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: We let it go?
00:23:58
Speaker 4: Like, well, does she want to fight for it?
00:24:01
Speaker 1: That's a good question, I'd I would wager that she's not concerned. Yeah, real artists aren't concerned of legacy things or whatever. And I'm certain for her at least it's weird. Man, people always want a piece of legacy and importance, but once it gets defined, then it could be a burden. Like I'm certain to this day, I'm almost certain that Illmatic as an album is more burdensome denias than it is a celebration of.
00:24:32
Speaker 2: A beautiful work of art.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: So it's almost like once you put something in the zegeist or whatever, like, it might make the individual that achieved that thing feel otherwise burdened because they either have to live up to it or that's only the thing that they're going to be associated with.
00:24:52
Speaker 4: It's a literal cultural weight.
00:24:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, so to woke or not to woke. But I will say this much unlike the word death. Oh boy, you remember when Rick Rubin had the funeral for the word deaf.
00:25:03
Speaker 4: No, I don't remember that at all. Wait you don't remember this, No, I don't see.
00:25:09
Speaker 2: You have a little subtle.
00:25:11
Speaker 1: Ways of making me just want to Rick, because you do this age thing, what thing where it's like yeah, man, we're like like minded once and then I'll say like, hey man, you remember da da da da da.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: And you're like, motherfucker. I wasn't of age yet.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I was of it. I don't know what year this happened. My first record was easy E all right, So that said Rick Ruben of course, pro prior to of Deaf Jam. He decided when he left Deaf Jam in eighty seven eighty eight he started Deaf American eighty nine to ninety and literally held a real funeral for the word death.
00:25:49
Speaker 6: That might have been a one time, a funeral for a word actually worked. That might have been a one time.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I sort of felt some sort of way because again, it's hip hop.
00:26:01
Speaker 4: Slang, right, and who is he?
00:26:03
Speaker 2: All right?
00:26:04
Speaker 1: But when I looked at the funeral, like it was a bunch of rock cats, like some of his Slayer friends some of the but like literally Rick Ruver is sitting in front with I think he uh, you know, like when you're mourning widow or whatever. Like yes, he had a veil on and all those things. So it's like cartoonishly over the top. So I didn't know how to feel about that. But yeah, so Deaf had a funeral, an actual funeral. Look it up, kids, But yeah, stay woke, stay woke.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: There you go. Quest Love Show is a production I Heeart Radio
Speaker 1: The quest Left show is a production of iHeart Radio. Okay, I was going to avoid this question, So here's the thing. Like I initially, I initially had so many musical questions, but because I didn't know you as a human being, I wanted to go through that route and just ask about your life as a human and a creator.
00:00:41
Speaker 2: But I'm going to close on.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: This last question, which is, how does it feel well to see something that you created, as in three words, that suddenly becomes all my It's like you you named this period like when we look at the time period when we speak of, uh, the Jim Crow period, when we speak of the civil rights period, when we speak of the reconstruction period, we will probably call the twenties. I don't know, but I know the word woke is going to to enter the lexicon when it comes to like describing it. What point did you realize, Holy shit, this like when I realized that, you know, white political pundits were now using it, when our enemies were using it especially I.
00:01:48
Speaker 2: Kept saying, right.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: But I kept saying, like God, I pray to Guy that Georgia like trademark that word so that it stays with her. When did you first coin the term was it when you were doing Master Teacher or like how did it?
00:02:07
Speaker 2: How did it come to be?
00:02:08
Speaker 3: It's so interesting, right because just even with Massive Teacher, right, like that song, like that was a day before I had a nervous breakdown, Like if I meant anything, I said it that day, do you know what I'm saying? So like if I meant anything, if I was like about it, like so many times I be so cringey about that song because like of what would happen the day after I made that song, you know, and it and I think that that's something so beautiful because it's like when you mean something so much, anything can happen. When you're actually cheating yourself, anything can happen. And so the state of Walk came from me and Lakeisha Benjamin being in New York in school trying to figure out how we're gonna get it out through the music like Cold Trane and and like you know, getting it out through the music, finding language for what it is that we're experiencing, you know. And at that time, Lakeisha Benjamin, I, like you know, we were jam session mates, you know, because I decided to drop out of the jazz program to just go learn by just being put in the blender, you.
00:03:18
Speaker 4: Know, and.
00:03:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but she graduated.
00:03:26
Speaker 5: I ain't graduate.
00:03:28
Speaker 3: So it was just like those things was just like it was wild because there were certain things that the composition teacher didn't know what to tell me what my chords were, and it was all types of weird stuff going on like that. I'm just sat in the stage for coming from a community as you well know, like being from Philly. You know what I'm saying, Gamble up, somebody got a coofy on. Like it's like it's like somebody got consciousness, you know what I'm saying. Oh, Jay's got animal rights songs, they got chugarhoy, they got branded. It's like they're going through the whole gamut of like every walk.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: A lot, you feel me.
00:04:01
Speaker 3: So I'm just saying it like because you're on my side, you feel me, decided to put you there. But like coming from the Mert Park where it's like like coming from the world stage, like my dad owned like a coop for every day of the year. Jazz or it's so called jazz right was never not an afrocentric expression in my whole life. It was always an afrocentric expression. It was always a diaspora, you know, a gem of the diaspora. It was never a question of is jazz even black. So when I go to school and they go like, jazz isn't black at all, I have to stand up and be like, sir, you lying. Children are from Japan and different parts of the world because they want to learn the truth. They're paying you to tell the truth, and now you're not telling the truth, so and.
00:04:49
Speaker 5: I have to tell you the truth.
00:04:51
Speaker 4: So it's like this was woke.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: Okay, this was the same thing as not pledging allegiance in school, you know, and like it was like the build up of that time at the time going to MARCHI again's occupation in Palestine as a child in elementary school, junior hi, you know, all of that kind of stuff, like being politically active since birth, right, going like, well, how does this translate into tones? Right? So we're like talking and talking for like a long conversation like this one, but even longer. Yeah, like marathon conversation. I'm going to see her tomorrow, but we're trying to get to the bottom of it because it was like there is a translation for this and so but we couldn't get down to the bottom of it in the night, so Keisha, of course would be the first one to fall asleep, and then she'd be like, yo, I'm trying to stay woke.
00:05:43
Speaker 5: But yeah, I'm trying to stay woke, but I'm I'm passing out. I'm like, yo, I'll trying to stay woke.
00:05:52
Speaker 3: And for me, I was in the thing just as a visual I've been always been a visual artist. So what I would do is is somebody said something cool like it was like my it was like my visual Prince Paul, the way I could take a snapshot out of something I love so much, I write it on my clothes, just as like it's like I write on my clothes, or like if like my roommate say Dancy Dancy and I wrote it. I wrote my clothes Dancy Dancy, you know. And I remember she's like, heyo, you're making me cringe with that shit stopped that ship.
00:06:23
Speaker 5: I'm like no, no, like no, this is part of my thoughts, Like shut up, you're right.
00:06:28
Speaker 3: So it was like that's what it was. But I remember very vividly I wrote stay Woke with a kiddie marker on this old white t shirt, you know, and it was just right there over my heart, and I remember I wrote it as a reminder not to kill myself, you know. I wrote it as a reminder to like survive the day that, don't kill yourself yet you know, stay woke. Like yeah, it was definitely like during those moments, like you know what I mean. And just the sheer amount of volume in my lifetime of these black student union programs having their fundraising T shirts be saying stay woke, and it's like the NASA logo and they sample, like they sample and logos and then say stay woke. The amount of stay woke shirts, like even before the politicians did it, it was the student the students that did it, the black students. That when I saw that coming back at me, I said, whoa, it was real like there had been a transmission made, you know. And that's where I just have such a love for like being kind of person what concepts me more than me than like than exposure. You know, I care more about what people care about themselves. I care more about what people think about themselves than I do. What they think of me or if they know me. I want to know that if after I've been here on this planet, that they people have strived to know theirself more that they know who they are. They they value that they're special, that their uniqueness is intrinsic to the elevation of us coming together as a whole in a permanent, conscious, every day, every moment kind of way. Well, if you don't love yourself, you can't do that as a group, you know. So I care more about that, you know. So in that care when you see there's flashes of that kind of care, that just like thing and it really happens that way. It's wonderful. And then when people who are subscribed to whiteness as a religious spirit, you know, with the religious spirit of whiteness, when they say that they hate me, then I'm like, that means I'm doing everything right.
00:08:50
Speaker 4: This is great. You know.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: It's the new nigga where it's like they could say woke. They call somebody woke and wokeism is killing America. I'm like, this is one Like I love that like for me, because the deal is, you know what, for me, it was too for real mirrors Like yo, I got songs about Venezuela that's like, you know, seventeen years old, like you know, I really do. So I went through a lot of intimidation under like behind the radar. I went through a lot of different things like that, you know, but I still get small because I'm still alive. They can't do nothing to me, you know. So it's like going through those things, right when they say that, that verifies those things like yeah, yeah, you can't even hold that back. Oh I do scare you?
00:09:39
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:09:40
Speaker 3: And and the part that's scaries that there's more of me everywhere. There's more people who have taken creative licenses to be all of who they are, you know, and to not withhold their blackness for love, you know, not with their self love right, the love of themselves so that someone else can love them. Because now it's all following apart. It's like, you know, if everybody focus on loving themselves more than we wouldn't have this drama. People wouldn't be hurting other people. You do your personal growth exercise, you know, you figure out what's wrong with you. You know what I'm saying, And sometimes you got to call for help and get to figure out what's wrong with you. But that's a way of loving yourself instead of hurting people. And so I just always hope that for me, woke mean to be undomesticated. You know, your awareness is undomesticated. You know, there's something of a bit wild and feral about you that hopes for good things.
00:10:55
Speaker 6: So I heard this clip of Georgia Animaldreaux and you're asking her about coining the term woke. Yeah, the turn has become so synonymous with our age and just how she feels about the scale that that's taken on and the story of the the original Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that answer, and you know, because I'll admit that.
00:11:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:11:26
Speaker 1: So oftentimes the gatekeeping issue of like this language.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: Of black folks, like once it enters the.
00:11:36
Speaker 4: Mainstream John for instance, Yeah, then.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Suddling, it's over, Like it's over, you know, close the shop up. But now I feel like some sort of like renewed sense of purpose of keeping it in with purpose, you know, now that I know her definition of it, of it all and of course at its ugliest, currently being used as a way to weaponize or to describe, you know, I.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Guess the coloquialism of just what we're supposed to.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: You know, you hear woke politics or you know, but.
00:12:15
Speaker 6: It's interesting too, because what when people are railing against woke politics, they're like railing against humanism. Yeah, liket, they're railing against caring about people who don't look like safe.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a safe way.
00:12:30
Speaker 6: It's the new inward right. I mean what in word was for the nineties or whatever. Now it's like woke politics, which you know.
00:12:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again hearing her describe what that means to her and how that like saved her life, like.
00:12:47
Speaker 4: Kind of literally saved their life.
00:12:49
Speaker 6: And I know Georgia personally, she talked in that clip about running around in the Myrt Park. I used to run around the Murt Park with her, Like we go back years and years and years. And when she said that about like she wrote that to like stay alive. She wrote that to give her fuel to not kill herself. Like I felt that so deeply because she's she's like that kind of person. Like you know, there are people in life that are just fireballs, like they are just made of energy from somewhere else and they don't belong here on this plane in this time. And a lot of times, like people like that, with that purity of spirit, they struggle to exist in this world. And it's amazing that in her challenge to stay connected to people, she comes up with a term like that, captures it and gives it to the world.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I you know, she gets all the gratitude for me for that. And again, normally slang, especially now might only slang used to last.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: For two years.
00:14:00
Speaker 6: When's the last time you were at six seven? So well, I watch a lot of NBA basketball. So whenever they still doing that, whenever they cut to the to the little kids at the.
00:14:10
Speaker 4: Game, they they don't like, they don't, they don't know.
00:14:14
Speaker 6: It's like how they used to floss dance ten years ago just because they didn't know what else to do with their bodies. It's like that kind of thing. Now that's what they're It's a default. Got you Yeah, so for you, what does the term mean now?
00:14:28
Speaker 2: For you? Personally?
00:14:29
Speaker 6: I only see people saying it now in a negative connotation. I only see it on Twitter. I only see it like or hear it when somebody who I don't agree with is talking about politics or media like it's a terrible sort of claiming that they've made of It reminds me of like hotep, like that term used.
00:14:53
Speaker 2: To miss Chicago.
00:14:55
Speaker 6: I don't know if it's Chicago. I first started hearing it in college. I went to Southern Illinois University, so it was people from Chicago, people from Saint Louis, but it was just a type of person like the hit.
00:15:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: But I remember Erica playing it for me maybe two months before the album came out, And you know, there's there's two parts of that song. It's a six to seven maybe six or seven minute song, and initially when she was playing it, like I was totally missing it because the first half of the song is just chaotic in its arrangement, like you know, Erica Georgia creative Partners like that whole creative circle.
00:15:42
Speaker 2: Yeah that that that that system.
00:15:44
Speaker 1: And of course the second half, which is just Erica James Poyson Blaw doing a slow down somba version of it, That's when I really like locked into it, yeah, and and then absorbed the song that way. It's you know, Master Teacher used to always that was like my favorite cut on that record. It's weird, like I don't think anyone has We're not mating people credit that song or Eric Abadu as the originator behind it.
00:16:16
Speaker 6: I mean, but it's much like six seven in that way, right where it's this cultural language that everybody's using, but nobody even questions where it came from most of the time.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think people know.
00:16:28
Speaker 1: I'm very slow in trying to not make it like the self congratulatory thing.
00:16:33
Speaker 4: All I do know is that.
00:16:35
Speaker 1: You know, it had a life of its own, like at the height of Okay players powers as far as the boards are concerned, like it lived there. And then, of course two thousand and six to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight was around the time when people started migrating from Okay Player and just going to Twitter, which really starts the genesis of what we now turn.
00:17:01
Speaker 2: Black Twitter or whatever.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: And so yeah, once I saw used outside of the Okay Player circle, that's when even I was amazed that, like the viralness of it, because I just thought it was just inside speak that.
00:17:16
Speaker 6: But then and then the Childish Gambino song, Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that I think that really puts I.
00:17:24
Speaker 2: Totally forgot about that part.
00:17:25
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, that put it in the stratosphere. And then everybody was like whatever that moment was, everybody glombed on to the term I feel like after.
00:17:36
Speaker 1: That, right, oh yeah, well then it got nashed on and then overused and whatnot. Do you find yourself using it ever and just your everyday talking vernacular?
00:17:48
Speaker 6: But I'm not sure I ever did, though. Do you feel like you have permission to use it or not? Well, I feel like if I'm using it, then I'm using it in that intentionally political way that sort of removed from the original meaning, Like like the original meaning was just kind of like stay away, stay aware, yeah, stay aware, right, you know, But like now it's got all of this, it's got different levels of culture all rolled into it now, so that when you say it, it now touches on the way that most people use it now, which is that negative connotation that political. So in this tug of war, should we try to hang on with all of our might or just like that's that's And that takes me back to the hotep thing where I remember I had an argument on Twitter with somebody.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: Someone call you a hotel.
00:18:39
Speaker 6: No, nobody eould call me a hotel. But I was arguing with somebody on Twitter. And this had to be like twenty eleven, twenty twelve or something like that, when it was first being introduced to me that some people within our community that had values that I didn't align with were calling themselves that like they were they were claiming the negative common connotation of it and calling themselves that.
00:19:07
Speaker 2: Do you know the origins of it?
00:19:09
Speaker 6: I don't know the actual I know how I first heard it, I don't know the actual origin.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: The first time I heard it common rhyme on it.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: On Ghetto Heaven, he said, hoole tep.
00:19:23
Speaker 1: That's the first time I heard it used in the second verse or the last verse of Ghetto Heaven. Actually, I thought he was just calling somebody a Hoe's Rasha's world famous for subliminal dishes.
00:19:41
Speaker 4: Back to this day, people don't know.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: I still when I see like seven or eight figures, if they don't respond negative to me, I'm like.
00:19:52
Speaker 6: Okay, you still have nothing. It went over your head, Like twenty seven years later, you still haven't listened to.
00:19:59
Speaker 1: Like Wanted for Chocoal the album, been like, hey wait a minute, but yeah, that's the first time I used it, and I.
00:20:06
Speaker 6: And that was when that was when I was in undergrad and that's when people were using it very sincerely as a way for like afrocentric people to communicate with each other and like greet each other on the yard or at the coffee shop or at the open mic like and it was it was like a term that people were using to try to point back to, like our africanness.
00:20:27
Speaker 4: Right, it was seen as like, oh, this is cool, like.
00:20:30
Speaker 2: But then it almost leads into corniness.
00:20:32
Speaker 6: And because and and it's funny because the negative aspect of it, a negative way to look at it to me, is crystallized in Fonte's verse on Yo Yo, right, and he describes that that that coffee shop doing trying to stop him from eating bacon or is talk down to him morally and ethically, but he's still all about the holes or whatever.
00:20:56
Speaker 2: To me, it.
00:20:56
Speaker 6: Literally ended to me like, oh he fined. He didn't use the word, but he defined the whole TEP and the whole TEPS politics and the things that were negative around people using that term and what And it was really what women were trying to call out about people like that, right that they presented this sort of cultural uniform. They was on some bullshit.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: So WHOTEP is quasi an afrocentric hypocrite?
00:21:28
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's afrocentric hypocrite.
00:21:30
Speaker 6: It's like a wolf in Sheep's clothing in some senses like.
00:21:34
Speaker 1: Like but not to be confused with well right now, like we have our own level of podcast bros who you know for the offering their word salad kind of.
00:21:51
Speaker 4: Gibbering manisphere right stuff.
00:21:54
Speaker 1: And but not coming in the name of a koofi or that sort of thing.
00:22:00
Speaker 2: Damn. I just remember Jim Jones coined the term koofy smack, So I actually had to look on.
00:22:07
Speaker 1: Urban Dictionary to see what the proper so the original meaning derived from ancient Egyptian word meaning to be at peace or contentment, used as a greeting amongst.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: Black people since the nineteen seventies.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: Even then, when Tarik said it, because I'm not well versed in Marvel DC comics thing, I thought he was just referring to some sort of character that I'd never heard of. So to Wreek somewhere in between a pretentious, a pretentious Afrocentric and the brainschild of the most dangerous man in comedy.
00:22:52
Speaker 2: So there you go.
00:22:53
Speaker 6: But I say I bring up Potep just to answer your question because I was thinking about when I had an argument on Twitter, I was I was offended that people were trying to use the negative aspect of potep is like a term of endearment among themselves. Like basically that was like the death knell of the original meaning. Was these people who were like, yes, I am like that, call me hotel please, Like, oh, that's horrible. And I think we lost that fight, and now I'm thinking we're woke. I don't I don't know if we need to fight for the term. I don't know if we need to fight for I don't know if that's where our effort is best used, because culture and language is going to do what culture and language.
00:23:33
Speaker 4: Does, So we should just let it go and see what happens.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: I think, see if the body.
00:23:38
Speaker 6: I think we always have to strive for new ways to expressly by jack and sink.
00:23:43
Speaker 2: Into the water or hang on to the door.
00:23:46
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, now that I truly know where.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: Georgia's heart is, i'd say, you know, I'm why should.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: We let it go?
00:23:58
Speaker 4: Like, well, does she want to fight for it?
00:24:01
Speaker 1: That's a good question, I'd I would wager that she's not concerned. Yeah, real artists aren't concerned of legacy things or whatever. And I'm certain for her at least it's weird. Man, people always want a piece of legacy and importance, but once it gets defined, then it could be a burden. Like I'm certain to this day, I'm almost certain that Illmatic as an album is more burdensome denias than it is a celebration of.
00:24:32
Speaker 2: A beautiful work of art.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: So it's almost like once you put something in the zegeist or whatever, like, it might make the individual that achieved that thing feel otherwise burdened because they either have to live up to it or that's only the thing that they're going to be associated with.
00:24:52
Speaker 4: It's a literal cultural weight.
00:24:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, so to woke or not to woke. But I will say this much unlike the word death. Oh boy, you remember when Rick Rubin had the funeral for the word deaf.
00:25:03
Speaker 4: No, I don't remember that at all. Wait you don't remember this, No, I don't see.
00:25:09
Speaker 2: You have a little subtle.
00:25:11
Speaker 1: Ways of making me just want to Rick, because you do this age thing, what thing where it's like yeah, man, we're like like minded once and then I'll say like, hey man, you remember da da da da da.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: And you're like, motherfucker. I wasn't of age yet.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I was of it. I don't know what year this happened. My first record was easy E all right, So that said Rick Ruben of course, pro prior to of Deaf Jam. He decided when he left Deaf Jam in eighty seven eighty eight he started Deaf American eighty nine to ninety and literally held a real funeral for the word death.
00:25:49
Speaker 6: That might have been a one time, a funeral for a word actually worked. That might have been a one time.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I sort of felt some sort of way because again, it's hip hop.
00:26:01
Speaker 4: Slang, right, and who is he?
00:26:03
Speaker 2: All right?
00:26:04
Speaker 1: But when I looked at the funeral, like it was a bunch of rock cats, like some of his Slayer friends some of the but like literally Rick Ruver is sitting in front with I think he uh, you know, like when you're mourning widow or whatever. Like yes, he had a veil on and all those things. So it's like cartoonishly over the top. So I didn't know how to feel about that. But yeah, so Deaf had a funeral, an actual funeral. Look it up, kids, But yeah, stay woke, stay woke.
00:26:34
Speaker 2: There you go. Quest Love Show is a production I Heeart Radio
