 Aloha and welcome to At the Crossroads. I'm your host, Keisha King, and I'm here every Wednesday live at 5 on thinktechhawaii.com and on Facebook on the Think Tech Hawaii page. And you can also catch me after the show on YouTube on the Think Tech Hawaii channel. You can go there and you can go directly to the At the Crossroads playlist. So, you guys, we are back again this week and I am so excited that you are joining me for this show today. We have music, education, and as you know, if I'm here it's always going to be lots of fun and positivity. Before we get started though, I want to tell you about my fantastic weekend. I attended several events, one of which was the Honolulu African American Film Festival. Now, it was amazing this year and I want to tell you that I had the privilege of going to both the reception and the movie. The first movie I saw I thought was absolutely amazing was, let's see, I saw Miles Davis, The Birth of the Cool. Let's just stop right there. Miles Davis is one of my favorite favorite jazz musicians, so I had a great time with that. Let's go back a little bit and I want to tell you I also saw 21 and Done, which was also amazing. This weekend we're going to go back to Jazz Mines and I also got the opportunity to go to Jazz Mines and see one of our guests there. We have two guests on our show today. I absolutely love Jazz Music, so when I attended the film festival, I went there with the intent of participating in the Miles Davis show because of the jazz or movie because of the jazz, but then things just got just way too good for me to even comprehend. For example, we had Kiara C. Jones. She is going to be a guest on our show in about two weeks, so be on the lookout for that. She had her movie there 21 and Done, amazing movie. Lots of good feedback with that one, so we will definitely have her on here. She was the director of that movie, so we'll have her on here to talk about that. Pretty cool. The last thing I did this weekend was actually not the weekend, it was yesterday. Last night I saw the movie Mr. Soul. Mr. Soul, absolutely amazing. Now, for those of you who are not aware, that director was Samuel D. Pollard and Melissa Haslip. Now Mr. Soul was a TV show that represented Black American culture and it happened on the heels of the civil rights movement. The host, Ellis Haslip, represented the demographic that was so different and definitely not in vogue. He gave his audience what they craved and what was missing from television, which were positive images of Blackness. Black and brown, everybody was included. Now, I counted as no coincidence whatsoever that I was there. I also counted as a total privilege to be in the crowd watching this movie the night before I was to do my live recording of this show today. I sat there with my mouth wide open in delight and shocked as the show used to play on public broadcasting network and it had a lot of established stars as well as several new and upcoming artists including poets, lots of intellectual philosophical females, and thought leaders of the time. So after the movie, I thought about it. I said the importance of what we do here at Think Tech, Hawaii and at the crossroads is to discuss matters that are real and relevant to you, my viewers. So it's my intent to always provide educational, entertaining and empowering content to move you into action. Now a person that moves someone into action is usually called an instigator, right? And when we think of an instigator, we think about something negative like someone instigating a fight. That's not always the case. I'm the instigator that wants to move you to action to enhance and improve your life. I want you to move forward in a positive direction and to do so with everything that happens in your life, whether it's, I don't know, what you do at your job or music. We're going to do that today. We have not one but two musical guests on our show today. We have Brown Man Ali with us today and Larry Locke and Henderson. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce our first guest born in Trinidad and schooled in New York and now splitting his time between Toronto, Canada and Brooklyn, New York. The internationally acclaimed jazz trumpet player Brown Man Ali is heralded by the New York village voice as Canada's preeminent jazz trumpet player and the new standard in electric jazz by the national public radio in New York, leading no less than a staggering eight groups of his own, all signed to his Brooklyn based label. Now you have to tell me the name of this. What is it? Brown to source records. He spent four years touring the globe with the legendary rapper Guru of gang star fame. Oh my goodness. As the featured solo for soloists for Guru's Jazzmataz from 2006 to 2010 and has since performed with the likes of Jay Z, Missy Elliott, Most Def, Paul Simon, Quincy James. That's like an interesting group. His powerful signature sound as a soloist has been compared to that of Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard and has made him one of the most recognizable trumpet players in North America today. He's here in Hawaii on tour and he'll be here for the month of February performing both as a leader and featured soloist over the entire month with one of the busiest touring schedules I've seen from visiting from a visiting artist, which includes dates at the blue note, Jazzmines, Heart Moon, Dragon of Stairs, Medici's, Gordon Bearsh, and many other Honolulu's acclaimed jazz spots. His frenetic schedule ends with his award-winning show, Miles Davis, Eris appearing at Jazzmines where he and some of Hawaii's best will be playing over two sets as they take the audience through Miles' entire career bebop to hip hop. So welcome, welcome, welcome to the Crossroads, brown man Ali. What up? What up? Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh. Quite an introduction. Did my mother send that to you? Yeah, your mom and she paid me. I said, mom, it's too easy. Oh my goodness. I am happy to have you. I am so honored. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Now awards are nice. I know you've won almost every single award possible in Canada. They're kind to me. They're very nice to me. Yeah, but I think you deserve it. Man, a lot of cast deserve it, man. I'm not giving nothing back, but I'm honored. They're very kind to me up there. I was born in Trinidad, like you said. I did all my formative training in New York City and then I went to Canada when I was young and they started giving me things. Yeah, it's good up there. I like it. Good. Well, we are definitely happy to have you here. I think one of the things that we don't have the pleasure of here in Hawaii is sometimes we'll hear about different artists. In the States or on the mainland, you can just drive two different states over and go and hear somebody you love. But here we are kind of waiting for someone to come. Right? So we're glad that you're here. All these tour dates you have coming up though. Yeah, it's my fourth time in Hawaii and this year has been bananas. I think 16 shows I've had. Yes, that's what I'm reading. And we're in the final week. We're just heading towards the end, which is great. Like today, Wednesday, yeah. So yesterday I played a Tuesday Friday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then Saturday is my last day. Wow. It's bonkers. Yesterday was a Jazz Mines. Today, in about 40 minutes, I gotta go. I'm playing just over at Gordon Beers with 0.05 and then Thursday's Herbie Hancock. My Herbie Hancock tribute show at Jazz Mines and Friday is Brown Man Electric Trio, but a Hawaii version of Brown Man Electric Trio. So that's my band. All my wacky tunes, that'll be fun. And then Saturday is The Big Closer, which is Miles Davis' Errors, my Miles Davis tribute show. Yes. Well, we're going to start in 1947 when he was with Charlie Parker and then move to the Coltrane period and went shorter and then the Electric Era and then go all the way to the last thing he did before he died was work with hip-hop artists. So we'll end with an exploration of the collision of jazz and hip-hop that Miles was working with. And as a jazz musician coming from Brooklyn, I've worked with a lot of, as you stated earlier, with a lot of hip-hop artists. I mean, it started because of Guru, right? Four years with the legend. Well, we actually have a clip of you playing with Gloop. Really? Yes. If you don't mind, we'd love to show off what you did with him. We're going to look at... Oh, man, Brooklyn. This is 2016, I think. Yeah. I think it depends, if it's the full band or not, because in 2016, we were rolling with an 11-piece band all across Europe. It was insane. We would do a country a day, a full group. We would fly in and do a country a day and then fly out. Okay. Yeah. This was a really formative time for me because Guru was such a personal, open, loving cat. So he would come and knock on my hotel room door and we would chat about... I mean, to me, in hip-hop, he occupies a space really similar to Miles Davis. Oh, really? Yeah. He was an innovator and an open mind. And he was... I mean, he invented this style of hip-hop that's now called jazz hip-hop. He was really the first cat to really do it right. There was a lot of guys dabbling in that kind of thing earlier. Right. I remember that era. Yeah. But he was the first cat to really do it right and amalgamate those forms of true jazz and true hip-hop. I mean, man, the trumpet players that played with him, I mean, Freddie Hubbard and Donald... I replaced Donald Byrd and Guru's Jazz Mataz, which is bananas growing. Oh, my goodness. That's saying a lot. Yeah. And then piano players from Herbie to Chick to Henry Hancock, Chick-A-Ria and Kenny Garrett. Yes. Some of the greats. Yeah. So when I got the call to do that, it was... Actually, when I first got the call, because he made the call himself, which he has people, right? Right. Normally, you get a manager. But he made the call himself and I didn't believe it was Guru. I thought it was one of my boys messing around. Guru don't sound like that. Who is this? So, yeah. Wow. That's crazy. That's so wow. Yeah. So I grabbed 2006 to 2010 four world tours with the great, with the legend. And then he died of cancer in 2010, which is tragic and a huge blow to hip-hop. And it's, you know, put us all into a tailspin. But then I went to Most Def for a little while and then Keras won and Big Daddy Kane and then Cool Herk. And then I got the call from Jay-Z. I didn't... What was that like? Because Jay-Z... That's the call, right? Right. That's the call you want to get. You're waiting to hear from somebody like him. Yeah. How did that feel? Superstar call. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was called just a sub because the usual catch is couldn't do... It was they were in the middle of the on-the-run tour and they needed a guy to sub. So, you know, they, in the community, they know Guru's trumpet players. So I got that call and it was mind-blowing as, you know, Jay-Z, what do I... What can I say to that? But the real dope story for me is that Missy Elliott was in the crowd at one of those shows and she heard me playing and she was like, someone give me that fool's number! So now, so I do hurt. I'm now with Missy's touring group whenever she... When she was with horns. Right. You know, we're... That's the thing with hip-hoppers is the horn players are usually expendable. If they need more pyrotechnics, sometimes, you know, get hired. But I mean, that's fine. As a soloist, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to bring what I do to that stage, you know. But I'm a jazz musician first and foremost. And my little record label, since 2000 in, I guess, 16, I've been signing other artists to the label. But there's something unique about your label, right? Yeah, we... 100% of the... Tell me, tell me, please, because it's good. We make no money. That's what's unique. We don't make no money. So what I did is, as I set up the label in a manner that all the artists on the label make 100% of all profits. The label itself, we make zero. And I wanted it to be like that, because I've been signed to major labels over the years and you're lucky if you get a 82-cent royalty, you know. Back... I had... When I was on EMI, I had an 82-cent royalty and we were... That was big, big bucks for every disc that was sold. I mean, $20 disc at HMV, 82 cents. And you were like, yeah, it's terrible. So with these young kids, these 20-somethings on the label, I wanted to change the game. And so they make 100% of everything that comes in. And all operating costs for my label come from somewhere else. And yeah, man, for me, it's just like trying to pay it back and trying to help catalyze a new generation of jazz artistry being created and propagated. So you give back in a lot of different ways, but there's another thing that I want to touch on really quick, because I know you have to go for your show tonight. So I'm so sorry we didn't have more time. He's got the horn. It's all ready for us, right? So I can't wait. I'm going to be there, by the way. There's this show at Gordon Beers that's happening right after this. So I'm going to follow you out as soon as I'm done here. But I heard that you're an avid reader. Yeah, talk to us about that. I just like to read a lot. I think that might come from growing up reading and growing up around parents, like highly educated parents. My mother was a professor of mathematics from the University of West Indies. I'm from Trinidad. And my father was a professor of engineering. Right. But there is a person who likes to read a lot. And then there's a person like you. How many books are you reading a week? I read about three on average. Three books a week. That's a lot. I read one and a half. Three books a week. That's a lot. So I have a degree in physics. I was going to mention that. And those schools are reading a lot. I went to school with cats that are reading six books a week. So I don't feel like anything. Three just seems low to me. And three when I'm able. If I'm touring heavily and there's a lot of time at the airport and a lot of time in the hotel rooms, I tend to read more. But if I'm dealing with the label stuff and prepping for tours and learning music, there ain't no time for that. But really quick. Because I know there's so much. We could take hours to talk. Next year. Yes. Please make sure when you come back. This is your fourth year. So we'll see you in year number five. Word. You come back right here on the show. We'll talk. We can fit all the musicians back here. We can have a little bit of a show. Thank you. For real. Okay. It's all right. Y'all heard it. We're going to hold him to this. Okay. We got brown man, Ali. And we're going to go ahead and take a quick break. If you want to catch him at any of his last shows here on the island for a year, number four, you can do that. We'll, uh, I guess we can post some of those up. Then of course, can go to your website. I think your website was brown man, Ali. brownman.com. But if you want a direct link right to the show, just go to gigs.brownman.com. GIGS.brownman.com. Check out all his shows right here in Hawaii and all his shows everywhere. Listen, it's so great to have you. Thanks. I'm going to see you in Pono 5. Yeah. Pono 5. Pono 5. Love it. Love it. Like in 40 minutes. 40 minutes. All right. We will see you. We'll do right back at the crossroads. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because security matters. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. I'm Jay Fidel of Think Tech. Our flagship energy show among the six energy shows we have is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. It plays every Wednesday at 4 p.m. Come around and see us. Learn about energy. Keep current on energy on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and it's streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Hi, Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, Maraming, Salamatpo, Mabuhay, and Aloha. Aloha. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back. I am Keisha King, your host. You're watching At the Crossroads, where you can catch me live at 5 on Wednesdays. All right. So we're here for our second segment where we have Larry Lock Henderson on with us. He is with Smart Hip Hop Global. All right. Larry Henderson is educated hip hop for those of us in the music business, not those of us, but those of you in the music business. He is the creator of a new sound of educational hip hop music that uniquely inspires people of all ages. His album Lesson One Hip Hop in Education has hit Amazon's best sellers list number one in hot new releases and number eight in educational music and has received airplay on major radio stations around the world due to his combination of deep insights and authentic hip hop sound. Lock travels the country sharing his educational hip hop soul music, offering lessons on topics that are rarely discussed, including current events, history, empowerment, political science, money management, and more. CBS calls Lesson One creative, innovative, and informative. Dominion of New York Magazine says most people use hip hop to educate but do so badly. Lock does it so, so well. Lock is a youth activist, social critic, history and religion intellectual, and innovative education advocate. He is a hip hop ambassador and a noted speaker on the impact of the hip hip hop culture. He holds degrees in Africana studies, communications, and labor studies from Rutgers University and studied studio engineering at the Institute for Audio Research. Lock has been featured as a host of, at a host of youth and college events, hip hop conferences, festivals, and on major radio and television program, including London, UK's Bang 103.6 FM, and so on and so on and so forth. BET here, CBS, you name it. Lock, welcome to At the Crossroads. Thank you for having me. What's going on? What's going on? It is my pleasure to have you. I am so delighted that you are able to be with us today. Where are we calling you from? Where are we reaching you right now? I'm in New Jersey right now. New Jersey? New Jersey, you know, home, and it's, it's cold out here, you know, in your Hawaii, and I know it's terrific weather. It was snowing all day today. It was nasty outside, but, um, yeah, I'm calling from New Jersey. Wow. Well, Aloha. I wish I could send you some warm weather. Thank you. I do, but I can't. Yeah, me too. Snow, I couldn't even imagine. So please tell me what is Smart Hip Hop Global, and how is it different from other record companies? Smart Hip Hop Global, this company is designed to mix education and hip hop. You know, the fusion of that is the music that we create. There's pretty much no other company that can do it the way that we do it. You know, there's definitely other companies that put out educational hip hop music, but, you know, because we come from a solid hip hop core, the sound is extremely different. But, you know, Smart Hip Hop Global is a company that's just dedicated to fusing hip hop and education. Wow. Thank you for what you do. It sounds amazing. You're welcome. Thanks. I heard you first on social media. I was just scrolling through on Instagram. I saw a sponsored ad, and I heard that Harriet Tubman song, and I about fell out. I could not believe how intelligent it sounded. It told a great story and used her voice. How did you even come up with that? Well, you know, Harriet Tubman was just, you know, if you know her story, which a lot of people do, but then again, a lot of people don't. It's very inspirational. So when I went into making lesson two, you know, I wanted to at least honor her. I wanted to do something that told something about her life, and I wanted to, you know, definitely try to be as creative as I can be, but I wanted you to know her story. So, you know, I was in the studio. My man played the beat, and I'm like, this is the one, you know, this is the track that I'm going to do the Harriet Tubman song to. And, you know, I did the research, listened to the beat. It took maybe about three weeks to actually put the song together. I had already been doing the research. I had already been reading about her, and I had already, you know, had down what I wanted to say. But, you know, it was definitely picking the track so that it can speak to me, so that I can speak to the people. And then it was just a matter of just merging that and putting it together. Right, right. So is that your normal process for developing a song is to hear the beat first and then write? Oh, well, there's, there's, there's different processes. You know, one thing is I have the ideas already. You know, I have all of the concepts that I would like to tackle. And then from there, then I'll go to the studio and then kind of let the music talk to me. And, you know, sometimes, though, I'll just hear a track and say, no, we got, I have to go in this direction. You know, this is speaking to me about this. And then, you know, I'll, I'll write it, you know, a day after or the night of me hearing that particular track. But what I, what I normally do is, you know, I have the content, I have what I want to talk about, and I just go into the studio, pick the track, and then I, and then I'll write the lyrics so that I can write to the flow of the beat. But this is not a definite way of I'm going to do it like this and want to do it like that. You know, when you're doing music, you have to be creative. You kind of got to, you know, let everything come out of your heart. So, you know, you don't want to be too robotic. But it was, it's definitely a process of knowing what I want to tackle and the music and having all that come together. But that's interesting that you would say knowing what you want to tackle because you have a huge impact with the music. It sounds good. And if we have it, I want to play a little bit of the Harriet Tubman song. And then I want to jump into Kings and Queens because my last name is King. First of all, I think that's so royal that you would talk about the Kings and the Queens of old. And I want to ask you, what impact has the, has your music had on the music fans of all ages? It's a variety of impacts. You know, when you're talking about Kings and Queens, that's from the Lesson 1 album. As far as the youth is concerned, you know, I went into that specifically targeting the youth from urban areas. So, you know, I had them in mind when I was, as I'm making this music. So one of the things that has happened is I know kids, they learn, they actually learn from the music. So whether it's the first 25 presidents, whether it's Kings and Queens, whether it's the Moors, whether it's 50 capitals, you know, they actually learn from the music. And that's, you know, I appreciate that. And the other aspect and the other thing that's been happening is the hip hop audience just appreciates the sound that I'm coming up with. So on the one hand, you know, you do have people that's just actually learning from the lyrics that I'm putting out. And then on the other hand, you have actual people that's just, that gravitates to the sound of hip hop music, and they just appreciate it. So there's been this, you know, this reaction of, hey, I'm learning. And then there's the reaction of this actually sounds crazy. I like it a lot. Right. I've been getting both of those types of responses from whether it's young people, whether it's educators, whether it's parents, whether it's guidance counselors, or whether it's just people that's just interested in hip hop music. Right. Because as I listened to myself, I thought, oh, this is amazing. Like, but the first thing I know this was the beat, the beat was sick. And I was like, oh, I absolutely love this, because it gave you, like you said, that balance of what you wanted to hear just to listen to and enjoy. But then you were learning something in the process. So I don't know if we've played the Kings and Queens track yet, but that's another one that the beat was just amazing. But then the history and the knowledge that was there, it made me feel good about myself when I was done. And I think, you know, that's why we titled this show Music to Uplift. Because, you know, you want music where you can relax to, music where you can dance to. But this is music where you can learn something to uplift and to become educated by such a well educated person. I was just at Rutgers University about four months ago and just phenomenal people. It was cold then too. I cannot deal. I cannot deal, but I really enjoyed your music and I want to help people find it. So where can we go to find your music and buy it and support you? Well, lesson one and lesson two, you can find it on all your digital streaming platforms from Tidal to Amazon to Spotify. You know, we just dropped lesson two on February 13th, which was also my birthday just passed. Oh, it was your birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. It's available everywhere, everywhere, everywhere that you can stream music where they're awesome. All right. So you heard it here. You can find his music everywhere. I found it on Instagram. I'm about to go buy it on Apple so that I can rock out. But I'm also going to play it in my educational settings. Do you do that? Do you travel to the schools? Do you find teachers that really want to play this music as part of their lessons? Yes. You know, we formed this company and we formed the company in around 2010, the first album dropped in 2012. You know, and from then, you know, we've been traveling pretty much across the world going to different schools, whether it's high schools, whether it's middle schools, and then from then on, the stages got a little bit bigger from different colleges and then the stages got a little bit bigger and, you know, festivals and whether it was jazz festivals, whether it was just all of the clubs, you know, everywhere. There hasn't been a place that we haven't been able to go into because I do think that we have such a unique sound that it fits in a lot of environments. Right. You know, it's educational, so it's very family friendly, but you still also hear the hardcore hip-hop element, which allows me to go into the other places that you don't normally hear positive for education hip-hop music. Right. And I'm hoping that you'll have more opportunities to do that. I think the masses need to hear that encouraging, uplifting educational hip-hop music, not to knock anything else that's out there, but we just need good variety of, and we need more good music. So we're going to close for now. I'm definitely going to invite you back again some other time. And maybe when you come back, I want to make sure I get this right. When you come back, I'm going to refer to you by Majestic Larry Zabringerville. I see you smiling. You want to know how I found this out, don't you? In like 15 seconds, tell us about Majestic Larry, the king. What is it? Oh man, that was, you got that from my friend Steve. One of the first names. Me and Steve, him, myself, my man, Todd Belford, and my man, Dave Halsey. We're all still friends to this day. We met in the 7th grade, and we actually formed this group called The Fourth Dimension. That's what it is. My name was the Majestic King Larry, but you know, that didn't last long. Well, I think you guys were like in 7th grade from the story that I heard. Yeah, so I definitely want to hear more about that next time. Yeah, definitely, definitely. We've been the same homo. But I'll just say this, I do want everybody to check out, check out the Instagram, the Smart Hip Hop on Instagram, check out the website, it's www.smart-hiphop.com. And you know, just enjoy the music lesson too. It's out right now. It came out February 13th. It features Khalid Qali, Beach for Megahertz, Capone for CNN. You know, it's a crazy project, and it just dropped. Amazing. Thank you so much. All right, you heard it here first. You can go and check that out there, and we will hear from you again. Locke, Majestic King Larry. But we know you as Locke right now, and you're killing the game. Thank you so much for all that you do. And thank you, our viewers, for watching. You've been watching At the Crossroads with me, Keisha King, your host. I'm here every Wednesday, live at five. I am always pushing you to the limits. This week's call to action is very simple. Read a book and enjoy the music while you're here. Aloha. See you next week.