 Okay, folks, listen, I'm Wil Mega, you're tuned in to Wil Mega TV. We've been trying to produce this Dr. Mark LeMonte Hill video. We shot last week. We had some hiccups. We had some misunderstandings. We supposed to shoot again this week today. I had some technical difficulties and a few setbacks in terms of my personal preparation. Mark was ready to go. And so what I've decided was that I'm going to share with you some vintage footage that I shot of him about eight years ago. Just because you've been expecting this interview, we're going to probably shoot this interview, the moderate interview next week. At least that's what I'm shooting toward, shooting next week instead of this week. So you can get what you deserve. Expect for us to talk Malcolm X. Expect for us to talk his personal transition, transformation, how he became who and what he is. Expect to talk about some of the rumors that have surrounded him and get some clarity. We're going to talk move. We're going to talk 76ers. He's an avid 76ers fan. We're going to talk about Mumia Bujama, the controversial death row, former death row inmate who got off a death row. We're going to have some conversations about current events. And we're going to talk a little politics, black consciousness, black history. We're going to open the door to some current events that we've yet to share with the public. And you'll get my angle coming straight out of Philadelphia. We've decided that he will be a reoccurring guest. So maybe once every two months, maybe three months, depending on what's going on in the world, he may decide to pop in even more frequently. So that being said, I want you to enjoy. This is a very short piece. I personally like it because when I shot this, I just began to start interviewing people on my network, professional athletes, pro ball players, academics, activists, folks who are, it's kind of part of the lifestyle I live. People in my network whose stories I wanted to share with the greater community. So what I like about this piece, we literally, I'm literally thinking about this. This piece is literally shot in my father's house. Mark Lamont Hill purchased my father's house, my parents divorced when I was younger. So we're shooting in the house of my father that I grew up in when I was with my father. So it was a really weird feeling for me. Anytime I visit Mark there, you can imagine going to your childhood house. But your family doesn't live there anymore. It's just weird. So the setting is real up close. You'll see, you'll see it's intimate. Mark is young eight years ago, believe it or not. He's in a different place. Check it out. Check it out. Let us know what you think. Expect the more modern interview coming up. I already have some footage from the last one. We're going to plug in and plug some of that in. We're going to mix it up. Just bear with me. All right. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy this piece. I call it Dr. Mark Lamont Hill Metamorphosis. My name is Mark Lamont Hill. I remember the Abbey and Ampere alumni chapter, summer 11 initiative. You can do it like that or do it the way we actually do it with your people. I mean, however you want to do it, you know what I mean? Mark Lamont Hill, Abbey to Ampere alumni chapter, summer 11. OK. So, Mark, where did you attend colleges and universities? I attended Morehouse College for undergrad, but completed my undergrad studies at Temple University. Then I attended University of Pennsylvania for my graduate degree. I got my PhD there in 2005. So what brought you to the Cap Office side of maternity and corporate? You know, I come from a family of capers. My older brother was a kappa, a member of Gamma Omega Chapter, fall 1987. And my father was a spring 1953 member of Kappa Alpha side from the Gamma Omega Chapter. So I've known about Kappa my entire life. And I was never told I had to be a kappa. I was told that if I did pledge of fraternity, it needed to probably be Kappa. And then when it came time to actually decide whether or not I wanted to, I had examples of people who were interesting to me, who were smart, who were loyal and who were generous with their time. And so for me, that was kind of man I wanted to be. I was kind of person I wanted to be. I met people who were generous to my family when they needed things when we were having economic problems. You know, a guy named Wash from from Cheney University, Cheney State University at the time will come and give us stuff. And then as I got older, I understood that that was my father's lie, brother. And I understood that that his his support was out of a sense of fine new pie. It was out of a sense of brotherhood, was out of a sense of fraternity, fraternity commitment that we all aspire to have. But I saw people live it in practice, that fraternal commitment. And so I was like, I want to try and do that, you know. And when I got to Morehouse College, there was no immediate opportunity to to to to join the fraternity because of the politics at the time of the campus. They just weren't on the yard. But the cats who were noobs who were on the yard or from other places like Clark, like Morris Brown at the time, like Georgia State, when they came through, either for just parties or when, you know, the freak would happen in Atlanta back in the 90s and all those people come through. The campus to me were the coolest dudes. You know, they were the kind of cats I would want to be if I had to pick. You know, I saw Alphys, I saw Q's, I saw Sigma's and nothing was wrong with them. But when I saw noobs, I was like, yo, that's what I want to do, separate from the family stuff, separate from my brother, separate from my father, separate from all of that. I just said, that's what I want to do. And so when I had the chance to do it, I did it. OK. So you've you've matriculated through several levels of higher learning. Share with the audience something about that. You know, the journey through education for me was something that I didn't exactly know would happen in the way that it did. I thought that I would be finishing undergrad because my parents told me that's what you're going to do. I didn't have a particular investment in undergrad. And really, I went to college still thinking basketball, and that was sort of what I wanted to do. I had division three offers that my parents were like, you're not taking them. You know, I was also set to go to Elmira and play or Kentucky State and play or Dickinson and play. And they were like, no, you need to focus on your education. So I went to Morehouse and walked on to the team. And after a little bit of time, they decided that I was going to have to redshirt the first year, which wasn't a big deal. You know, people do it. But there was this moment where basketball stopped being fun and there was no game to play in and practice was a lot harder. And learning to plays was a lot different than high school. And every one day, Coach Brewer, who was assistant at the time, said, son, if I could ask you to run this play one more time, I must just think you're not that bright. And it was it was a Iowick experience. My sophomore year, I came back through and I knew basketball wasn't something I was going to do anymore, at least not there. So I walked out of class freshman year and dropped out. I said, I'm not going to be a student anymore. Playing basketball, that's kind of the only kind of goal I had in college was to play basketball. I didn't think I was going to the pros. I wasn't that good. I just but I knew I was good in playing college and I knew that that's that was kind of what I've been wanting to do. And when that didn't seem like it was going to be a real thing for me, like I just I just gave up. So I dropped out and I lived in Atlanta for a bit. I lived in Atlanta for a long time, actually, not a long time. It felt like a long time when I was home. I was on the street for a lot of that time. So, you know, when you're outside a couple of months is a long time. You know, so I left Atlanta eventually and went back to Philly. And in my mind, I was still just going to play basketball. You know, coach Newsom at Dickinson was still saying come out here. Dickinson, Kevin Newsom, it might have been somewhere else. Because I was I was actually thinking about playing Gwyneth Mercy at that point. I was like, I just want to go to Gwyneth Mercy and play a couple of my friends where that will card was there. Percy Herron was there and it was like, yo, just come here. Play. And so I started training and working out. And my parents were like, you can train and work out all you want. But if you live in our house, you're going to get a job. So then I got the job. And while I was working, I decided what might as well get an apartment. Well, I started thinking about apartment. Because I didn't want to live in my mom's house no more. You know, I was only I was 19 at this point. And I wasn't old. I just was ready to be out the house. And so it was like, I can either go to Gwyneth Mercy and play basketball. Or I can get this apartment and go to Temple. And so I got my apartment on City Avenue with the Temple and finished. Some days I regret the decision. I don't know what's your major at Temple. I changed so many times, you know, because in my house, I was I was political science, religion. And I was going to be a religion major. And then maybe education. And then I transferred to Temple and started as an education major, elementary education major. Then I transferred to Spanish. Then Spanish. Yeah, yeah, I was a high school Spanish teacher. And so how do you say Kappa Alpha Psi? I guess you say Kappa Alpha Psi, right? It's all Greek. And then I went to I dropped out and I left that program and was thinking about FM studies and then going back to education because I found I had so many credits that would count if I took a certain kind of education major without certification. So I basically got out of school as quick as possible. I was like because I had lost that year after dropping out, I felt like I was in a rush. So I was just taking any class I could take and I was taking as many classes as I could find. I didn't care what they were. I took physics in science fiction movies. I took like some online anthropology class, language anthropology. And then I ended up taking 21 credit hours my last semester. I took seven classes and, you know, most people taking 12, 15, you know, I was taking 21 because I just wanted to be done. I didn't want the extra semester for one class. I was like, I want to graduate. So I was looking through the book to find a class and the class that I took was one called The Black Woman. I took it because it was the only thing that fit my time schedule. And I was like, there's going to be black women in there. So I went in there and I was the only brother in there. It was two, me and one other brother were in the class and there's a bunch of sisters, man. Just an amazing class. Dr. Renoir McDonough taught it in the African American Studies Department at Temple. And in that class, I didn't just learn about black womanhood. Although I did learn about black feminism, which was super important. I read a book called Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins, which is like a staple book of black feminism. And it really changed my life. But more importantly than the book itself, which certainly did change my life, was the fact that it was the first time that I had paused to actually be a student. I had grown up reading books outside of school. I had grown up going to black bookstores and reading those traditions and being a pretty rigorous student. But in college, college for me was just something to do. I was going because of basketball. Then I was going just to get out so I could get a teacher certificate. Then I was going that semester just to, you know, take whatever they would give me a C or B or whatever. But over the course of that, over the last six months or a year, I was taking all those credit hours in the summer and in the fall. I realized that I liked reading and writing. I liked thinking. I liked engaging ideas for a living. Are you friends with any of those sisters over in that class still today? No, no, no, no. I would see them from time to time in Philly, you know, because back there was this point in the late 90s. I graduated in 2000. So, you know, I would see them at shows back in the Black Lily. Back, you know, Black Lily was an amazing, amazing kind of open mic menu. Well, not even open mic. It was just it was at a club called the five spot downtown and people will go there and you would see it was right there. A harder neo soul movement. I mean, Philly is the heart of neo soul. And you could go there for five hours. I suppose called the five spot. You could go down there and hear Kendrick family soul. You could watch Questlove on the drums. You could hear Jill Scott come through. India, I read what passed through. The jazzy fat nasties will perform. Bilal would be there. Music soul child would be there. You know, Jaguar Wright would be there. And they would just come through any given night and just rock out by do a slide through sometime. And it would just be like all four five hours and we'd be there packed up. Yeah, come and be there. And it was just crazy. The five spot was crazy. That was the energy in Philly. And so some of those same, that scene that I was in love with some of those same sisters were in the black woman class, you know, because they had natural hair and, you know, they, you know, they were just beautiful. It was very African center. And I love African people and African things. And so I took the class and I learned in that I wanted to be a scholar. And it's at that moment that I decided to go to to go to graduate school and to pursue a PhD. And I wasn't fully prepared for what that meant because I hadn't taken a lot of the courses and done a lot of the training and things that's necessary for that kind of work. But I had the idea and because I'd worked so hard those last six months, taking all those credits and had gotten A's in most of them, my GPA had gone up to a respectable number. Still not a good number, but a respectable number. And I was able to hook up our crew getting to the University of Pennsylvania. And so you got a doctorate degree at University of Penn? Yeah. And what? I was trained in an education school. I was trained as an anthropologist. Okay. So I took courses in both anthropology and education and focused really on those intersections between culture and politics and identity. So you leave there and you go on to teach in college and universities? Yeah, I left University of Pennsylvania in 2005. I forgot my PhD in four years working again. Just I had a sense of being in over working overtime because I felt like I was behind even though I wasn't anymore. And I was now 26 with his PhD and I was like, what am I going to do? And so I taught at Temple for four years in the Department of Urban Education and also in American Studies. And then Teachers College Columbia University called me in 2009 and said, hey, we'd love to have you after I applied for the job and gave a presentation. And they brought me there. And I stayed there from 2009 until 2014. So your professional trajectory took a shift. You got to be found yourself in the intangible world or as a journalist. Talk to me more about that side of your profession. What are you doing now? Well, you know, what happened was, and I walk into it, you know, I while I was in graduate school, I realized that I still love to engage bigger audiences than just other academics and I needed money. So graduate school, I was writing music reviews. I was on album reviews from hip hop magazines. I started being a regular writer for Pop Matters magazine. I started writing hip hop encyclopedia entries. And in doing so, I realized I loved having a bigger audience to speak to about issues. When I got my PhD in 2005, I decided to write a column. So I wasn't just doing music anymore. I was talking about social issues and doing cultural criticism. And I was like, yo, this is dope. Like, this is part of my understanding of my vocation is that I'm not just going to talk to academics, which is cool. But I'm also going to talk to bigger audiences about issues that aren't just in my narrow area of scholarly expertise, but also deal with issues of race and class and gender, et cetera, et cetera. So I started this column. And because I was kind of one of the early bloggers in 2005, blogging was still relatively new. And black bloggers was a novel idea. So when TV networks needed black voices, they said, you know what, we're going to call this guy. They know who I was. They just googled my article on the Duke rape case. And my thing came up. So they called me in, and I started talking about it. And I didn't set the water on fire. I sat right in this very room. And I did an appearance through webcam. And I did OK. I didn't embarrass myself. I didn't embarrass the family, but it wasn't great. But it was my first taste of television. A few months later, they called again when I was working on the case of Janala Wilson doing some advocacy work. And I got another phone call. And this time it was headline news. They wanted me to talk about the TV show Survivor and how they were dividing the teams up by race. So that time I got a little traction. Next thing I know, Bill O'Reilly's people are calling me. And they had me come on the show. And I became a regular on MSNBC and Fox News. And then Bill O'Reilly's show really liked me. So they had me come on weekly. And then President, or at the time, Senator Obama was on the scene. And they were trying to make sense of this black senator who's going to run for president, who's audacious enough to think he could be president after a couple years in the Senate and a state senate tenure. So they started snatching up black commentators, CNN, Grab World of Martin. And MSNBC was big on Melissa Harris Perry. And so I became Fox's resident black person. Resident black person? Yes. That wasn't the official title, but that's what it felt like. There's other names for that. Yes, there are. And I did everything I could to do the job with dignity and a commitment to our people so that I didn't become the other day. And I did my best for a few years there. And I became a pretty regular pundit on Fox News. And I really got into the mix for my battles with Bill O'Reilly. And then when I left there, or more accurately, that was fired from there, just because of political views and wasn't job performance, I got a call from someone at Black Enterprise. Not BET, but Black Enterprise Magazine. And they had this TV show, which had been syndicated for years. And it used to be called Black America's Forum, I think. But in its current iteration, I was following Ed Gordon, who had just left the show. Ed being this amazing host, really a legend. I was like, I can't feel Ed's shoes, but I like a job. So I went over to Black Enterprise. And they gave me a chance to host. And I didn't know how to host. Arguing on TV is not the same thing as hosting a TV show. Two different skill sets, two different, just a whole different experience. I know what to do. I know how to do it. But they were patient with me. And they let me grow as a host. And by the second season, I felt like I was getting my sea legs. By the third season, I felt like I knew what I was doing. And so I continued to host that in aired on TV One and syndicated markets around the country. And at the same time, Huffington Post called me and said, hey, come on, we're doing this new internet thing. And I was like, man, I ain't trying to go on internet. I'm trying to get on CNN, man. And CNN was dangling a job in front of me for Court TV. What was Court TV at the time? To anchor. And that didn't feel like the right fit. But I thought TV is better than internet. And then CNN kind of pulled the offer back. And so the only thing left was HuffPost Live, this TV show. So I didn't realize that I was on the cutting edge. I didn't realize that internet was beating out TV on a certain level. And so I was the inaugural host along with eight others, Elisa Menendez, Abby Huntsman, and others, Ahmad Shabdine. And we made some history. I mean, we had a very good run. I was there for three years, three and a half years. And over the course of those three and a half years, I learned how to really be a host because I was on every day. So this is an exclusive interview with you. Most of our interviews are highlighting the achievements of young capas and graduate capas or brothers who've just moved on in their careers and touching base on how they've achieved in their lives. But I want to fast forward to the show that you're on now. And we have a few more kind of off-color questions for you. And then we'll wrap up. Yeah, well, after I left HuffPost, I left HuffPost because I wanted to create space for something new. I love my experience there. I just didn't know. I wanted the next thing to come. And so I left. And I was patient. And I swear, not even two months after I left, I got a phone call from VH1 that they were interested in doing something with me. And it took us into January to figure out exactly what it would look like. And then from January to June, we developed it. So what's the name of the show? VH1 Live. Yeah, the idea was to do a talk show. The idea was to do a daily talk show that would, in some ways, be like, watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, where you kind of have a talk show that's also anchor to the network's programming. And so the idea was I would do a nightly talk show and I'd have a little bit of the VH1 shows in the mix. But I'd also be able to talk about sports and politics and all these other things, do celebrity interviews. And the show started off one night a week. And it's now four nights a week. Right now it's at 11 o'clock. We may move the time slide, I'm not sure yet, but it's doing well. The ratings are good. And it's shaping into the show I want it to be. So if you had to define what your professional title is, what would you say? Would you just leave it at one word? I don't think I can. Because I think there are a couple things. I think it's reasonable to. I use the word intellectual to shape a lot of my stuff. I'm an academic. I'm a writer. I'm an activist. But I think all of it is part of one big intellectual project. So somebody said, what are you? I said, I'm an intellectual. I wouldn't say I'm an academic. I wouldn't say I'm a scholar. Although there are academic dimensions to my work, although I do scholarly work, I would say I'm an intellectual. Because I think the intellectual title is broader. And it stretches into more areas. But I'm also a journalist. And I have to say that because there was a time where I would say my journalism is purely an extension of the intellectual project. That I just want to ask questions or investigate stories or whatever. And sometimes it is. When I do a documentary in Palestine on Afro-Palestinians, that's an extension of my intellectual work. But if I'm interviewing Stevie J on VH1, that's not. I'm having fun. And I'm a journalist. And sometimes I want to just ask interesting questions. Sometimes I want to interview celebrities. Sometimes I want to interview everyday people. And it's not part of the same intellectual project. It's a journalistic project that's different. So I would say I'm an intellectual. But I'm also a journalist. The New Black Week, we focus on highlighting people's achievements. What would you say would be your three most impactful or your favorite achievements in your lifetime? What are your three favorite achievements? First one is being a father. And I know it can sound cliche, but I mean, being able, being charged to help a black child navigate this world in a way that affords indignity and safety and love and care, and that gives them the tools to make the world better than they found it, I think it's pretty dope. And so being a part of that is pretty amazing for me. I think working to get people home, the work we've done on projects, I've never done it singularly. No one does. But the work we did to get Mamiya off the death row, or the work we did to get Gennaro Wilson out of prison with a draconian sentence to get Shaquana Cotton out of the juvenile facility, these things matter. Sometimes we think our activism doesn't matter. Sometimes we think the letter writing campaigns don't matter. Sometimes we think that the sit-ins and all those things don't matter, but they do. And there have been a few victories. We've had a lot of losses. You know this, we've had a lot of losses. But there are moments where we know that if not for our efforts, someone would have died. If not for our efforts, someone would still be incarcerated. If not for our efforts, someone would not have gotten justice. And so I'm always proud when I can look back and say we've had a moment where our efforts were vindicated. And then third would be the writing. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to share ideas. I was writing poems in second and third grade. Who's your favorite writer? Oh, wow. There's so many. Baldwin, James Baldwin for sure. He had a sense of America that he combined style and substance, right? I mean, he has this brilliant mind that is able to analyze America's race problems, force America to come to terms with its soul and itself. But he does own a prose that is so attractive and compelling. For me, that's important to boys. To me is the model of black intellectual life. Suppressively the African slave trade in 1896, or the Levin Negro in 1899, so was Black Folk in 1903. Just those three alone, right? Before you even get to 54, you get to black reconstruction. Those texts, to me, represent a body of work that is virtually incomparable. Of course, Du Bois had contemporaries. He had interlocutors. There were many women who helped shape his thinking, many men who helped shape his thinking. He wasn't alone, but I do think he's the towering figure. And then thirdly, I would say for me is Bell Hooks. Bell Hooks not only modeled a kind of living feminism for me, but she also modeled a kind of commitment to writing that I had not seen before. I mean, she writes so much and so beautifully, but so prolifically, more importantly for me right now, that I was like, oh, this is possible. And you don't have to be limited to the thing you're training. She wrote a PhD dissertation on Toni Morrison. But she's writing about space and location in her book, Home, where she's writing about, and remembered rapture, she's writing about the process of writing, a book that changed my life. Feminism is for everybody, or ain't I a woman? Books that challenge us to think about feminism killing rage. Then her close reading of texts and outlaw culture. I mean, or her engagement with Black masculinity and we were real cool. I mean, we named book after book after book. She's been amazing. And Bell Hooks has been a hero of mine, and someone who I wish I could be like as an intellectuals, a writer, and as just a human in this world. As we wrap up and play a quick word game and then one final question. Sure. I'll give you the name. You give me one word, Ralph Abernathy. Complicated. Colin Kaepernick. Courageous. Elder Watson Diggs. Creator. Always Caze, by the way. What's the future for Mark Lamontev? Hopefully, I'll be able to continue to grow as a human being. Be able to make even better decisions to be able to love my friends and family even more, to be able to grow spiritually, to just grow as a human being. On the professional side, I want to expand the bounds of what I do even more. People couldn't see me hosting a late night talk show five years ago. They couldn't see me writing on New York Times bestseller maybe 10 years ago. Cause they said that's not what academics do. I wanna write a screenplay. I wanna write a movie. I wanna write a book of comedy stories, like a David Sideris kind of thing. But I also wanna own more of the stuff that I make. So growing my production company, producing and shooting a few projects that are where I want them to be. And then hopefully once my child is at a school, traveling a little bit more and spending more time in the Middle East and on the continent of Africa doing the kind of anthropological field work that I've always wanted to do in a more substantive fashion. Well, thanks for joining us at The New Life. If you would just bless our audience with a bidding to do. I'm Mark Lamar Hill and I'm down with The Newps.