Monday, April 11, 2011 at 4:31PM "Never thought I'd be alone again / that's why I asked you to be my best friend..."
Original video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j17qt53Bh0
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 12:08AM Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 12:03AM A conversation with my little bro, the other dusty foot philosopher, in my other home... London, England.
Video Post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyTE6yoe8GU
Drake, Interview, england, future the prince, london | in In the Media, Love, T-Dot | Email Article Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 1:18PM What's up,
I'm always surprised at people's surprise at my "community side". It's logical, however, as many of you have only ever met me in the capacity of an event promoter...
So allow me to re-introduce the other side of me.
I grew in a community family with an activists Mom and Dad, sleeping many nights under the tables of community organizations that they were a part of like the Afro Canadian Congress. My social pedigree includes some of the greatest freedom fighters in our community's collective history from Dan Hill to Al Mercury and all points in between. My mother was given her articling position in Law at the Official Guardian's office, and instilled community mindness in me from an early age - with me volunteering at Anishwabe at the age of 5. My head has been patted "hey little guy" by community leaders from Alvin Curling (who's nephew was my best friend) to Lincoln Alexander... From Zanana Akunde to Dudley Laws...
I grew up in University with her, taking Women's studies classes and being a child in adult classes on African writers like Wole Soyinka, asking questions and making the class laugh.
I was virtually raised in the Third World Book Store by Mr. & Mrs. Johnson who I had met as a child with my Mother years earlier and whom further fueled my love of Black history and Canadian Black History in particular. I witness the birth of 2BlackGuys (Adrian was my hero) in the store, and watched with pride as they expanded and other businesses like Soul Kids populated the area.
I was mentored under (albeit our numerous disagreements on tactic), the great Lennox Farrell at Francis Libermann. I have always studied and taught Black history throughout my life. During late high school and early University, I taught Black History for years at the Scarborough Black Education Organization (SBEO) and still make regular speaking appearances to this day.
I spent the summer preceeding my first year at University working at the Black Pages. At University of Toronto, from where I have a degree in International Development Studies and as many who knew me, I was an activist... First as a member of the Scarborough Campus Student Council, which I joined because they produced a frosh week which was not mindful of the multicultural nature of the campus - putting catfood in the hair of dreads during frosh week and making us endure Moxie Fruvus without respect to the fact that we didn't all listen to rock. I was largely involved in ACSA, the African Canadian Students Association for years, and went to schools to speak regularly. One of my proudest accomplishments is my little brother Wan who I met while mentoring (and being mentored) at Each One, Teach One's "Brother to Brother" programs...
During these process of doing these speaking engagements, and realizing how little our children knew about our history, I created my clothing line, Emancipation Consciouswear (in my 18th year) and placed phrases and contributions from prominent Black leaders and historical figures in the community on clothing. My biggest selling piece, had Kente cloth in an E emblazened Emancipation. That year, Maya Angelou autographed my "Still I Rise" shirt at a speaking engagement. I was one of many "conscious lines" - including Origin and Nubian Classic, lines by Wayne Donawa and Mark Stoddard around the same time.
That company went on to do screen printing, and my graphics company, named aptly "Black Star" after the star that the slaves followed into freedom / Frederick Douglas's revolutionary newspaper (as a means of transmitting information) has worked with every major community and university organization in the country - from ABLE to the BBPA & Harry Jerome Awards, Congress of Black Women on. At a chance meeting at BBPA event, I met my next mentor, the late great Beverly Mascoll, who was a great supporter of my clothing line and myself in general. I did work on the James Robinson Johnson Chair for Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie (as well as her son Eldon's Hip Hop TV show). Working for York's Black Students Association's Kevin Blagrove, I met a guy named Dwayne Morgan who I designed for for 12 years... I have been blessed to work for virtually every major artist and dj and small business in Toronto's Black community, and in Urban entertainment since then.
Most of Scarborough actually knows me as the guy selling"conscious clothing" out of the truck of an Aqua Cavalier in the 90s and dropping t-shirt orders everywhere....
In business however, the screenprinting took in the direction of entertainment after doing work for ACSA, I met Re-wine and Play (djs) who asked me to print towels for them. From there, Baby Blue, Scratch, Dr. Jay, Scott Boogie (Ottawa) and every other dj in the market came to me for T-shirt, towel design and print across the country....
My return to the Trinidadian side of my culture, Mas, was too a nod to my love of history and culture - and my costumes came initially came with an explanation of Mas for those who were new to it... Even in entertainment - my appearances on Jester and Chief's Worldwide were generally for panel discussions on community issues like the year of the gun, and I had a Black History moments segment each year and on OTA Live for their Black History Month programming...
There's so much more - I've actually never written it down before now, and don't own a resume since the fateful day that I ripped it up - meaning that I have no actual account of the countless speaking engagements that I've done, panels I've sat on, people that I've met and the such... Even that story involves the Black community. The organization I was working for when I ripped up my resume was the Black Business Resource Centre on St. Clair above Sunshine, which was created under the same mandate as the ill fated Black Credit Union.
Regardless, I thought I'd let you know that there's a little more than what meets the eye.
Funny enough, my business mantra stems from the entire community thing - meaning - my goal was to become successful so that someone would listen to me, as I discovered time and time again, that the adult community doesn't take your suggestions seriously unless they can see some "reason" that they should listen to you - and that reason is usually success as measured in money.
We'll talk again. Gotta get back to work.
I
