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The Latest with Loren LoRosa
Paying tribute to Malcolm Jamal Warner … run toward the things that instill pride
00:18:47
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- [00:00]
Lauren LaRosa
This is an iHeart podcast. Let's get to it.
- [00:06]
Charlamagne Tha God
Time to do it.
- [00:07]
Lauren LaRosa
I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and everybody exclusive.
- [00:11]
Charlamagne Tha God
You know, she don't lie about that, right?
- [00:12]
Lauren LaRosa
Lauren came in hot. Hey, y'. All, what's up? It's Lauren LaRosa. And this is the latest with Lauren LaRosa. This is your daily dig on all things pop culture, entertainment, news, and the conversations that shake the room. Now, today, if we're checking in behind the scenes of the grind, I know we haven't checked in in a. Wow. It's been some time back on the grind. I. I don't. It's not that I don't know how I feel. I guess that there's, like, a level of shock and sadness. Yesterday, the news broke that Malcolm Jamal Warner tragically passed away in a drowning. He was on a family vacation in Costa Rica when he went into the water and was taken down by a current and did not survive. He was pronounced dead on the scene after rescued by some bystanders and, you know, just didn't survive. Which man. Just even talking about it right now. We were talking about it this morning on the Breakfast Club. Make sure you guys go check out our coverage over there as well, too. When we got finished our first segment, I said to Jess and Envy, I'm like, yo, I'm literally shaking. And I think what the feeling is is just like, man, death is. It can be so sudden and just so unplanned. Not that anybody plans, you know, something like this, but I feel like he's been such a staple in entertainment and black storytelling my whole life. So it felt like, you know, this was somebody close to me because I think I text someone and said, man, this is just so crazy. It came out of nowhere. And the response was, that's normally how death happens. We're getting on into the latest right now because, you know, as we talk about, you know, the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner, you know, it's all over the news today, right? And was yesterday all over the headlines, all over the news. It's anything everybody is talking about. Any. And everybody are talking about it. I went on, like, a deep dive just now in preparing for the podcast because I'm like, you know, I want to talk about Malcolm Jamal Warner on the podcast, but I don't want to just report it as news. Like, I don't want to just say, okay, here's what happened here. How. Here's how he passed away. We did that in the beginning. You guys got that. But I think that with this, it's like, it's hard to just treat this as just a headline, which is very crazy for me to say. Cause, you know, I live in a world of headlines. But this just feels so different because of the, you know, untimely, like, the untimely passing, like, you know, just how this came about and the story behind it. And, you know, hearing him talk so much about family and his daughter and, you know, his wife being a love of his life and his daughter being a love of his life and just having to think about, you know, all the people that loved him being without him now. I don't know. It just doesn't feel good to make this just a story, just a headline. So I wanted to dive a bit deeper here and have a conversation about the passing of Malcolm Jamal Warner and some of the work that he left this earth doing. And I think a lot of people, I know for myself, when we think about what we want people to say about us after, we can't say it ourselves anymore. I'm always thinking about, like, impact and what that looks like in how am I shaping that, even if in the beginning, the beginning stages. And I went to Malcolm Jamal Warner's podcast, I'd seen, if I'm being honest, I'd only seen one episode of his podcast prior to this. And then I saw the promos of Envy and Gia on his podcast prior to this. But this was my second episode that I watched. And this episode that we're going to feature today in our conversation is actually one of. Not even one. It was the last sit down episode that Malcolm Jamal Warner did on his podcast. So it's an episode called why the Hood Deserves More Respect. Georgia Me speaks the truth. And it features a conversation that is extremely interesting. So in this episode, not on Hood, which is the Nah podcast by Malcolm Jamal Warner and his co host Candace Kelly, they sit down with a poet. She's also an actress and an activist. Her name is Tamika Georgie Harper. So she's known for being a part of HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam. She was also on Broadway as well. And they have a real conversation. The description here says this is a masterclass in radical self love, hood pride, and the resilience of black creativity. Georgia Me unpologetically uplifts the hood as a sacred space of community, survival and joy. She also delivers powerful insight on the gentrification of Atlanta, the misrepresentation of black stories in the media, the commodification of struggle, and the need to honor working Class black Americans. So they have a ton of conversations here. In this conversation, they start off just talking about the hood. For anyone that was raised in the hood, whether you stayed and you built your life, you know, in the neighborhood you grew up in or you moved and you know, do you go back and forth to where you're from or whatever the case may be, you instantly kind of get the sense of what the conversation is like. That, that tribal, it takes a village feeling that you, you really understand only if you grew up in a community interlocked. Being black and growing up in the hood, it has its things, but the sense of community, and I'm a stand next to you, not behind you or in front of you because we need to do this together, is different, especially if you're from different generations as well. So let's take a listen to the conversation on the hood and how the hood is shown.
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Charlamagne Tha God
What the media shows us is one side of black culture and it's the hood side. And the hood side ultimately, historically is what has always created American culture. It gets co opted from the hood and then it becomes mainstream.
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Jessie Woo
Exactly.
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Charlamagne Tha God
But I just loved your, I loved your take and your reminder that the hood should be as celebrated as the rest of the lanes of black culture.
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Jessie Woo
We thrive because there's devised plan for our demise every day. So for you to still smile, still find ways to make it. And then in the hood, we help each other. Poor people help each other more than rich people all day. In my neighborhood, my whole life growing up, we don't just borrow some sugar. It ain't no thing to borrow no sugar. I might borrow a whole chicken from Ms. Ada across the street, make a whole dinner and bring her a plate. You hear what I'm saying? That's my hood.
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Lauren LaRosa
They then get into a conversation, right? Because once you start to have a conversation, conversation about the hood and the way it's perceived and you know, kind of how things used to be to an extent, I, I think right now because of the things that we're dealing with, like, you know, people really, really don't have money, they really, really don't feel like there's hope. You have all of the things that people have dealt with before in our civilization and in our neighborhoods. But now things are personified because you have social media personifying everyone who's not in the hood or even the people in the hood that are doing well. So it makes, it's easy to make one person feel less than because of that or it's easy to paint a picture of a neighborhood or a group of people from a certain area, for lack thereof, right? So then they start getting into the conversation of black excellence and black love. And this stems from a conver, a comment that Malcolm Jamal Warner made about his experience or like, his learning of black soldiers, like actual soldiers. Let's take a listen to that.
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Charlamagne Tha God
And it was that conversation. So before I, you know, I have a thing we talk about all the time. I have a thing about black excellence and like, black love. Like you, when you. When you put black in front of. Makes it a subset of that thing. But then when I started, you know, having this argument with him, not argument with discussion about the history of black soldiers for the first time, it made me think of black excellence in a different way. Right? Like the, the. The. Because black excellence now is attributed to fame and money.
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Jessie Woo
Never.
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Charlamagne Tha God
So that's been my. My issue.
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Jessie Woo
Never for me.
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Charlamagne Tha God
But now when I'm looking into the story, like black. Black survival in and of itself is black excellence.
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Lauren LaRosa
Because we've always had to supersede, do better, and more things have been put in our way. The reason why I thought that this was like fire. And I'm like, yo, if I'mma, you know, do a segment on Malcolm Jamal Warner for Malcolm Jamal Warner for the latest with Lauren, the Rosa, I want to have the. A conversation almost like a teaching of, like, okay, here's like, you know, something that he was, you know, set on teaching and putting into the world. Because, I don't know, I was watching this episode and I'm like, you know, I might not agree with everything that's being said here, but the notion that we need each other more than we are willing to allow ourselves to act on in 2025, I felt it. It's like, it's hard to get around. It's hard not to think about. It's hard not to have a conversation about. As a media personality, I remember when I moved to la, I was told, don't do the black stuff. Like, you don't want to be the black girl. Like, make sure if you're doing, you know, the bets or the this or the that, you don't just cover black news or black music or black this or black that. And if you do get a job outside of the black entertainment realm, make sure you don't become the black girl that only does the black things. And then I remember coming to Breakfast Club and feeling so good about being able to do the black things and being able to really speak to those things, because those are the things I Grew up on some of the stuff I can have kind conversations about in my sleep because I grew up hearing it, watching it, knowing who these celebrities are, watching them grow in their careers and things of that nature. It, y' all like, it effed my mind up when I made this transition because for so long, I was like, to Malcolm Jamal Warner's point of putting black in front of things. Black love, black excellence, right? Even with, like, me having a conversation about being a business owner, black business owner, black entrepreneur, black journalist, I always felt like if I leaned into those things, I would always end up with less than. And that is not the way that I was raised in my neighborhood. And you know what I mean? Like, those are not the morals and the backbone of the things that made people, where I'm from, great. Understanding who you are and understanding why black is so amazing and understanding why being able to go out into the world as a person who knows all of that is such a superpower. You get into the world of things where you're then hearing so much about the disparities and what we don't get and how things are unfortunate and just all these things, right? For me, it was like, I wanted to run from it. I didn't want to be black excellence. Like, I just wanted to be excellent conversations like these, where people are like, but hold on, but why not like. Like, let's recenter and really think about, like, how much of a privilege it is to even be able to be a part of. Like, think about your family reunion, right? Or like, whatever tradition is amazing in your family. And I'm talking to black people specifically, a lot of like us. I don't know if I got how many white listeners I got or others, any other race, but right here, this is. This is. This is for us. But think about something really sacred in your family. So for my family, it's our family reunions. And we do this thing called the Mother daughter sleepover. And we've been doing it since, man, like, I was maybe 2 years old, and it's so special. And it's something that not everybody gets to experience. And when I speak from that experience or when I operate in the world as a person that grew up in love like that, right? Like a family that is whole, that gets together, that loves on each other. When I operate in the world off of that, the way that things are received literally has changed my life. One of the biggest things that people say to me a lot is, is they. They talk to me about my family, like how I was raised like my mom, my grandmother. And I didn't realize it until I began to talk about it. That, like, everybody don't have that, like, not everybody has a family that gets together for every holiday that celebrates the mothers in their family. And it's a legacy, tradition that really understands wholeness and, like, you know, that warm feeling of tribe and community. And not everybody has that. When I got in LA and I got in these spaces, like, you know, they're talking about, like Malcolm Jamal Warner said, these soldiers were fighting for these privileges that they didn't even get to enjoy, right? The only difference between journalists and black journalists is the experience and the expertise that I bring. And that's an asset anywhere. And I might not be able to, you know, always get to enjoy all of the fruits of my labor because, you know, I'm a. I'm black and I'm a woman and all of these things, but, like, who's to say that what I'm doing isn't excellent and that I can't love it and I can't continue to do it and work for it? And, you know, like, this conversation made me think about that feeling of. And maybe that was like an identity battle too, right? Because you're in these spaces where you feel like you have to convert, you have to shrink the world. As a black woman who shows up, like, I'm telling you guys, like, I think when you are a part of a community and a neighborhood in the hoods, like, what they are talking about, and you think about the good things that come from it. The, the, the. The. The learning to survive, the understanding of culture, of family, of I got you no matter what, of whatever you need, right? Being able to hold those things and those pillars that you learned throughout your whole life literally changes your life. It. It puts you on a pedestal that is so amazing. Like, you have these black soldiers that Malcolm Jamal Warner is talking about who, you know, even though they're trying to erase it, they're being written about in these books, right, and talked about throughout history. Not just because they're like, you know what? We just want to go be soldiers. You couldn't get around the fact that they were black soldiers. And I'm sure that their upbringing, their families, their faith that they were instilled with made them operate in ways that allowed them to achieve the great things that they did, even under those circumstances where they didn't even get to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but it made them great. We're talking about them today. So as I'm thinking Through, like, the Malcolm Jamal Warner passing and, you know, just. Man, I remember. I remember watching a Cosby show and that was my first time ever seeing a black family all in one house. Like, I swear to you, that was the first time I ever saw it in that way where, like, they weren't struggling like they were dealing with life, but they weren't struggling. Like they were doctors and they were astute and their kids were going to college. And think about that. Like, imagine if Malcolm Jamal Warner had said, I don't want to be on this show because I don't want to be the black son on the black show that's talking only to black people. What I'm talking about is a sense of pride that these hoods and these neighborhoods instill in us. And when I put that parallel to, like, the life and the legacy of Malcolm Jamal Warner from what I grew up watching and how I felt about him from my, you know what I mean? Like, just watching him in my household and growing up on the Cosby show and things of that nature, it's like taking who you are, where you're from, and being able to teach through whatever gift it is that God gave you to be able to do so can literally change people's lives, and you can't run from that. And he didn't. He was so intentional about the things that he did. I'm. I'm 33 years old, and I will say that this year has really taught me about intention and being intentional. And I'm not the best at it all the time, you know, but I've learned a lot about it. But when I, when I, you know, look at people like him and what he's done, that wasn't just a one off show for him. He lived every moment after that intentional, intentionally speaking to black people and doing things that bettered people, even if people didn't agree with him all the time. So definitely want to send, you know, a rest in peace to him. And, man, I can't imagine what his family is going through right now. If we feel like this and, you know, we're, you know, selfishly. Because this is a character. Well, he had a character that we grew up on. But, you know, Charlamagne was talking a lot today on the show about, like, the man, you know, Malcolm Jamal Warner the man and not Theo the character. We, you know, in our loving Theo from the Cosby show, the character are devastated and we're shocked and we just have so many questions. But imagine those who loved and got to experience Malcolm Jamal Warner as the man and how they feel right now, you know, like, so definitely take some time, send a prayer for them. Legacy, like that's, that's just the only place you can end something like this is legacy and thinking about legacy, because if nothing else, those, you know, family members, those friends who know Malcolm Jamal Warner the man, that is what they're going to have to hold on to now. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. This has been another episode. I know that this episode was a bit different. I hope you guys enjoyed our conversation that hopefully shaped, you know, shakes your room. You can't run from your. You can't run from the things that are still pride in you from the beginning. And when you choose not to run, you build real legacy. Look at the life of Malcolm Jamal Warner and go check out his podcast. The podcast you can find on YouTube. Not all hood. Nah, on YouTube there are some episodes there for you to check out. And at the end of the day, you guys could be anywhere with anybody talking about all these things because there's always a lot to talk about. But you guys are right here with me, my low riders. I appreciate you guys. I'll see you in the next episode. Foreign this is an I heart podcast.