Black kid white town Hip hop George Floyd and brokenness
[Applause]
i’m sorry
hey i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry sorry
you over there
super sorry sorry sorry yeah
um i’m guessing you’re wondering why is
he saying
sorry instead of hello hello thank you
thank you you’re far too kind well
the reason is what i’m about to talk
about has everything to do with two
topics
and those are specific events
surrounding the murder of george floyd
and everyone’s favorite topic race
and i’ve found that when you’re going to
talk about these sort of things
the best thing to do is say sorry right
off the bat right at the top
so the whole thing has a little bit of a
this might sting a bit to it
so with that being said let’s get into
it who
am i well my name is matt allen mr allen
if you’re nasty
and i was born in bronx new york
something that would give me a whole lot
more street cred if it wasn’t for the
fact that i moved when i was very young
to a town called
rosemont minnesota
[Music]
fun fact about rosemont we had three
liquor stores a mr movies
and a blockbuster video before we had
a public library so you know just a
little bit of rosemont trivia to dazzle
your friends with
something that i learned right away
growing up in rosemont
minnesota i actually learned two things
cemented
into the mold of who i was the first was
i love to entertain love to sing dance
you know what i was called back junior
year
to be joseph and joseph in the amazing
technicolor dreamcoat now
i ultimately didn’t get it but i did get
to sing a nice jamaican number so you
know
that was fun which leads me to the
second
thing i learned because growing up in
rosemont minnesota it was clear that i
was unstoppably
uncontrollably and irreversibly black
i’m sorry for those of you who can’t see
color and are like who is this weird
muscle and bone man and what’s he
talking about
my skin has a different shade
than the majority of people i went to
high school with a majority of the
people
that i shared a blockbuster video with
in rosemont minnesota
and when you grow up different in a town
like that you have three options you can
either fight
flee or hide and while i was strong i
wasn’t really a fighter and
i’m not in the fleeing business
so i decided to hide now matt you ask
you’re very wide where were you
expecting to
hide at and to that i say thanks
for that but there are multiple ways for
children to hide
from a world that hates and fears them
i wanted to be an entertainer so i
entertained
i danced i sang i threw myself
into my passion and it became my safe
space
it’s a lot harder to hear the hate when
you have an auditorium
full of people cheering for you don’t
get me wrong i did enjoy it i do
enjoy it for those of you who don’t know
i do hip hop in the twin cities under
the name
nerdy and i’ve done pretty well for
myself i’ve
been able to play at first ave paisley
park the u.s bank stadium and
across the country in a dramatic amount
of time
something that many of my hip-hop peers
have worked decades
and decades just to get even half of the
opportunities that i’ve been able to
receive something
that makes me just as well like behind
closed doors as it sounds
and some of the reasons for that is
because
yes my music is good and yes my music is
positive
but a clear and repeating factor is that
my music is clean
no cussing now i have said damn
a few times and i did say that fictional
haters could
pucker to my anus which while gross
isn’t technically swearing i told the
radio station who still wouldn’t play
the song
but it’s true 99 of my music is
clean no cussing in fact it’s very
non-violent from content
to tone and it gives me a lot of
opportunities
so when tedx minneapolis asked me to
come here
stand on this spot look super hot which
i feel like i have
i came up with an idea on what to speak
on
clean hip-hop is the future of hip-hop
and by embracing
it not only will you be a better artist
and more successful but you will affect
the world
more for the better i had written stuff
about that but then something happened
may 25th an officer
of the minneapolis police department
murdered a man named george floyd
by kneeling on his neck for eight
minutes and 46 seconds
while two of his fellow officers held
him down and one more made sure that the
terrified onlookers couldn’t
save him that video
was captured on a cell phone put online
and went viral
worldwide and when i saw that video
something inside of me broke
you see no matter how much
i danced or how wide i smiled i was
still
black and no matter how deep i threw
myself into my passion
it was less of a fortune of solitude and
more of the saloon door
that trouble could and would walk
through
at any opportunity my mind raced back
to when i was leaving rosemont marcus
theater
and cops showed with their lights
and they demanded me to show them some
id
i remember pointing to my name tag
because i was too afraid to reach for my
wallet
my mind raced back when my car got a
flat in the blizzard
and a cop car pulled up and i was so
thankful that someone was there
to help me and as i stood up and brushed
the snow from my pants the officers got
out of their cars with their hands on
their guns
and told me to drop the weapon
a literal saving grace that so many
young men like me never got
as we marched to three miles from cup
foods to the third precinct
i didn’t want to dance
or sing i wanted them
to hurt as they fired
gas and rubber bullets at children and
elderly people all gathered i didn’t
want
anything i sought to myself i want each
and every one of those
cross-burning stepping child beating
monsters
to pay for what they did and anyone who
supports them
to pay as well i didn’t want to dance
i didn’t want to sing
may 27th where we were providing
first aid outside of a peaceful protest
of the third precinct i remember
as a young black girl was brought to me
shaking in her own blood
trying not to choke on her teeth because
a police officer had
shot her in the mouth with a non-lethal
round as we put her
in a civilian car because 9-1-1 wasn’t
sending ambulances i
didn’t want to make a 90s cartoon
reference
may 29th after being shot by the police
and fleeing i watched as a nurse tried
to save a young girl’s face and eye
in a filthy basement by cell phone light
because a police officer had shot that
young girl in the face at point-blank
range
for the crime of being outside after
curfew
and i didn’t want to sing a note
and on june 1st
when i was put on the ground hand zip
tied behind my back
so tight that my hands went numb
i watched as an army of police officers
descended
upon a group of young people sitting at
the capitol
singing their songs for a hope
of justice and i learned something there
in my brokenness
to my hip-hop peers who have been
shouting
about these things were broken for a lot
longer than i was
the truth is that while rosemont
minnesota wasn’t a dream
many of my peers who had been ignored by
the powers that be
had been living in war zones for much
longer than a week
and me coming here and asking them to be
more accessible
was akin to me asking them to lay down
their swords
and unwound themselves all at the same
time
you see the songs that escaped their
lips had cuts
and edges and jagged and they would
never
expose their necks to anyone ever
i find myself here burdened
under the realization that while my
talent and my drive undoubtedly
contributed
to my consent to my success
the truth is that one of the
huge contributing factors to me being in
the industry where i
am today being here in this room right
now is because
i was safer
i am buckling under my arrogance
thinking that i could come
here and ask these people these veterans
of systematic dehumanization to change
their songs
instead of asking the world to change
their ears
and i find myself
shattered under the realization that
like martin luther king jr my message
has only been so
fervently accepted
because those of malcolm x and my
hip-hop peers hit too deep
and too radically for people to cope
with
so what’s my big ask they say
when they give a speech you’re supposed
to have a big ass something you want the
audience to do
now that they’ve heard your story and
mine is this
i am asking you to not let
the jagged pieces of a person’s song
keep you from hearing the melody of
their heart
i am begging you to work on being
emotionally
stronger so that you can be publicly
wrong
about your misconceived and preconceived
notions
of people and places and movements that
don’t center around what makes you more
comfortable
don’t let your
sacred spaces of success be only
filled with people who make you feel
good
but allow those spaces
to be filled with people who make you
feel challenged
for not being good enough
and when i said i was sorry earlier
i lied
whew