Wise Intelligent: Soul of a Black Man

Came to Trenton, NJ by way of North Carolina that’s where my parents are from. My mother came to North Carolina by way of Barbados who also came to Barbados by way of Guyana BiSol she’s Balante (Her tribe). My father came to North Carolina by way of Virginia and he came to Virginia by way of Southeast Nigeria and he’s Ibo.

What it must feel like to know exactly where you come from. We’d be surprised if we all knew exactly where we cam from and why we do the things we do and things may be a little different. Wise Intelligent of the Poor Righteous Teachers took it upon himself to gain that knowledge and as a person and an artist he’s that much better for it. With his new album dropping yesterday Wise is set out to prove that it’s no longer cool to be dumb. “If Paris Hilton listened to a little more intelligent music she wouldn’t be incarcerated-If George Bush listened to a little more intelligent music we wouldn’t be fighting a war in Iraq.” For Wise Intelligent it’s all about infrastructure and through his new community center soon to open up in Camden, NJ to this album release you will witness the growth of this artist. It may make you re-think your own steps and look at where you’ve been and where you’re headed.

Scheme: How did you come up with the name Wise Intelligent?

Wise Intelligent: Actually I didn’t come up with the name Wise Intelligent it was my physical brother Israel.

Scheme: Where did that come from?

Israel: That came from the five percent doctrine. I came across the 120 lessons from the first resurrection, that was given to the Honorable Elijah Muhammed which is known as master crawl and I told him this is what his name was going to be and he was about 12 years old at the time.

Scheme: When did you begin to form your political perspective and worldview?

Wise Intelligent: At the moment I started to really study and comprehend 120 Lessons from the nation of God’s nurse. That’s when my view started to formulate and that’s what served as a catalyst to propel me into the libraries and books that complimented the 120 degrees. It’s like studying anything, one thing is going to lead to something else.

As far as my opinion and views on how the world functions, that was shaped and maintained by the environment in which we are embedded as a people so as far as those views that’s something that came through me. That’s something that we’ve been dealing with since European aggression. The five percent lessons pretty much complimented that or induced that.

Scheme: When did you decide that music was going to be one of your avenues to express your opinions?

Wise Intelligent: When I first started writing and rhyming and being serious about it. The feeling was this is me and I don’t care what anybody thinks about my opinion, get what you can get out of it and leave the rest.

Scheme: When did music grab your ear?

Wise Intelligent: Music is the soul of Black people and music was with us before we were born. Whether it was in the church, the family cookout, the Marvin Gaye’s and the Curtis Mayfield’s music is a part of Black culture. Music always represented our social struggle throughout life whether it was European oppression or on the continent of Africa, the dance, the call & response so music was always with us. Hip Hop magnetized me in a way that previous genres did not because hip hop was driven by my peers. They were speaking the language that I spoke and they were dressing the way that I already dressed. That’s why I like to say hip hop didn’t make me fresh I made hip hop fresh. When Melly Mell said, “Broken glass everywhere people piss on the stairs like they just don’t care.” That was my hood! Melly Mell was me and I was Melly Mell.

“Me as CEO of Def Jam is like Malcolm X alive in America.”

Scheme: Chuck D said a long time ago, “hip hop is our CNN”, if you were the CEO of Def Jam what would be your marketing strategy and how would you flip it if you had that kind of power?

Wise Intelligent: Right now I’m a founder of Intelligent Music which is a record label and exactly what we’re doing with Intelligent Music would be our agenda for a Def Jam which is to create balance. I wouldn’t want to see all 50 Cent or all Jay-Z. My roster would reflect the many ideas that exist within the community. I’d have that brotha on my label that goes to college trying to secure a degree along with the kid whose selling crack on my corner all these ideas are relative to the collective Black mind. We have to present all those ideas so that people can have a true choice or an alternative to what might be imposed on or approaching who they really are. So that’s what I would do in that position of power but I would get shot. Me as CEO of Def Jam is like Malcolm X alive in America or Martin Luther King Jr. I’d be assassinated because my goal would be to change and challenge the status quo and that’s a no-no in any mainstream American institution that has any real power.

“There’s no structure for the emcee that wants to address the situation in Darfur so he’s not going to be propagated and he’s not going to eat and that’s the way he’s viewing it.”

Scheme: How do you feel about artists who may say something that carries political content but when they get asked the question are they political they shy away and say I’m not a politician I don’t vote for this or that I just say what I feel. However, when it’s time to stand up and say this is who I am, why do you think hip hop artists are scared of that?

Wise Intelligent: Hip Hop artists are afraid of a lot, their not just afraid of being political. They’re afraid of losing their position in society. They’re trying to preserve their fan base for one which is their source of feeding themselves. History proves that anytime that a Black man took a political position that contradicted the establishment he was lynched so their afraid of that lynching whether it’s from a tree or whether that lynching is an economic lynching and this is why a lot of rappers say I’m not political I’m just expressing myself. It’s just like Oprah Winfrey she says that same thing, this is the paradigm that any non-White person in America is facing. Hip Hop doesn’t have a monopoly on being afraid of being political. The disc jockey on the radio of station, non- of them want to be political, they don’t want to be political even though they’re children are waking up every morning with a kilo of coke and a handgun on their front porch because they are afraid of losing their job.

Scheme: So would you say that people aren’t ready to make that sacrifice, what would you call that?

Wise Intelligent: I would call it a failure of the Black community to build infrastructure. We don’t have the infrastructure to facilitate the Black personality on radio so that he/she won’t sell out. Look at the doctors that graduate from Xavier, Xavier turns out 104 doctors a year and their talent is being facilitated and propagated by White hospitals so they have to leave that community, they can’t bring that talent and skill back to the community where it’s greatly needed. A little boy just died of tooth problems because the doctors wouldn’t take care of him and that’s a problem. If we had the infrastructure for the Black dentist and the Black OBGYN to come back to the community we could facilitate them not serving the enemy; and there’s no infrastructure for the emcee that wants to say something political in the neighborhood. There’s no structure for the emcee that wants to address the situation in Darfur so he’s not going to be propagated and he’s not going to eat and that’s the way he’s viewing it. We we’re building infrastructure but we integrated and lost the infrastructure.

“We’re afraid to say 98% of all public schools are Black but 83% of all public school teachers are middle-class White women. The future of the Black race is in the hand of middle class White women!”

Scheme: To that statement would you promote segregation and the move back to Africa? My opinion there would be Black people and people of color that would say why do I have to leave? I feel like if you gathered some Black people to move back to Africa, I feel like they would say, “Hell No!”

Wise Intelligent: You have to understand why they would say hell no. Look at what they’ve done to Africa. Africa is worse than any ghetto in America right now. The same problem that the African is facing is the same problem that Mexican, Native, Negro in America, South American is facing in this hemisphere. The earth is in the hands of the wicked, their ruling, powering and oppressing and that’s how they operate. When we say separate or segregate, America is separated and segregated! Our goal wasn’t integration, our goal was freedom justice and equality, matter of fact freedom wasn’t even attached to it because we believed freedom was a natural right! European power structure redirected the movement into the cooling mechanism of the vote. So you now you can sit back and let the vote take care of your problems-just vote and that will take care of it, when in reality that was a lie. We set out for freedom, justice and equality. The problem was all of these organizations from NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) , CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) were funded by White men. So when the Black revolutionary leaders of these organizations wanted to direct the movement in a way that aided the people who it really represented the White underwriter said we’re not financing it. That’s what happened with Roy Enis at CORE, he wanted to project a more Afro-centric vibe but the White Jewish underwriter said absolutely not. So if the movement is not catering towards European interests the movement cannot exist in this infrastructure.

Scheme: Besides building that infrastructure what do you see those other solutions being as a people of color?

Wise Intelligent: We have too many examples, we have the Amish people are separate but equal. They control their economics, education and their politics. The Chinese community they have Chinatown. There’s no Rasco’s Chicken & Waffles in Chinatown. It’s Chinatown but nobody is calling them racist, there is no Mexican, African-American working in Chinatown and nobody is calling them racist. So why when we choose to do the same thing we’re racist and we’re separatists? We need that same infrastructure, same racial pride and high self-esteem and that’s what’s killing us, we’re afraid to be who we are. We should be trying to take control of the educational system in our communities which is in dyer need of an Afro-centric curriculum. We’re letting major corporations like Mellon Bank come in and bid for schools that are predominantly Black, take over the curriculum and continue to mislead our children. Whenever your kid comes home looking like a rabbit with rabbit ears on the top of his head like Noam Chomsky says, “Education becomes an imposed system of ignorance.” We’re dealing with European psychology being imposed on African people and that’s a no-no and we’re afraid to tear down that psychology. We’re afraid to say 98% of all public schools are Black but 83% of all public school teachers are middle-class White women. The future of the Black race his in the hand of middle class White women! As Bobby Wright would say that’s mentacide because we are afraid to deal with the causes of our condition. So we spend all this time saying we need more politicians, we need to get these rappers off the radio saying n*gga, all of these are cooling pots to vent. The behavior of the average mainstream rapper is a behavior that was shaped and maintained in an environment that is not conducive to the development of Africans. So the point is we need to take control of our infrastructure. I mean the Koreans are selling me soul food in my community, but let a Black man open up a store in a Korean neighborhood, they would not spend a dime in his store.

Scheme: What’s next for Wise Intelligent?

Wise Intelligent: The new album it’s a different record. It’s a conduit out of the Poor Righteous Teachers platform in the sense that PRT dealt with the immortal side of Black men but with this record it’s more personal. For the first time I’m letting the fan base delve into what shaped me. I want to show people my development and what brought me to this point and I want to show Black youth that I was them.