Comedian Sheryl Underwood inspired me to release something thats been sitting with me for a VERY long time. Im not gonna release the names of the individuals because that seems, for me at least to be irrelevant. Besides, they know who they are, and they know what they did. :) Anyway, here goes.... Several years ago, back in 2000, I, along with a few others represented West Palm Beach in the National Poetry Slam competition, which is considered the WORLD CUP of poetry. I came from an entertainment background and applied that to my stage performances. I also met a lot of interesting people. I saw a guy at most of the competition bouts taking notes and thought to myself, Oh, he must be a reporter and kept on with my business. I remember speaking to several poets about trying to film ourselves and shop it around to some TV/film studios. Most people laughed at me...thought I was getting high and mighty with this thing they all coveted called spoken word. So I let it go. But secretly, I wanted to push forward. It was hard in South Florida trying to convince people that this could become so much bigger...in some cases it was damn near impossible. But i kept it moving and kept grinding. THEN around 2001 a good friend of mine told me about an audition for DEF Jam and that they were looking for spoken word artist for an upcoming project. It ended up being a 3-part audition opportunity. One in downtown Miami, one in Ft.Lauderdale, and one in West Palm Beach. Both me and my very good friend had been down on our luck for a bit and were both in various stages of building and re-building our lives and careers, and lyricism and the ability to take no prisoners on stage was pretty much all we had to cling to at that point. We were GOOD...REALLY GOOD. And so off we went to the first audition. I should mention at this point that there was a lot of SHADE surrounding these auditions. There were various audition fees at each location and best believe, poets were paying. BUT NOT ME. I had been through this process before and there was NO WAY I was paying for an audition, nor was I gonna let my friend do it. We simply showed up at the various locations, filled out our paperwork, waited for our names to be called and did our thing, waited around for a bit and then went on our way. At the time, nobody knew the size and scope of what the project would exactly become, but we were all excited. And so we waited. A couple of weeks went by and we heard nothing. Then the word started getting around about who they liked and who they didnt, etc. and both of us were in the running, so to speak. But the promoter who had the inside track with Def Jam already had plans of their own. They already knew who they were going to push through and because the person didnt like me for some reason, they excluded me from the situation. When my friend realized the level of SHADE that he never knew this individual was about, he was no longer interested in what they had to offer and we both moved on. Now remember, several paragraphs ago I told you that someone was at the National Poetry Slam taking notes, right? Well that person was one of the producers of what came to be known as HBOs Def Poetry. ( told yall fools back then that somebody was gonna turn this art into a show, but NOOOOO, dumb asses didnt wanna listen. ) Anyway... So Def Poetry debuts in the spring of 2002 on HBO and was an INSTANT HIT. Actually, it became a MEGA HIT. And turned some unknown poets into stars. Then there was talk that they might do a tour. You see, I had been on TV before, and even thought it had been some years prior, I still remembered what that moment felt like. But for me, I was only interested in networking with Russell Simmons, the THEN head of Def Jam and godfather of Hip Hop. I wanted HIS name on my resume. But when the opportunity came to audition for him at a secret location, I relied on a promoter/poet to get me the opportunity and quickly learned that I wasnt on the IN CROWD. They had a conference on a Yahoo! group that they thought I wasnt a member of and it became CRYSTAL CLEAR who was never gonna get an opportunity through them, even though to my face, they would be all smiles. And so it would seem I lost out, right? WRONG. Fast forward a couple of years and Def Poetry is now on Broadway, Emmy nominated, Tony Award nominated and seemingly out of my reach. BUT GOD HAD A PLAN. I had been teaching a class on spoken word at a high school diversion program in Hollywood, Fl. and my then colleague who was starting a non profit was invited to a ritzy event in Palm Beach and who was there, you ask? Yep. RUSSELL SIMMONS. And after some networking, Russell agreed to judge a youth poetry slam that I was the host, emcee and co-organizer of. Not only did I get to perform and network with Russell, but I got all my friends and crew in my performance and they all got to perform in front of him, as well. It was a good day. The next year, Academy Award nominated writer/producer/actor: Robert Townsend was auditioning people for his show called SPOKEN which was somewhat like Def Poetry but on a different network. I knew about the audition 2 weeks before the general public even heard about it and I still passed along the opportunity to pretty much any and every poet from Florida who ended up auditioning, even those who had been shady to me with the Def Poetry thing... I ended up getting cast on 2 seasons of his show. I was also cast in TV shows on Telemundo and its sister channel: MUN2 and brought other people along for the opportunity, one of which just performed with Jennifer Hudson at Fashion Week on TV last week, whos now a big star in their own right. So to those poets who SHADED me, talked about me on a Yahoo! group and tried to hold me down... THANK YOU. Your shade OPENED DOORS for me that you couldnt even imagine. Thank you, Sheryl Underwood for sharing THIS moment and inspiring others to turn peoples SHADE into SUCCESS. Bravo! https://youtube/watch?v=i_lk5bgwh98
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 08:32:59 +0000
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