Freaknik: Wildest Party Never Told Review

[00:00:00] What's up fam, it's ShaPeL back again with another episode of Recap Kickback, the podcast where I talk TV, movies, and whatever else catches my attention. One of the reasons I started Recap Kickback was to highlight and celebrate black media

[00:00:30] and experiences, and I'm so happy today to be discussing this particular topic. Today's episode will be dedicated to the documentary Freaknik, The Wildest Party Never Told. And luckily, I feel like I have the two perfect co-hosts to talk about Freaknik with me.

[00:00:44] First, back for another weekly catch up, it's Mari. For it's Mari, what's up? Welcome to Freaknik Kickback. Yeah, you know, I'm always here, you know, helping to host the kickback spark discussions. I think this documentary in particular is going to spark a lot of discussion.

[00:01:04] It's been trending for the past like three days, I want to say, on Twitter. So I am really glad to get into this with you guys. Okay, of course, this is going to be a fun one.

[00:01:15] And back by popular demand, my brother from another mother, a certified Freaknik alumnus, Tyrone. Tyrone is back, what's up? What's happening, man? I'm excited for this one. I'm a true Atlanta native. I've had the pleasure, I guess, of joining Freaknik at one point in the latter stages

[00:01:36] of it. And so I'm excited to kind of talk about it and bring some accounts from some avid visitors of the event. Yeah, we seen you in the video. We ain't gonna point you out.

[00:01:48] But if y'all, the keen, the people with the keen eyes probably saw Tyrone in the background, Freaknik-ing it up. I was on the side now. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't. Were you on the side? I was on the side.

[00:01:58] All right, when those screenshots come out, we'll see. But first and foremost, thank you all for listening to Recap Kickback. Thank you for subscribing and all your five-star reviews. If you haven't already, be sure to head over to recapkickback.com and leave a five-star review.

[00:02:12] This helps people find the podcast and will help expand our reach to hopefully cover more content just for you and all the Recap Kickback listeners. Thank you to Jason Reed last week for joining us to finish up the Black TV theme song record.

[00:02:24] If you didn't check out our two-part Black TV theme song tournament, be sure to go listen to that. Audio can be found on Recap Kickback podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. And you can even watch the YouTube video at youtube.com slash at Recap Kickback.

[00:02:39] Now let's get into it. Mari, do we have any feedback from the tournament? I don't want to spoil the results of anybody's, if anybody's here, you know, for the first time. What did you think the consensus was about our ultimate champion of Black TV theme songs?

[00:02:57] What I saw was a lot of brackets busted. I saw a lot of people like, how could you choose this over this? You know, but I did see a lot of people like, well, of course they would. So I think it's good.

[00:03:14] Again, we're here to spark debate, discussion friendly, you know, and just open up and talk about our beloved Black TV shows. And I think that's exactly what the bracket did. So I'm so glad we got to do it.

[00:03:29] I'm so glad we got to visit stuff that like revisit stuff that we hadn't really heard from in a long time. And maybe like down the road, we'll do a couple of rewatches and stuff like that. But it was, it was so fun.

[00:03:41] And I, and we love hearing from you. So again, reach out to us either on Twitter at Recap Kickback or in our Facebook group. Let us know what you're thinking, how you're feeling, like get into it, get into this discussion. That's what this is all about. So yeah.

[00:03:57] Thank you so much for that, Mari. Yeah. The feedback we were getting was just like, oh, how could you pick this? But then also everybody seemingly okay with the ultimate winner and I think that means we did something right.

[00:04:10] So yeah, in the future, we have to run something like that back. Obviously if we can figure out another bracket or something to do maybe next March, make it an annual thing, who knows? But I thoroughly enjoyed it for sure.

[00:04:24] But we have something new to talk about right now, right? We have to get into what's next on the docket and it is Freaknik. Now I remember when I saw the trailer for Freaknik, the documentary coming out on Hulu,

[00:04:36] I was thinking, oh well, this is obviously something we have to talk about on Recap Kickback no matter what. But Mari, what was your initial reaction when you saw this? Because I saw a lot of people thinking, oh, this might not be the best thing for TV.

[00:04:50] My initial reaction was like, I wanted to know more. Like I really thought that this was a good place to start. I think you, especially black people, if you have a family in the South, I've heard a whole bunch of secondhand stuff about Freaknik and stuff like that.

[00:05:07] I really wanted to see how Hulu was going to handle this documentary. And honestly, Hulu in itself does a pretty good job. They did the Firefest documentary. They do a pretty good job of really diving deep into these events and stuff, these cultural events.

[00:05:27] So I was really excited. I also thought I was really happy to talk about it with you because we covered the Woodstock We covered the Woodstock 99 documentary together over on Crime Scene.

[00:05:39] And I thought this would be a good place to kind of like compare and contrast and stuff like that. So yeah, really, really, really fun. I'm so excited to really get into this and really, really discuss what was talked about,

[00:05:54] what was maybe not talked about and stuff like that. Yeah. I saw people being like, oh no, you know what? Whose mama is going to pop up in the film? You know, who auntie you gonna see in the background?

[00:06:06] There was a lot of question about how scandalous this was going to be. But Ty, I know you were pumped to hear about this documentary because aside from Mario, you're my natural first choice as our resident ATL-ian here. So you've been to Freaknik, you've grown up in Atlanta.

[00:06:22] Tell us about your experience in comparison to what we saw in the documentary. So my experience actually with Freaknik, it was happening at the latest, latter stages of it. And I know some people that might be listening right now watching is like, well, damn, how old are you?

[00:06:38] I went to Freaknik when I was in eighth grade. So I wasn't supposed to be there. But that's my experience. My experience is, wow, they let us free to be on the streets.

[00:06:52] And even though it was in the latter half when all of the blockade and stuff that we'll get to was happening, it was just an interesting dynamic. I have two brothers that are seven and 10 years older than me.

[00:07:03] And so to hang out with them, to allow to be in their space, in their circle through that was pretty awesome. And just to see all of the people that wanted to come to Atlanta and enjoy Atlanta. I grew up in 90s, 2000s.

[00:07:21] South age was really blooming in the South, but it was always an East Coast thing. And so I always had a lot of pride in Atlanta. So people wanting to visit or be down and enjoy themselves in Atlanta was always a huge thing for me.

[00:07:35] So that's why I enjoyed it. But I was trying to pay attention to who mama, auntie, daddy, uncle, their face not being heard. Yeah. It was an interesting dynamic to watch for sure. Oh yeah. I was people watching too.

[00:07:52] I saw a couple of people that some celebrities maybe they didn't know that they were going to pop up in the documentary, but we'll talk about that when we get to it. For the people who are uninitiated, Freaknik, The Wildest Party Never Told is described

[00:08:04] on Hulu as a celebratory exploration of the boisterous times of Freaknik, the iconic Atlantic street party that drew hundreds of thousands of people in the 80s and 90s, helping put Atlanta on the map culturally.

[00:08:18] But the first thing I want to talk about today is the part I didn't really know about, which was how Freaknik began as a party amongst kids in the AUC. Tyrone, this is something you probably knew about in Atlanta, right? Yeah, a little bit.

[00:08:32] I didn't know the players that was involved with it, but you know, I know those three or four colleges that are in the AUC. Piedmont Park is kind of like a centralized location and has always been for them.

[00:08:44] And I always know because of my brother, of the experience of those who don't have the ability to go off and have some sort of grandiose spring break. And so what do you do with those folks? And so I knew about the gathering.

[00:08:58] I just didn't know who the players were and kind of the story behind it. So it was new information for me somewhat. Yeah, it was fun to hear about. Mari, you and I both attended HBCUs. Yeah, so I was very proud to see our representation here.

[00:09:14] And especially the part about, you know, seeing that, you know, HBCU students eventually led to the creation of one of the largest events for young Black men and women in America, Mari. And so, you know, we hear Atlanta referred to as the Mecca for Black people several times

[00:09:30] a year, but you come from a Mecca of your own. Yes, the true Mecca, Howard University. The real HU, all of that. Yes, and so to hear the start of it was amazing. Again, shout out to the DC Metro Club who started it.

[00:09:48] I love how they explained at HBCUs, they explained the city and state clubs because we had those here too. Like, I remember my freshman year, I didn't have to be a part of the DC Metro Club because clearly my, we were. You were home. We were home.

[00:10:10] You didn't need a club to be home. But like, you know, I remember being a part of like all sorts of different clubs and I like how they said like, oh, the DC Metro Club was like that club. Everybody's like, okay, that's the club.

[00:10:22] At Howard, the club that was like that club was the Louisiana Texas Club, aka the Latex Club. And they would be the ones like, yo, the latex parties. Like, oh my God, that's the parties we got to go to. We got to go to the latex parties.

[00:10:39] And I loved hearing from the original founders what it was like, like Ty said, a gathering of people who really could not afford to go back home and how the Atlanta University, the triangle, it was Clark Atlanta, Spelman, Morehouse and Morris Brown. Right? Was that before? Yeah.

[00:11:01] And I mean, all of this just reminds me why I love going to HBCU. It reminded me why I was 10 thinking I was going to Spelman and I would have gone to Spelman if they had had my major, but they didn't.

[00:11:16] And just the camaraderie, to see the camaraderie in those first few Freak Nicks where it was mostly just about like, it was Black Spring Break. And it was like all of these kids who are in town are celebrating together, just, you

[00:11:35] know, being in the same space, seeing each other. I love that thought, you know, and I'm not trying to be like, like separatists or anything like that, but it was like, I really wish we could just get back to stuff like that

[00:11:48] where it's like, this was made for certain spaces and then, you know, we can't have nothing. But so, you know what? That's very interesting, Mars. So two things, right? Of the four, the two in the middle, you got Morehouse and Spelman.

[00:12:04] Spelman being all women, Morehouse being all men is really kind of like tells the story of Freak Nick all together. I love the fact that even nowadays, like Spelman and Morehouse kind of work together and they

[00:12:16] have like a brother-sister connection where they kind of grow with each other throughout school. So it's a really deep dynamic and dope. But also like, I feel like Howard University's homecoming is almost that space because people travel all over to go to Howard University's homecoming.

[00:12:34] Yes, and it is not the same like it used to be. It's not the same like it used to be. Like it's and again, it's not about gatekeeping or anything like that. I think it's just, I think it's just about like times changing and then not necessarily

[00:12:54] being able to keep up with the growing number of people. So I think that's kind of like the problem across the board because when it's a small event, a small cultural just city event, it's very easy. If it's a small college event, very easy.

[00:13:09] Once it gets to a level of like people are traveling all over the place to get there, it gets harder and harder to manage. I think Howard homecoming when I was there was amazing.

[00:13:20] All the stuff that I heard about it beforehand seemed to translate while I was there. Since I've been gone now, it's just undergone so many different changes to the point where it's just like it doesn't feel as student focused anymore at all either.

[00:13:36] Like I would have to talk to some of my alumni, but it's like it's kind of gotten even away from student planning. It's become such a, it's become such a event within itself that now it's not, it's like a very sponsored SponCon type thing.

[00:13:55] It's just not the same. It's like, it feels like it's not local businesses. It feels like it's not about the students or the alumni anymore sometimes. And it can get frustrating in a sense. And again, it's not about feeling secure. It's not about crime.

[00:14:12] It's not about anything like that. It's just about, are we getting away from our original, like the original intent? Exactly. And that's what I think we saw here in the Freaknik doc. Yeah, I think I definitely liked them explaining the name.

[00:14:28] What did you think about the name, Chappelle? Oh yeah, this was cool because I wouldn't have known this. I just wouldn't have. We talk about Freaknik and you hear freak and you think of the 90s version of what freak meant, right?

[00:14:42] And then you'll see later on Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew ushering in what the idea of a freak was in these party situations. But for this to start off as the freak, you know, as my mom and them probably was doing,

[00:14:54] my mom and them wasn't in Freaknik, okay? They were already grown. My mom was at home taking care of her child. So she was not there. I got a funny story about that. Okay, we're going to talk about it.

[00:15:07] But yeah, so to see that it started off as there and then it just became, you know, the freak was like the theme of whatever they were doing for their spring break of that year with what the state clubs were doing to make everybody feel at home.

[00:15:22] And then combining it with Picnic, making it Freaknik made a lot of sense. You know, we didn't have state clubs in Texas, Margie. Really? Well, because people don't... We're very far west. We're very far west.

[00:15:33] I mean, aside from Meharry in California, there's not a lot of HBCUs further west than us, you know? And so you have to go out of your way to go to Texas basically. So we had... We didn't have state clubs, but it was some factions, you know?

[00:15:51] You had like Houston. At Prairie View A&M, we had Houston, we had Dallas, and then we had everybody else. And then everybody else could fit into whatever groups they were in, but it was Houston and Dallas because that's where everybody went.

[00:16:03] Prairie View, Texas Southern, maybe if you're in Dallas, you probably went to Paul Quinn, you know, or Houston-Tulleson down south. But yeah, it was very much divided for a reason. And so we... And remember the four hour difference between those two cities? Oh, from Houston and Dallas?

[00:16:21] Yeah, four hours for sure. Wow. So yeah. At Howard, we were overrun by people from New York and New Jersey. I had never met so many people from New York and New Jersey there. And it was just so funny.

[00:16:35] I'm from Maryland, so it was so funny hearing their slang versus our slang and the melding pot of a whole... But we had so many state clubs because so many different people came from all different places. But yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah. It is.

[00:16:57] It takes forever to drive out of Texas. Go ahead. No, no. I think it's interesting. I know we're talking about things around it because we're trying to think about all of the different styles that introduce partying or introduce a sort of gathering or whatever the case may be.

[00:17:14] Because I know Howard University is heavy Greek and Freakneck wasn't like that. Like you had Greek there, but it wasn't heavy Greek, right? You didn't have to be Greek to come or at least feel comfortable coming and things like that. So it was just a free for all.

[00:17:30] And that's the love of it, and that's the end of it. From what we saw in the beginning intentions and with the original founders... So they show us... I think it was founded in what? Was it 82? 84, something like that? Yeah. In the early 80s.

[00:17:53] I believe it was 83 was when they said the first group got together. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. And so we saw 83, we saw a little bit of 84 and then they kind of yada yada through the 80s until like about 89. But from what I do understand from...

[00:18:11] We did watch some outside sources as well just to get a little bit more background. Freak Life did become pretty heavily involved with Freaknik because later on we see that they held step shows and of course they're always strolling somewhere. But it wasn't exclusively Greek.

[00:18:31] Howard being home to the alpha chapters of most of the Greek organizations, a lot of our events focus around them but also still in an inclusive way. So you like just don't get in their way, they won't get anywhere.

[00:18:53] So it was the main part in the first, like we said in the first half of Freaknik but by the time it gets to the end, you know, like Luke said, this ain't no little Greek event anymore which...

[00:19:07] It's always been a thing with Greek for the people that don't know. I never went Greek or anything like that or joined any type of frat. My oldest brother did, my middle brother did it and it wasn't anything like wrong with it or anything like that.

[00:19:26] It was just, you know, some sort of club that I guess I personally was like, I'm good, you know, I'm okay with it. I'll just watch it from afar type of thing. But I definitely do recall like seemingly in the 90s and maybe it's been like this in

[00:19:43] all decades is that there was some sort of disdain for folks outside of Greek towards Greek and then for folks that are in Greek towards the people outside of Greek. And that's why you hear those statements from Uncle Luke and stuff like that or even some

[00:19:59] of the... It might have been purposeful change of how Freaknik showed itself in the 90s because that's the Freaknik that people recall is the 90s version of it. Yeah. Chappelle could probably really give us an insight on this. As the Greek on the panel here, yeah.

[00:20:19] You see my fraternity throughout this documentary several times. Every time I see them, I get hyped. Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated just shining on these boys as per usual. I think that the disdain probably from like Uncle Luke or something is just that Uncle

[00:20:31] Luke was bringing his Miami party vibe to a college atmosphere. And on college campuses, a lot of times the hierarchy is that the Greek people are the ones like socially like hold the status. Right. And so they're not any better, any smarter, you know, whatever.

[00:20:46] But it is a status club a lot of times to get into those organizations. And so we saw Mark Lamont Hill in this documentary even saying that some people were just going to Freaknik so that they can get viewed by the Greeks.

[00:20:58] So that would be their introduction into, OK, if I was there, then people would see me and then know that I would be interested to join. And so I don't know if it's a natural disdain or it was just like Uncle Luke's just not

[00:21:09] a part of that environment. So when he comes, he's thinking, no, this is the show. Freaknik is what I'm bringing to the table, which is the freaks, you know, as opposed to the Greeks. Lame freak. Yeah. Yeah. The Greeks and lame freak. Yeah. Freak out.

[00:21:24] So I think that a lot of times, like, look, the Greeks are not opposed to getting freaky. You know, those who those other Greeks, they're just not wholesome at all. Not family men. They don't have other ones. Whatever. Whatever. So, yeah, the documentary as well.

[00:21:43] But yeah, I think that the evolution is clear, you know, and the divide really shows up with Uncle Luke. Yeah. And it's like, like, again, like especially on our campus, like it's really it's a real big deal. Like it's a truly, truly big deal to pledge Alpha Chapter.

[00:21:59] And I did. I don't know if I should tell this, but I had every attention. Again, I was a 10 year old who was like, I'm going to Spelman. I'm OK. I'm doing all this stuff.

[00:22:11] But once you get on campus and you see like the money that's required, you see the time commitment that was required for me. I couldn't do it because of the time, the time commitment, because because so many

[00:22:24] people pledged, pledged, they never had lines every year because they just couldn't because it was just too much. Yeah. Yeah. So they would have lines like every two years. And then on top of that, there was a rule you can't pledge as a freshman.

[00:22:39] So they had a line my freshman year, couldn't pledge. And then the next the next one was wasn't until I was a junior. But I my I was there for school and my degree required me as a junior to also work in a

[00:22:55] hospital. So there was no there's no feasible way that I could have done everything that I was doing and pledge. And I was like, I was OK with it because on our campus, it's a status thing.

[00:23:08] But we truly, truly tried to try to make sure that it wasn't like there wasn't as much animosity. It's so easy to turn on each other. It's easy to see that a lot online nowadays and stuff like that.

[00:23:21] But really in person, like it truly is like a vibe. We you know, Asia are one of our other podcasters. She's she's an AKA. We always asked her when I remember when we did that insecure episode when they were

[00:23:37] talking about it, when insecure had shown some letters and people on social media were getting upset. I think we got to remember that social media is just like a small microcosm of what really happens outside because even Asia was like, no, I don't care.

[00:23:49] You know what I'm saying? So it's like, you know, we don't want to try and foster that thought process. But I could definitely see why back then it was a thing, especially when it's two worlds colliding, because again, it's this isn't your college Greeks versus your college students

[00:24:08] who understand the reverie of the social status and all the clubs. It is these college Greeks versus Miami Party Life or people that, you know, this is not a college thing anymore. You know what I'm saying? So it I'm not I wasn't surprised.

[00:24:25] Like Chappelle said, I wasn't surprised that this was like kind of the back and forth we got at the event. Yeah, we see that, you know, we see the resurgence or the I guess the emergence of the HBCU popularity in movies like School Days talked about. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:45] School Days is one of the movies that kind of thrust that into the into the forefront, A Different World, which we talked about on our theme song bracket as well as our TV sitcom

[00:24:54] bracket. I mean, I mean, rankings we talked about a few times, but it really did put those conversations in the forefront. And so that drew a lot of attention to Freaknik. People were like, oh, we're talking about HBCUs. We're talking about Greek fraternities.

[00:25:07] We're talking about college kids hanging out and then college kids were in high school kids were watching this on TV and saying, OK, well, when I go to college, I need to go do that. Right. And so that's how it starts.

[00:25:18] And then around the 90s, the word freak takes on a different meaning. And we see that people are like, oh, no, a lot of college kids are coming to this college kids come from all around. What if college kids had the best party music as well?

[00:25:32] And that's where we insert the I guess what we're shown in the documentary, we're shown Jermaine Dupri, but we're also showing Uncle Luke kind of almost simultaneously. So Ty, you could speak to this probably a lot more.

[00:25:43] In Atlanta, Jermaine Dupri is royalty as far as like the hip hop scene goes. He is a person who in this documentary is credited with some of the explosion here. What was it like around that time? Because you were you were kicking it around this time.

[00:25:57] And I know you've seen all the artists that come around. Tell us a little bit about your experience. Yeah, man, I really think Hulu documentary did a great job of explaining Atlanta hip hop and the history and the culture behind it because we weren't played on radios.

[00:26:13] You can hear it in outcast rhymes that we weren't being played on our radios. And so you got this guy like Jermaine Dupri, who is starting to see himself involved in circles beyond Atlanta, but at the same time show pride in Atlanta. That's all we ever wanted.

[00:26:33] And so what Freaknet brought to the table was an opportunity for us to get our music out to the masses. Look at me. I'm saying us. That's how much pride I have in Atlanta, right?

[00:26:43] My damn music. But getting our music out to the masses, because you saw how long it took to get Freaknik popular. It started in 83. It got popular in the 90s. No Internet, no social media, no something, no anything like that. All word of mouth.

[00:27:00] And so what a great opportunity where we have a bunch of young hip hop listeners coming to one centralized location. Let's go ahead and attack it. And so you got Jermaine Dupri, even a lot of things that Uncle Luke did.

[00:27:15] We kind of claim from Atlanta, even though we know it's Florida. Right. And then OutKast and Goody Mob, etc. Right. It was just 90s, mid 90s was a beautiful thing for Atlanta music. Something I will tout to this day. I still listen to to this day.

[00:27:30] And I think Freaknik had a true huge part of it, of getting it out to other people in the world. So it was great. It was great. That was the part I really found surprising. I had no idea about that.

[00:27:43] Like, I like I always thought you always think regionally everybody has their own music process and stuff like that. But for them to be like, oh, yeah, down here they're playing New York hip hop. It's East Coast. New York, East Coast hip hop.

[00:27:59] And I just always assumed that there was always a Goody Mob and an OutKast and stuff like that, and that it just took us longer to hear it. But to kind of be like, nah, it wasn't even being played down here until we got our

[00:28:12] hooks into more people, more ears. That was very, very, very fascinating to me. And I always think of the second wave of Atlanta hip hop, like your Little Johns and stuff like that. Yeah. But it's just like that was astounding.

[00:28:33] I did love that portion of the music aspect of it. The background there, them saying like, oh, you would sell cassettes that would like it would be like a sample.

[00:28:43] So you have one full song on the one side and on the other side, you have a snippet to get people to buy the album. And back then you had to physically buy albums. You couldn't just stream them and stuff like that.

[00:28:56] And it was so it was that was so interesting. I really love that they they they dived into that. Yeah. East Coast music ran things, ran things for so long. And radio stations would play them because they want to have listeners.

[00:29:11] And if that's the thing that is showing out all over the US, then I get it. I just think they should have done. I definitely think hip hop stations should have done a really better job of saying, hey, during this hour or two, we're just playing local stuff.

[00:29:27] Right. Just a little segment. And they really didn't do that until early. Yeah, even in Houston, in the Texas area, we had a very similar music distribution to this, which was, you know, we had like the Cappa Beach party that a lot of people know

[00:29:44] about because they would pass out the great cassettes, you know, the screw tapes and stuff like that. A lot of those mixtapes and stuff would get distributed at parties and functions and like the Cappa Beach parties where a lot of those mixtapes will get the

[00:29:55] back to the cap of mixtapes. All that kind of stuff would get distributed. And so that's where a lot of music would get out prior to the Internet. And so I was like, man, there's a lot of parallel there between what was happening in

[00:30:06] Freaknik and then what later on goes on and happens at the Cappa. And so I was like, OK, cool. This is new information for me. I really enjoyed that part. And just to see the big names that were involved.

[00:30:17] Right. I mean, we saw Usher at the Rim Shop. Usher, who had to have been like all of 16 years old. That's what I was about to say. Right. Tupac was there. Goody Mob, obviously. TI was there. You know, just a lot of big names from Atlanta.

[00:30:31] And we had a lot of big names speaking on this. We saw your boy Killer Mike, Tyrone. Yes, that's my guy, man. I think Killer Mike's presence on here was really centered around just his ability to do storytelling, right?

[00:30:47] The historian of Atlanta, of a lot of things, but Atlanta in general. And so he can kind of give the background of Jermaine Dupri. And I think it was important for him to do that because a lot of especially current

[00:30:59] folks and even some folks in the hip hop business kind of shunned Jermaine Dupri a little bit, because regardless of the situation, you know, the way that he approached putting Atlanta on the scene, a lot of people consider like Kitty.

[00:31:13] Right. It wasn't it wasn't hard or anything like that. It didn't it didn't talk about Bankhead and the places like that where things went down, you know. So I think it was good for Killer Mike to come on and kind of do

[00:31:24] that storytelling. I also want to give a shout out to Kilo Ali. That's the attachment to Miami music, right? He he has attachment to OutKast, which you won't attach booty shaking music to OutKast, but he had an album.

[00:31:38] I think it was called Organized Bass, which was produced by Organized Noise that also produces the OutKast music. But it had like a Miami style music to it. And that was the attachment from Uncle Lou to Atlanta was Kilo Ali. And then it kind of spread from there.

[00:31:53] Can I put on my crime scene hat here? So, um, you know, over on the crime scene podcast, when we analyze documentary series, we talk about the talking heads and I am not going to lie.

[00:32:08] The talking heads are kind of fall flat for me in a sense of they lean so heavily on celebrity talking heads that I feel like we miss the human element. Me personally, my favorite talking heads were like the founders, some of the like

[00:32:28] research professors and stuff like that, or people who are there, you know, later on, unfortunately, the victim, I think was her name, Cheryl Lloyd, Stacey Lloyd. I wanted more firsthand accounts from regular people like Jalen. Um, what's his name? Jalen, uh, Brown, the basketball player. What's it was?

[00:32:47] What's his name? I forget his name. Jalen. Right. Yeah. Talk about, oh, Jalen Rose. Jalen Rose, you know, he, he's from, he's from Michigan. Fab five talking about how he drove down there to Freaknik like great.

[00:33:07] But that's not to me a, a firsthand account of like a regular person we have. We're having Rashida from, from, uh, housewives of Atlanta talking about her experience, but it, it, the we'll get to her section, but like, doesn't come off

[00:33:26] sincere to me, you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Like, I truly wish they got out and got firsthand experiences from people who were there, who were maybe just college students or people who were not college students, but came in town.

[00:33:39] Um, I'm not even going to talk about how egregious it was to have CeeLo, CeeLo's ass on there. I don't give a shit who I don't, I don't give a shit what, what band he comes from. I didn't need to see him on my TV.

[00:33:50] Um, so like I, to me, I feel like I was lacking because, uh, real quick into my funny story, I'm sitting here like, my mama was way too old for this. I was a baby. She won't nowhere near this. I talked to my TT later that night.

[00:34:07] Like my literal TT, my auntie who's, uh, uh, 15 years older than me who raised me. And she's like, oh yeah, girl, I was a freak Nick, like at least four or five years ago, I was like, of course you were because you were exactly that age living

[00:34:22] in Atlanta slash Florida going back and forth. And she was telling me she was there. Like, um, I think. I want to say 98 might've been her last year. I told her to watch it and get back to me and I'll do an update.

[00:34:36] Um, but like, she was like, yeah, I went, I went, I went like four years in a row, maybe five years in a row. I didn't see any crime. I didn't see anything. She was like, where we were at, we were having fun.

[00:34:51] You know, it was, it was a pretty good experience. Like I didn't have, I didn't have to deal with a lot of stuff. And I was like, this is what I want to hear. Ties family. These are the stuff I want to hear.

[00:35:02] I don't think I necessarily wanted to hear from all of these celebrities. Chappelle, am I, am I too much here? What do you think? I think the issue is that these people were our celebrities to us, Mari, because we know them from television.

[00:35:16] But I think in the time, like they're talking about their experience and they're not celebrities. Rashida at that time is not a celebrity. She might be like locally Atlanta famous, but you know, even then she said she

[00:35:27] was working at the mall, you know, when people were coming to get their fits and stuff. So yeah, it's like they use a recognizable name, but she was very much a person of the community.

[00:35:35] Even you know, you, you send me the clip, but there's a true life documentary about a freak Nick or true life episode about freak Nick from way back when. And so even in that you still have the same talking, like you still have the

[00:35:48] goodie mob talking as the talking heads. And so, yeah, we know them. We know them as the goodie mob. Yes. But in Atlanta, they were the goodie mob, but of Atlanta, you know, like you know, these people, you could see them locally at the store.

[00:36:00] You probably see them at the mall and stuff like that. So yeah, it's like in a way they're big names, but at the same time, because Atlanta is such a microcosm and like what they were saying, like its own little black America in a bubble.

[00:36:11] I think that they were still very much locals and part of that, that experience. But I agree with you. I think that seeing those big names is like knowing that like Jalen Rose is somebody of a certain status coming from Michigan. Like don't get me wrong.

[00:36:25] Jalen Rose, like he's not from Atlanta, so he comes there and he's relatively new, but he's also Jalen Rose that's a part of the Fab Five. So, you know, he's going to be able to use his clout to get into better situations than some people.

[00:36:36] Whereas like, I kind of want to hear about, you know, what is the random, you know, the random person from Michigan who just showed up experiencing everything? So I kind of see exactly what you're saying.

[00:36:46] Ty, your experiences would be that you were living in Atlanta while this is happening. I imagine it feels like it's happening to you all instead of apart at some point. Because when people just start coming, it's not like Atlanta is saying come one, come all.

[00:37:00] At some point there were people were going to come regardless. Yeah, and I would say is less happening to me and to my brothers because where the location of it is, which is downtown Atlanta and then later on Midtown, the it was further away from the home. Right.

[00:37:20] So any type of extra traffic or anything like that, I didn't really feel that necessarily. So from my brother's perspective, it was all just enjoyment of having other people coming from different locations. And the biggest thing that I heard from, you know, from my brothers that was

[00:37:42] being there and my cousins that also went there as well, is just we got a different opportunity to talk to another girl from a different city, from a different location. That was the fun of it. Right.

[00:37:56] They didn't they didn't have all the criminal activity as a part of their group and their center or whatever the case may be. They didn't they didn't get they didn't see that. They didn't. There have been doubt.

[00:38:07] My brother did say my oldest brother, he did say like he would see like a woman. You know, of course, the event says, hey, you express yourself freely. You are scantily clad. Right. Walk through a group of hounds, you know, that might bark or that might say something.

[00:38:29] And then there might be like a light touch or something like that. Like that was the experience. I know you mentioned Stacey Lloyd. Right. It didn't it didn't get to the point of they didn't see the rape. Right. They didn't it didn't get to the point.

[00:38:42] It was manslaughter out there. They didn't see the manslaughter. Right. I think people get to the point of Freaknik has this negative stigma that's attached to it. And maybe local just don't really want to be the front face person that's talking about it at that point.

[00:39:01] I do think that accounts from people that were kind of like boots on the ground that's not famous would have been appreciated. I just don't know how many people are actually willing to to talk about it, to do that, because it just has so much negative stigma.

[00:39:16] Like you talk. These people are probably not not just parents and aunties and uncles and grandparents. Right. They might be like some business owners, you know, that went to Freaknik. They don't want that a part of their business.

[00:39:31] And so it's hard to get a full account when you're doing stuff like that. But from my experience, when I went in 1998, which was obviously the latter half of it. And in my brother's accounts, they didn't see all that.

[00:39:44] They saw the stuff that might have led to it eventually, but they didn't see all the extra stuff. Well, let's get into what might have led to it. Right. So again, Uncle Luke is the villain in this story. Also, probably probably not the villain.

[00:39:58] But, you know, like I think all of this stuff collided at the perfect time for it to blow up the way it did. You have Uncle Luke going through his legal battles about censorship and being able to perform his art the way he wants to perform his art.

[00:40:13] And then you have the emergence of all this black culture in Atlanta based on the way the politics break down, based on the college atmosphere, a bunch of black people getting education and then staying in Atlanta and working and building their

[00:40:29] own community. And then all that stuff happening right around the time where it became very popular to let your freak flag fly a little bit. And this is at a time where social media is not around.

[00:40:39] So you can tuck off to Atlanta for the week, go live a little bit less conservative than you would, and then come back home and tell the stories of it to the point where it had gotten so big, people were talking about it, people taking pictures, trying

[00:40:53] to commemorate these moments that it became something that everybody wanted to go to. Now, it didn't shift because Uncle Luke does not make music for college kids. He makes music for everybody. And so that means everybody now feels like they're able to attend these events.

[00:41:11] And so it goes from people being roughly 20, 25, 30 years of age to 40 year old, 50 year old, just people coming from far and wide just to be a part of the function, just

[00:41:24] to be in the mix. And so at that point, you do have now kind of like a mixture of everybody, people who might not want to keep the same integrity of this is a college party or maybe people who don't care about Atlanta.

[00:41:36] So they're not worried about how it looks when you going outside and you're urinating on somebody's yard or, you know, you're in front of somebody's business acting crazy. You've got people who are using Atlanta as a place to kind of just let loose.

[00:41:49] Ty mentioned the scantily clad clothing for some of the women. And I think for in the South, it's very easy to say I'm going to wear less clothes because it's hot. Number one, it is hot.

[00:41:59] And a lot of these places, a lot of people are coming from places that are not hot. So you come down there and you're you come to dress because you're like, oh, this is comfortable for me. Right. And it starts off with that. We see the short skirts.

[00:42:09] We see the booty shorts. But then Rashida tells us about the the coochie cutters part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It all of this collides at the same time of the what is called the black female sexual liberation.

[00:42:24] But of course, black female sexual liberation comes at the same time that rape culture has to rape culture because rape culture is always going to be because that's what it be. That's what happens. And at first, when they're talking about the black female sexual liberation, I'm like,

[00:42:40] OK, all right. All right. Rashida being the one delivering it. I don't know. I again feel like we could have had people. I think I think there was like a doctor somewhere in there.

[00:42:55] I forget her name. Like somebody who actually had done the history of that movement and the actual movement of it all. But we get Rashida talking about like, oh, you know, you know, you try to wear short shorts, but sometimes you wear shorter shorts.

[00:43:14] And and this whole like dichotomy of like. You could wear what you want, but also you might get some negative attention. It felt like really weird and kidgubby to me. Like instead of saying like women were starting to take agency, they did say they said

[00:43:33] women are starting to take agency of their body. They're starting to be more sexually liberated and free. And that's a good thing. That's always a good thing when women take agency and say, hey, this is my body. This is what I want to do with it.

[00:43:49] That's always a good thing. Unfortunately, there's always going to be also the other side of like, well, this is what you're dressing like. This is what you're doing. Like so I get to override your agency and help myself. And it's it's it's just the opposite, like Ty said.

[00:44:07] And so them talking about the the liberation of black women, it it felt like it was incomplete. And then they they came back to it at the end when they were talking about crimes and sexual assaults going up near the later half of of the Freaknik.

[00:44:26] I, I just don't know if I'm fully satisfied on how they handled handled these. It's kind of like in the Woodstock documentary, Chappelle, where we had like the whole segment of just like all of the horrendous things that happened at Woodstock and the

[00:44:44] reasons why and how they they they laid out the confluence of events of stuff that was just led to like horrific acts being being done, you know. And I think that the documentary wanted to stay away from it a little bit more because

[00:45:02] like Ty was saying, like it might have that negative stigma. But I feel like if you have something that has a negative stigma to it, you can't ignore it because it just makes you feel like you're covering it up.

[00:45:14] And that's what I was kind of feeling when I first saw that that section of that really, really quick section. And they didn't talk about the sexual assaults. I was like, first I was like, OK, that's a little weird.

[00:45:27] And like I said, they came back to it in a minimal way. But I just don't know. You know, I don't know if they fully fleshed out. And I think you could fully flesh it out without painting broad strokes on the whole

[00:45:39] event itself. Like Ty just beautifully did it. You know what I'm saying? Like it's very it should be very easy to lay out like these are the things that we were seeing happening and, you know, we got to do better, do better and

[00:45:53] then be like, but this event was still bigger than that. Like this event was still successful. This event still wasn't as bad as they made it seem, you know. And they do get to that part. They do get to the like, oh, nobody's saying anything about Daytona.

[00:46:09] Nobody's saying anything about Gabison. But the way they presented it felt like what about is to me? So I don't know. Am I too deep again? Am I in too deep? I don't think you're too deep. I think this is why we have the conversation, right?

[00:46:22] I think for me, the documentary painted it as almost like a timeline. Right. So you get the Rashida conversation about the shorts and the scantily clad outfits or whatever. But that's like 94, right?

[00:46:34] And that's around the time Uncle Luke is doing his thing, but it's getting more and more like outward, you know, to the point where around the time when the people in their 30s and 40s start showing up and their 50s. It's predatory. Yeah, they say it.

[00:46:51] They said it's a predatory vibe. But I think it's because of the money. Right. So we talk about Atlanta as a place where it has an entrepreneurial energy about it. Right. We see people selling shirts.

[00:47:02] I've seen so many Freaknik shirts in the 90s when I was growing up, people just would have a shirt. You know, I didn't know if they were buying it from the store, if they actually went to Freaknik, you know, just they had the shirts.

[00:47:12] They had the merch. People were trying to make money. And so you got Uncle Luke selling sex as an idea in his music. And then you got people in their 30s and 40s coming to literally sell sex.

[00:47:21] We saw people, some people in the documentary saying they would drive past cars and people would be charging for peep shows. And so I think so when sex workers start showing up and this becomes a place where you

[00:47:33] could buy, you know, those services, you could say, OK, well, this is a service I want. I think it starts to kind of influence the way people are looking at the event like, oh,

[00:47:40] OK, this is an event where we just doing all the freaky stuff out in the open. Freaky stuff, not the Nick stuff. Right. Exactly. Just the freaky stuff out in the open. And then the way people have always treated sex workers has always been just problematic

[00:47:53] in general. Right. And so they're thinking, I could just grab this person, touch this person, pick this person up. And then they start treating everybody like that. Any passerby who's wearing what I would consider, you know, hoochie clothes or whatever.

[00:48:07] Maybe that's like, oh, yeah, you dress like that girl's dress. So I'm gonna treat you like I was treating her. It's like, well, that person charged you and told you that gave you their consent.

[00:48:15] And this person did not. And I think there's a lot of that going on at one time. And I think it's really hard to disseminate. Well, what is happening here? Right.

[00:48:22] Is this a bunch of people who are just these bunch of wild and crazy kids who are out here just being freak nasty? Or is it a bunch of kids and a bunch of freaks and then a bunch of people being

[00:48:32] freak nasty and then a bunch of innocent people. And they all look the same. Everybody's dressed the same. Everybody's wearing the same uniform. Right. So you don't really know where one thing ends and one begins.

[00:48:42] And I think by the time they come back to the sexual assault, I think that's past the 1994 era. And that's closer to, you know, the 96, 97, 98 type era. You know, that's how I read that situation.

[00:48:54] Yeah. By the time I the doc ended, that's how I read it as well. Yeah. 96, 97 is when the debauchery, the true debauchery that we're talking about with the sexual assault, all of that happened. And another thing that they kind of glossed by during the like the 94, 95 transition

[00:49:10] all the way into the Olympics is that, you know, Maynard Jackson was the mayor of Atlanta. It was a second stint as the mayor of Atlanta from 90, 1990 to 1994. And then it switched to Bill Campbell, who's also African-American. But his role was really related to post civil rights.

[00:49:29] Let's bridge these white voters. Right. And so the eye of the white voters really, truly came and focused on Freak Nick. Right. And that's where the transition was a part of Bill Campbell's kind of thing as mayor. His mayor campaign was economic. Right. Bring the economy into Atlanta.

[00:49:54] Right. And so that's where they talked about, hey, they talk about so much and much of dollars. But look, we got the Olympics coming. You get to get you got to get your act together. Right. So all of that happened at the same.

[00:50:05] It was just a hodgepodge of things that happened at the same exact time where you got non-college kids coming in. You got a new mayor that's trying to bridge white voters. You got a new mayor that's trying to bring a higher economic budget into the into

[00:50:19] Atlanta. And then you've got the female liberation and all of the the extra sexual, you know, we are free to do what we want. And it doesn't mean that I need this or I want this from you happening all at the same

[00:50:33] time. And that's what kind of blew the whole damn thing up. Yeah. The Olympics is a big catalyst here as well. You know, with the Olympics coming, the like it's crazy because you say, all right, we're announcing the Olympics.

[00:50:47] That means we got roughly four years to prepare for that. So what are we going to do? And over those years, Freaknik is still happening. And so people who are starting to figure out how they can capitalize on the Olympics

[00:50:59] are seeing Freaknik happen and saying, oh, that might be bad for business. Remember, this is the 90s. So this is the age of politicians telling people that black people are super predators and that, you know, and yeah.

[00:51:09] And the crime bill, all that stuff is happening around that same time. And so people already are looking at black people in a certain way. And then you have Freaknik happening and getting bigger and bigger and more debaucherous as it's going on.

[00:51:24] And so Atlanta decides we're going to crack down on that. We're not going to let Atlanta be the face of that. We're not going to let Freaknik be the face of all this debauchery, even though it had been so prosperous up until then.

[00:51:36] Right. So they said we're going to shut it down. So they try to correct by getting the police involved, by trying to basically mandate how Freaknik is going to function. So this has gone from now a college campus thing to a citywide thing where the government

[00:51:49] is saying, OK, here's what we're going to allow you to do. And naturally, people don't like when the government gets their hands on things that have nothing to do with them. And so they start to push back.

[00:51:59] We see, Ty, that they start blocking off roads when Freaknik comes around to where the traffic is unbearable. Now, Atlanta traffic is already bad. This had to be a billion times worse. It was terrible, like absolutely horrendous.

[00:52:15] They talked about how they would push people from downtown towards midtown. And if anybody that's listening that might be younger age and never really had the chance to either hear about or experience Freaknik and you've been to Atlanta, you would say, oh, midtown is happening. It is now.

[00:52:34] At the time, it really wasn't. And they were just pushing people out. And what ends up happening is when you start to push people out, even though a lot of crime happens around midtown right now, it's a lot of rich crime.

[00:52:46] At the time, it was a lot of like low collar crime. And so when you start to push people out of downtown into these areas, now you're getting into you're getting to the hood.

[00:52:58] You know, I mean, to where, you know, people see an opportunity to like capture on something that they don't have. Right. They see all of these people that are around and then they try to take advantage.

[00:53:11] Right. So that's what that was another part of the story that kind of end up happening. And it's just so it's just so interesting. The focus and the attention that they had on it really should have been focused on Eric

[00:53:22] Dan Rudolph. Yeah, man, I just think they should have been focusing on Eric Murphy as if you don't know, is the bomber of the Olympics in 1996. That should have been the focus that they were on with the security around there.

[00:53:35] But they wasn't. And all of that frustration of the movement and all of that, it just adds on. Right. It's not an excuse for sexual assault or anything like that. It just adds things on on top of it for people who come down and travel.

[00:53:49] You heard it. They don't have hotels. They sleeping in their car. My brother had a Jeep, by the way, because of Freaknik. But they sleep in their car. They don't have hotels. Right. And so you come here to experience something that you've heard great things about.

[00:54:04] And then you get ushered to a different location that doesn't have the same experience and you're just sitting in traffic. And it's not the same type of sitting in traffic that it was because you're going somewhere that you just don't know how to get to.

[00:54:18] Right. And so it's just it was just a whole bunch of things that just led up to to all of the things that went to a tragic ending. And I'll tell you this, my brothers agree with the with the documentary and that.

[00:54:32] And no coming back, right, there's no more. And no coming back for it, right, it is what it is. I think I think some things just have a time. There's a time and a space for certain things in certain movements. And I think Freaknik had its time.

[00:54:46] I think that from from my point of view, we just explained why it worked. Right. It was the college atmosphere. It was the AUC. It was also, you know, this emergence of black people just, you know, trying to have

[00:55:02] these gatherings when you had black music booming in Atlanta at that time where all this stuff was feeding into each other. And I think it had its time. I do. I'm not saying that we don't need a Freaknik type party, but I definitely don't

[00:55:14] think Freaknik itself is necessary right now. Yeah. Some of the talking heads say, well, you know, well, you know, there was no social media. So I think it's different. It's like you're absolutely right. There was no social media.

[00:55:28] And I think that a lot of the reason why these people came to Freaknik was because they wanted to be able to escape some of their conservative upbringing in the South. You know, like, oh, yeah, I'm coming from South Carolina because my mom is not gonna

[00:55:40] let me dress like this. We see we see women in this very documentary saying, hopefully you don't dress like that at home, you know, because, you know, but people are coming to Freaknik to do it like a once in a lifetime was a once a year getaway situation.

[00:55:54] And I think it had its moment to where all that stuff made it make sense to where like, OK, that might not happen again. But there are definitely other things you can do to encourage black joy. And I don't think it necessarily has to be Freaknik, Marnie.

[00:56:08] I don't know, because to me, it kind of sounds like, oh, you can't do that anymore because you can't be held accountable for if you do something wrong. You know, like I think. Yeah, exactly. Like, I think it's proven, you know, everything I said about our

[00:56:25] homecoming aside, I think it's proven that like this is this is the time of like festivals. People love a good festival. You know, I'm saying turning Freaknik. They showed in the documentary the guy who applied for the trademark and turned it into like a concert.

[00:56:43] They had like a like a business plaza health thing. It was given very much like Insecure's the black party. The black party, yeah. Yeah. Like I don't see why you couldn't do something like that. Like that's still fun. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, it's not Freaknik.

[00:57:01] It's not the same. It's like it's not unregulated. Got you. I understand that. That's smart. Exactly. But. That's smart. Yeah, that's why I say that time has passed. Yeah, but we're in a time where we want to hold people accountable.

[00:57:15] Right. Like I get you know, I get the want to keep regulation to a minimum, especially when it's coming from white people who have no clue what Freaknik is, where it started, where it came from or anything like that. Cool. I get that.

[00:57:26] But at the same time saying I want that old thing back. It's like it's not realistic because we don't that was a time and a place in a society in a bubble. Yeah. In a vacuum. Right.

[00:57:37] Like everything was like you can't say, oh, I want people to be able to sneak off and and dress looser than they normally do dress or wear less clothes and all this other stuff without people knowing in an age where everyone's going to know because

[00:57:50] of social media. Like those two things are not the same. We've moved past that. You want to say, OK, we don't need social media no more. So you want your Freaknik back. OK, well, you're going to be sacrificing a lot by giving up social media and like

[00:58:02] the Internet and all the developments we've made now to get that back. So it's like, yeah, I think that happened. But I think there are definitely spaces where you can you can promote this kind of

[00:58:12] joy, this type of togetherness in a healthy, you know, you know, public way. It was like, OK, well, people are making sure that everybody's being held accountable. Nobody's assaulting anybody. All those things can happen. But it won't be the Freaknik that you want.

[00:58:27] And sometimes we look back fondly on the time to say that was cool for what it was and we really liked it. We wish we could have that. When a lot of times we look at that stuff more fondly because it's in the past.

[00:58:37] Right. We talked about it a couple of times. There were crimes, you know, there were definitely people who were effective negatively. Stacey Lloyd talks about when her clothes were ripped off in a crowd full of people in the True Life, True Life episode.

[00:58:52] We actually see firsthand the count of that exact moment where the people that they're following on True Life are like, yeah, we looked to our left and we saw a woman getting her clothes ripped off. We see different retellings of that same exact moment.

[00:59:08] And so for Stacey Lloyd, she's like, yeah, I liked Freaknik, but I don't like that. You know, we don't even think that was her. Like that might not even been her. Right. Exactly. So, yeah, it's like it sounds like, oh, that one isolated incident.

[00:59:22] We don't want to paint this entire people and this entire function as some type of, you know, horrible thing when it wasn't because those were isolated incidents and isolated incidents happen, especially when you are using the cops to do things other than fight crime. Right.

[00:59:37] But at the same time, that does not change people's experience. There were people on this very documentary saying I'm never coming back. I actually don't want to come back to this. This was not fun. I don't like this. I don't like the way people being treated.

[00:59:47] I like women, the way women are being treated. I like the way we're being treated. And so those things that you want back. Yeah. You could look back finally on the good things. But also you have to acknowledge that there were negative things that went along with

[00:59:59] that as well. And so, yeah, try finding a space, carving out a new Freaknik type event that allows you to express Black joy and allows you to uplift each other and build community around. But learn from the mistakes of Freaknik of the past.

[01:00:13] And I think that's the important part that I took away from it because we see George Hawthorne have to literally step in and say, that's it. It's over after this last one. We're not doing it again.

[01:00:23] Freaknik is done. They try changing the name Black Spring Break College Weekend or whatever. So ultimately saying shut it down. And it got to the point of no return. And so now we have Mari is nostalgia. Yeah, I mean, that that is all it is at this point.

[01:00:42] You know. It's a shame, it's a shame because from what my teacher told me, it's like it was a place for them to go have fun, like really just let loose and just be around people who are like them. That's another reason why I like the true life.

[01:01:00] There was a true life Freaknik 1998. If you do not know what true life is, I feel so sorry for you because it's one of the greatest things that MTV ever used to do. Why they stopped, who knows?

[01:01:12] But MTV actually followed a group of three different groups of college students to Freaknik in 1998, three different ones. Some iotas from Maryland, some iotas from Keene University. Not that snicker. I didn't say nothing. And some some women from ECU, East Carolina, from Greenville.

[01:01:34] That's where my peoples are from. And they were literally there with first hand accounts and talking to to witnessing their experiences. And the iotas from Keene, when they saw what happened to that woman who was who we saw on camera, they even rewound it and slowed it down.

[01:01:56] I was like, dang, what happened to her getting her clothes ripped off? They they immediately the guys were like, man, that made me think about my approach completely different. Like, I'm not like I'm like, hey, miss, may I talk to you like he they really showed the

[01:02:11] effect of of seeing some of that stuff and how it changed some of their perspectives. And then we even get this whole scene where it's just very raw and upfront and people talking about it and, you know, some very problematic ideals being laid out, you know,

[01:02:27] from from some of the women, even some of the women, they're like, oh, if you dress like that, you're wanting negative attention and stuff like that. And it's going to happen to another girl like, no, I came down here. I dress how I want to dress.

[01:02:40] I don't don't give you the right to do the other way to. Yes. One of the the older iotas, you could tell he was not. He was not. He should not have been there. No, he was like their stage hand.

[01:02:57] He was like a stage manager at their step show talking about, well, if you if you make I don't see your intelligence, I'm going to see those cheeks, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yada, yada, yada.

[01:03:07] And it's just like to get that time capsule of the thought process is what I really liked in the true crime documentary, which is why I think I wanted wanted it a little bit more on the Freaknik Hulu documentary.

[01:03:21] Because, again, my favorite portions of that documentary was I love all of the archival footage. I love that we have so, so, so, so much of this footage because of how how documented it was and how it's all like, you know, documentation from people who were

[01:03:39] actually there. So I thought this I thought this documentary hit on a lot of things. I thought it it introduced stuff to me that I had no idea about Freaknik. And. I think it went there, I think it could have went a little bit further, but I appreciated

[01:03:58] it nonetheless. Yeah, this was a fun watch for sure, but I definitely think that there's like, you know, there's definitely probably larger conversation to be shown about the way people were perceiving these moments.

[01:04:11] Right. Like Mari mentions in the True Life documentary or the True Life episode on MTV, we see that person's perspective go from I'm going to Freaknik to get on some freaks too. And then he slowly becomes like, oh, yeah, we see him on the street.

[01:04:25] Like, I'm just taking pictures with all these girls. Yeah, these girls let you grab them. And then eventually he's like, well, why are you why are you showing it to me if I can't have it? I don't understand why you why you carry yourself like that.

[01:04:36] And then he sees what happens when people perpetuate that mindset and that woman's clothes get ripped off. And he's like, oh, no, I changed everything. And you see it scene to scene, this man's whole perspective change and you see it in real

[01:04:46] time. And it's very fascinating to watch it because it's like, yeah, those are the types of moments that it was very sobering for him. And then for him to have that sobering moment. And then we see the argument where people are saying, yeah, screw your sobering moment.

[01:04:59] She was dressed like that, so she deserve it. Those conversations are still being had today. They're still being had today, which is wild. But I think if you show more of those conversations being had where you're showing

[01:05:08] people who believe in that archaic view of women have to dress a certain way to get some type of respect versus people who are looking at it and talking about the humanity of people and saying that all people deserve respect no matter how they dress.

[01:05:22] Then you can have these conversations and people can reference those and say, OK, let's move forward and stop believing in those old ways. But because we kind of gloss over that sometimes in conversation, we don't get those

[01:05:34] conversations. And so I agree with Mario, probably could have done a little bit more of that. But I think for Hulu, this was great. It was a fun watch. It taught me so much.

[01:05:44] It gave me a new appreciation for something that I always have heard like almost like legend of, you know, I never I've never seen Freaknik. I've seen clips of Freaknik. I've heard people talk about Freaknik. I've never been to Freaknik.

[01:05:55] So I just, you know, whatever people tell me is what I was going to believe. And so to see it with my own eyes, Ty, this was great. Yeah, man, you know, I'm going to give a different perspective and it's not against what

[01:06:07] y'all just stated, because I completely agree with you all. I like this documentary because it gave a perspective of what I recall and what my brothers are called. Right. And that something they didn't talk about.

[01:06:20] And I'm not sure if this is a part of the founders or something separate, but I remember it being called Freedom Fest before it was called Freaknik. And it was just uprising of young African-American people just freely being expressive and having a good time.

[01:06:38] And for me, it was the part of that uprising was the musical era. All of the different genres that came about during this time period. It was just it was just an amazing event that I can't and I can't I can't really do it

[01:06:58] justice kind of speaking to. But I remember like King Edward J. mixed tapes during that time that they didn't really talk about just people on every street and corner, a group that I listen to a lot is Ghetto Mafia. They were popular during that time frame as well.

[01:07:14] And so a lot of people outside of Atlanta don't know who these people are. But I do. And I remember all of that being a part of that experience. And, you know, I remember my brothers didn't have to have their perspective change about

[01:07:28] how to treat a woman during this experience. They just went out there and enjoyed themselves. You know, I mean, my brother was when when he first started going to Freaknik, he was a senior in high school in ninety four.

[01:07:39] You know, I mean, and he didn't have to learn how to treat a woman. And so that story that's being told on True Life or this is extremely important. But just what I appreciated from it is what it told the story about Atlanta and how it

[01:07:56] grew and how it built itself off the backs of Freaknik and has grown to what it is now. The Mecca, Mari. Yeah, I mean, it's a city Mecca. We're the college. Listen, we're not doing that.

[01:08:12] We're not doing that today because this very much was a love letter to Atlanta by way of Freaknik. And I enjoyed watching it as well. There were some big names, big names throughout this entire thing. Like we mentioned Killer Mike.

[01:08:25] We've mentioned, you know, I think Lil Jon pops up at some points or you get 21 Savage. Well, I thought was in the UK around that time. Who knows? He been there long enough to where he even he feels it, you know, it's a part of the

[01:08:42] community that he grew up in. Yeah. Per him, per his words in this documentary, we saw Claudia Jordan. We saw Cecil from Mari to Madison. And these are just footage of them. They weren't even talking heads. You just see Claudia Jordan up on a balcony like, hey, y'all.

[01:08:57] And so stuff like that is so fun to watch, especially when it's archival footage. And so bring me more of that. Tell more black stories with more evidence because I like that kind of stuff.

[01:09:06] I don't really like when I have to go and like determine if something is real or fake. Show it to me and then I can believe it myself. And then I can also spread those stories to other people. This has been a great time.

[01:09:17] Y'all, we got to come up with something else to watch soon. We got to figure out something. Mari, you got anything on your radar? Shirley's out. The movie about Shirley Tisdom starring Regina King. Yes.

[01:09:30] So if you want to do that, we can hop on that for the next weekend. If not, like we are open to hear everybody's suggestions. Yep. You can email us recapkickback at gmail.com. You can DM the Recap Kickback Twitter account at Recap Kickback.

[01:09:48] Also the TikTok or even in the Facebook group. Let us know what you think. We should talk about here on Recap Kickback because we're here to talk about all the things you want to hear us talk about. So until then, you know, keep us posted.

[01:10:02] Let us know what you're thinking and then we'll give feedback and we'll see what we can do because we want to keep the content coming. I have been talking to LaTanya Starks about joining us for Shirley. So we're going to work out her schedule as well.

[01:10:13] So that could possibly happen, but we will see. In the meantime, Tyrone, what you got going on? Recap Kickback, man. I truly appreciate you and Mari for allowing me to come on this podcast. This one was very special to me because of the Atlanta thing.

[01:10:30] And I got so much pride in Atlanta, so I appreciate y'all. So if you want to hear me talk more about black things, Atlanta or any other thing out there in the world that taps into the culture of Recap Kickback, then you

[01:10:42] could find me here in the future. Mari, I kind of feel like we got to talk about the boondocks with Ty because he doesn't know. Yeah, I kind of feel like we got to do it. That was some of the feedback we got back from our bracket.

[01:10:56] I'd be willing to entertain an episode or two in the next few days, Mari. Do you think that'd be fun? Well, that'd be very fun. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Let's put that on the docket. I think me and LaTanya can talk about Shirley.

[01:11:13] And I think the three of us can reconvene for the boondocks. I think that's a bigger event. I do. So yeah, I think talking about Ty. You just want to kick me off the Shirley podcast? No, no, no, no.

[01:11:24] Yeah, listen, we have no interest in what Mari thinks about Shirley Chisholm. No, I'm joking. But I do think that, yeah, I think being around for Ty's introduction to the boondocks as a whole would be very fun. So we'll talk about it.

[01:11:37] This is what happens when you give dudes the keys. That's it. They just kick you off the podcast. That part. Mari, what do you have going on aside from getting kicked off the Shirley podcast and bad image?

[01:11:48] Um, of course, every Tuesday, me and Sarah Carradine bring true crime Tuesdays to RJP with the crime scene podcast. Again, if you'd like this type of style, we, um, we go over documentaries, we take them apart piece by piece.

[01:12:00] And then we give it, give our ratings and tell you if you should watch it. Last week, we teamed up with the mess magnets to form the crime magnets to talk about quiet on set. Um, that was a journey.

[01:12:13] Um, so you can listen to both our, our version, the crime scene version and the mess mag magnets version. Um, by going to rob has website.com slash crime feed, uh, this week coming up, uh, guests, Matt Scott will be, um, tying Chappelle's guest spots. Uh,

[01:12:30] what's the baby so bad? It's just obsessed with me. Dang. So talk about, can I tell you a secret? Um, a doc, a docuseries about cyber cyber stalking in England is it was a cyber stalking case in England.

[01:12:49] We had a really good chat with, with Matt, me and Sarah. So definitely go check us out. You can also follow us on Twitter at crime scene, our HAP or, uh, follow our Facebook group crime scene podcast on Facebook, um, every week, me and

[01:13:05] Matt Scott bring the wrestling or half up, uh, where we talk about pro wrestling, the highlights in pro wrestling. Uh, uh, last week we, we brought grace on grace leader, our unofficial third chair there, um, to talk about some of the off, some of the storylines that

[01:13:22] aren't necessarily, um, going to be showcased at WrestleMania, but well, that was the thought process. We were like, okay, well, we'll go with the storylines that aren't really being talked about. However, however, black women, black women are just dominating wrestling right now.

[01:13:41] So we had to talk about it. So if you're interested in, in, uh, listening to us talk about some really fun, uh, wrestling storylines that are going around right now, you can go to our website.com slash wrestling feed in order to subscribe, but you could also

[01:13:58] see it catch us on our own YouTube page. Again, if you're supporting this YouTube, come on, go to the YouTube and support us over there. Go to youtube.com slash at wrestling rehab up that's youtube.com at wrestling, R J P U P. And that's it for me.

[01:14:15] All right. And for me, uh, you know, you can catch me all over the place of course, here on recap, kickback, taking your suggestions, uh, doing podcasts every time I get a chance, so G and I are still covering Abbott elementary.

[01:14:28] We should have that episode out to you. The most recent two episodes out to you very soon. Uh, and then I am on the Netflix podcast talking about three body problem this week with special guest Josh Wiggler, uh, this week on club

[01:14:41] condo with Rob on RHAP, we're talking about the most recent episode of survivor. And then Sasha Joseph and I are talking about below deck on the below deck wrap up on the Bravo feed on RHAP. So I got a lot of podcasts coming your way.

[01:14:55] Um, but again, you can always find me here on recap kickback. So for Ty and for Mari, thank you so much for listening. Thank y'all for tuning in. Thank y'all for subscribing on your five-star reviews for kicking it at the

[01:15:06] recap, you ain't gotta go home, but you know, the rest we'll talk to you all later. Peace. My goddamn self.