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GenX Gon Give It To Ya is ultimately about spreading love and bridging generations. I’m broadening connections while scoopin up some old friends along the way. We’ll reminisce on tv, movies, music, entertainment and events that helped form our culture cause the bond is deep!
Come Play!
Deshanta (00:00)
Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome back to another episode of Gen X Gon' It To Ya. If you are new, welcome. Glad you could make it. Please hit that subscribe button. I'm excited for tonight's episode. It's with someone everyone from around the way is proud to say is from the Bronx or Co-op or from Truman High School.
When many of us hear the name Miles Marshall Lewis, we can't help but smile. Even if we don't know him, he's reppin' for all of us. Let's get right into it.
Deshanta (00:26)
Did you have a good day?
Miles Marshall Lewis (00:26)
yeah.
I did. It was sort of a long day. I was sick this week. So today was the first day that I felt myself, and it was jam-packed with stuff. I had therapy actually this morning, so that's kind of new for me. I got a therapist last summer, and it's been going well. So I did that in the morning. Yeah, mental health is important.
Deshanta (00:44)
Good job.
for sure.
Miles Marshall Lewis (00:48)
I went to the gym and I hadn't been since last week.
And I came home and ⁓ had a Zoom. You know, I'm the cultural historian at the Hip Hop Museum So the museum is not open yet. It opens at the end of this year.
My job consists of a bunch of like remote Zoom calls, you know, every day, nearly every day and writing and other things.
Deshanta (01:08)
So
I was gonna touch upon that later, So the hip hop, is that the same? Tell us what it is.
Miles Marshall Lewis (01:16)
Yeah, the hip hop museum opens in December of 2026 and it is the first museum in the world completely devoted to hip hop culture. It is two stories and it is based across the street from the Bronx terminal market in the Bronx. And I can walk there from my crib even though I live in Harlem.
The 145th Street Bridge is right there and yeah, I can be there in 10 minutes if I have to be. So they're building it. The outside is built and they're constructing the inside now. And yeah, you know, I'm the historian there. So it was my job to sort of explain what hip hop we should feature in the museum and how we were gonna tell the story.
And there are going to be four galleries inside, each one devoted to a different element of hip hop. DJing, emceeing, graffiti and break dancing. so, yeah, telling the story and the history of each element and other surprises. You know, it's going to be a cool space. I mean, we have a theater that's going to be up in there. Hot 97 is going to have a booth where they're like doing live broadcasts and
Nas just gave us a million dollars at our gala a couple of months ago yeah things are moving forward.
Deshanta (02:26)
Amazing Now I don't want to get confused because I looked it up. Is it it's not Universal Hip Hop Museum that's something different?
Miles Marshall Lewis (02:30)
Okay.
It was once called the Universal Hip Hop Museum, but the name changed a few years ago. I've been there, I guess, two years now, maybe a year and a half. yeah, ever since I've been there, it's been the hip hop museum. But it's been in the works for like at least 10 years now. And Rocky Buchano is the CEO and he is older than we are, but he comes from our neighborhood in a way. I mean, I grew up in Co-op City.
as did you, correct? So he lived in the Valley and he went to Truman High School and you know, like I just, never knew him because he's a different generation. But it's been a like a dream of his to open this museum for 10, 15 years. now it's finally happening. So yeah, in the beginning it was called the Universal Hip Hop Museum, not unlike the Universal Zulu Nation or something. But then the name changed to...
Deshanta (02:59)
Yes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (03:23)
to the simpler hip hop museum and there's merch, there's hoodies and tote bags already and stuff that I'm rocking.
Deshanta (03:31)
about
I saw that it was founded in 2015 so it's just been in the works for about 10 years a little over 10 years and now it's gonna finally launch and we're gonna be able to go in there and it's touching and just viewing and just embracing all of hip-hop.
Miles Marshall Lewis (03:48)
Exactly that, yes, exactly that. It's gonna be a cool space, you know, I've never seen anything like it. There's been hip hop exhibits at places like the Brooklyn Museum in the past and I know that there's a graffiti museum that's in Miami that's pretty cool.
Deshanta (04:03)
Mmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (04:04)
you know, but that's just one element of the whole story of hip hop. But I love the Graffiti Museum, you know, down in Florida. So yeah, this is gonna be the first real one devoted to each element and in the Bronx where hip hop started. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing.
Deshanta (04:19)
That is so exciting. How did you land this gig?
Miles Marshall Lewis (04:23)
I'm working on a book actually now. It's my fourth book and it's a book about Dave Chappelle. It's basically like a biography of Chappelle, right? And so coming toward the tail end of finishing it, you know, I'm editing it right now with my publisher,
Toward the tail end of it, I was like, yeah, now that this book is done, it's kind of time to get a job, you know? I mean, the way books work is you get half your money upfront from the publisher. And when you hand it in, you get the second half. And so I was good, but I was still kind of like, all right, you know, either it's a new book that I'm going to write or it's a nine to five. You know, I have two kids in college. So I decided, you know, if I'm going to work,
some place that needs to align with my purpose and, you know, has to be a gig with meaning. You know, I don't take, you know, I don't take or recommend people to take gigs that don't have something to do what you're about, you know? And I was aware of the hip hop museum and I was like, you know, I'd love to help them bring that to life. I don't know, you know, what's possible. And I just Googled and they were hiring for a director of
Deshanta (05:17)
right.
Miles Marshall Lewis (05:28)
Curatorial Affairs and I looked at the job description and you know, I kind of felt like maybe I could do that So I contacted them we had been in contact previously Over something else. I think there was a biography of a hip-hop legend on the table that they they you know thought that they might want to try to self-publish and wanted me involved but they knew who I was anyway and
One thing led to another and I didn't get that gig, but they offered me historian, which made a lot more sense for me anyway. And the money was the same. So I took that and I've been there since August of 2024.
Deshanta (06:06)
Wow, we got a lot of ground to cover because you said you had kids in college. I went to your website and you know, I saw, you know, two little, yeah. So we got a lot, a lot to cover. And ladies and gentlemen, I just want to introduce Miles Marshall Lewis, who is going to be.
Miles Marshall Lewis (06:15)
Little guys. Right.
Deshanta (06:27)
My sixth episode. It's been a year, yes. I had some things going on. I apologize, but I am back and I'm busting through the doors with Miles. You hear me? All right. So thank you for being here so much. So let's get into some of these questions. Okay, so you mentioned that you lived in the Bronx. Where did you live in the Bronx?
Miles Marshall Lewis (06:38)
yeah. Sure, sure.
Yeah.
A couple of different places. mean, mainly it was Co-op City. Mainly it was Section 5 of Co-op City. I grew up on Elgar Place, but I moved there when I was maybe four years old.
Before then I lived in the South Bronx. I lived on Marcy Place Which is yeah in the South Bronx kind of near the Grand Concourse and That was yeah, that was where I was like really a shorty and then I had different grandparents who lived in different places in the Bronx I was blessed to know both sets of my great-grandparents Before they passed away and they lived on
St. Anne's Avenue in the South Bronx and also Caldwell Avenue in the South Bronx, Findlay Avenue in the South Bronx. So we were definitely in those spaces for Thanksgivings and Christmases and before I started elementary school, you know, they were watching me every day. So I was on my tricycle riding down Findlay Avenue and, you know, hearing park jams in the distance.
from hip-hop DJs and whatnot. So then we moved to Co-op City and that's really where I grew up.
Deshanta (07:52)
There's so many memories just of the Bronx in general. You just mentioned like being out there with the DJs in the park. I grew up with Afrika Bambaataa.
Miles Marshall Lewis (07:59)
you
Deshanta (08:01)
He would come to my grandmother's house all the time. She called him Bam. Bam. What's up, Bam?
Miles Marshall Lewis (08:03)
Wow.
Deshanta (08:06)
But you know, I was so little, I didn't realize until I was older was like, my God, that was BAM. But ⁓ yeah. ⁓ What are some of the things you like doing in Co-op or in the Bronx in general?
Miles Marshall Lewis (08:06)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
That's you.
Well, I was a big action figure guy. I was a big superhero guy. I was a big comic book guy. So I spent a lot of time watching TV and watching cartoons and superhero cartoons or reading...
comic books. My dad had a huge comic book collection. And a lot of those comics weren't even old. It's so funny to me that I was reading comics from the 1960s and they felt like ancient artifacts, but it was only like 1973. You know what I mean? Like the comic was only five years old probably, but it felt like, you know, so ancient to me. But yeah, he had a lot of original...
editions of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers and the Hulk and all of that. I spent a lot of time just sort of up in the room reading. But when I would come outside, I mean, naturally, you know, there was bike riding and there was the different games that we used to play, you know.
like hide and go seek, that kind of stuff. The same kind of games, I guess, that everybody was playing. What else did I like to do specifically in the Bronx? There were public swimming pools that were like...
They were fun. I didn't learn to swim officially till I was maybe 10 years old or so, but the public parks, particularly in The Valley area of the Bronx, which is near Co-op I'd go there with my grandmother and that'd be fun. Yeah, what else? There's just those types of things.
Deshanta (09:43)
You mentioned the comic books and that reminded me and I probably was gonna ask this a little later in the convo, but I can circle around with it. But I remember my first time getting comic books, I was in the basement doing laundry. You know how we had the laundry rooms in the basement and around the corner we had the dumpsters. So one day I stuck my head around the dumpster and there was a stack of
Miles Marshall Lewis (10:00)
Right.
Right.
Deshanta (10:09)
Thor comic books and that's how I got into comic books because I found a stack of Thor comic books and I'm a Marvel fan to this day. got a lot of stuff out of the dumpster Maybe that was just me. I know it's a thing now with some people like dumpster diving and you know random places But I was doing it when I was like eight, but that's how my comic book journey started ⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (10:10)
Mm-hmm.
I'm Steve.
Ha ha!
Right?
Okay.
Deshanta (10:33)
What schools did you attend growing up in Co-op
Miles Marshall Lewis (10:36)
Yeah, I went to all public schools. I went to IS 180 for elementary school. No, sorry. It was PS 160 for elementary school, the Walt Disney School, they called it. Yeah, and still do, I imagine.
Deshanta (10:48)
Is that what they called it?
I didn't know that.
Miles Marshall Lewis (10:52)
Yeah, that's in Section 5 and that's kindergarten to fourth grade. Then IS 180, I guess maybe it's still called IS 180. It might be called JHS, you know, or MS 180 at this point. But when I was going to school, was junior high and it was, well, IS 180 stood for intermediate school, I imagine. But that was, you know, fifth grade to eighth grade. And then I went to Truman
high school all these schools were like within Co-op City and and yeah that was my education.
Deshanta (11:25)
It was definitely a six degrees of separation. I also went to IS 180 and I also went to Truman, I loved living in Co-op City and the hands around the park and everybody just trying to get along and be friends and share their cultures. It was really an amazing time for me anyway. Are there any teachers that made an impact in your life?
Miles Marshall Lewis (11:31)
Mmm.
Right.
Yeah, definitely I would say so. ⁓ had an English teacher named Mrs. Crutoy in Truman, at Truman. I had, what do they call it then?
It was sort of like, yeah, AP, right? I had AP English, Advanced Placement English, because I was, you know, it was always, like I said, a reader and eventually a writer, right? So it was in that class, AP English, had her maybe seventh and eighth, no, sorry, 11th and 12th grade. And yeah, she turned me on to Toni Morrison, you know, who's my all-time favorite writer. ⁓ I think we had to read Song of Solomon.
Deshanta (12:24)
Yes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (12:26)
at some point and I was really into that and ⁓ had never read her before. I'm sure I had heard of her but I'd never read her. Yeah, we read a bunch of cool stuff. later on when I was like in my 20s and about to become the music editor at Vibe Magazine, I think I reached out to her for some reason. And around the time I reached out to her, she was looking to figure out who was gonna be the keynote speaker.
for graduation that year and she asked me to do it. She spoke to the faculty and they seemed to think it was good idea. And so even though my grades were not that great when I graduated at 17, like 10 years later they asked me to be the commencement speaker. So I did that, I accepted it and that was a cool little 360 moment.
Deshanta (13:18)
So you were a trailblazer early. You guess Look where you are now.
Miles Marshall Lewis (13:21)
I mean, I guess. I
was struggling to get out of there.
you know, but it worked out. Yeah, no, seriously, eighth grade, no, I keep saying that, 12th grade, at the end of it all, yeah, I walked, you know, in terms of graduating, but I had to go to summer school that year before I could even go to college, you know, I went to summer school for something really dumb that I should have passed in the first place.
And then like the same week that that class ended, I went down to Atlanta to start college.
Deshanta (13:53)
Did you know at that time that that's what you wanted to do was be a writer?
Miles Marshall Lewis (13:57)
Not really. I had a feeling that I was going to be an artist of some sort or that I wanted to be. Music was really big in my head at that time. I play piano and it was during those years that I was really kind of practicing after school and buying sheet music from different record stores and
learning, you know, what I could learn to maybe become a producer or something. I definitely looked up to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at the time. Prince was, you know, my biggest hero at that time. And he produced obviously, among so many other things, right, multi instrumentalists and all of that.
So yeah, I wanted to do music. You know, I was even songwriting. was writing lyrics to different songs that didn't have any music because I didn't know how to write music. But then it turned. mean, you know, yeah, I don't know how badly I wanted to do that as opposed to like the idea of it, you know. And when I got to college, I ended up writing for the school newspapers there.
And I had always been really into Rolling Stone magazine, for example, and Spin magazine. I was an avid reader of Billboard magazine, like in high school even. And so it made sense that that's what ended up happening. Like while I was at Morehouse College in Atlanta, that's when Vibe magazine launched.
once I saw that there was gonna be a magazine that treated hip hop with the same seriousness as Rolling Stone treats rock and roll, know, I was definitely like, wow, that would be the dream job. eventually I became the music editor. But I mean, the 1990s were full of rap magazines, know, like Rap Pages and The Source which predated Vibe And...
Deshanta (15:37)
You
Miles Marshall Lewis (15:48)
Egotrip magazine and 4080 and Stress and ⁓ all the rest of them. So yeah, hip hop journalism really blew up that decade and it was definitely the perfect fit for me.
Deshanta (16:00)
In all that that was happening in your childhood, did you have to go to your parents and be like, hey, this is what I want to do? Or was it more like they saw your potential in being artistic and just pushed you towards that? Or was there a balance in it?
Miles Marshall Lewis (16:16)
Yeah, I that's a good question. I don't think they really... I don't remember asking them for permission, to be honest. I mean, I guess they were paying for my education, or actually my grandfather footed most of the money for my education. But even him, I mean, I didn't major in journalism. I majored in sociology. And upon graduation, you know, from undergrad,
I went to law school, actually. I thought that if writing didn't work out, that I would be maybe like an entertainment lawyer. So for the first three years of my writing career, after college, I was actually still in school. I was going to Fordham downtown, Fordham University School of Law.
I think that they kind of felt that writing was sketchy, not sketchy, but what's the word, not something you could really count on or maybe it was too artistic and is there enough money in that? Nobody in my family really had an artistic job or made a living as an artist. So yeah, I don't know that they...
really felt like that was the smartest road to go down. I mean, they were patient. They were waiting for it to play out and see, especially Hip Hop They were still, I'm sure, the mindset that it was going to be a fad or it wasn't going be. You can't be 50 years old writing about hip hop.
Deshanta (17:20)
Right.
Right.
Miles Marshall Lewis (17:36)
you know, like maybe choose something else. But no, I never really got any pushback. You know, I think maybe my grandmother was the one to actually say to me, get a real job at some point. ⁓ But like, you know, at the point that she said that, I probably did need to get a real job. I was probably asking her for money or something.
Deshanta (17:49)
You
you end up going to law school?
Miles Marshall Lewis (18:02)
Yeah, well, I was about to graduate from, well, actually, actually, no, let me back up. Because when I started college, I was a computer science major.
And when I started college, ⁓ I didn't start at Morehouse. I started at Morris Brown. So in Atlanta, for those that don't know, there's what's called the Atlanta University Center. So it's Morehouse and it's Spelman, which is like the top school of HBCUs, all female. And it's Clark Atlanta University, and it's Morris Brown College. And the year that I started college, which was 19...
1988 Spike Lee just released School Daze know, which filmed on Morehouse's campus and Morris Brown's campus and A Different World started on television, which was you know Cosby's spin-off of the Cosby show where Denise goes away to an HBCU, right? So a lot of that was in the air, know in terms of black colleges and I wanted to go to one and my grades weren't good enough to get in to
to
Howard or any of the top schools. And Morris Brown accepted me. So that's where I started as a computer science major, because I figured computers were the future, which they were. But I wasn't prepared to be like Mark Zuckerberg or something. So I transferred eventually. I transferred to Morehouse, and I switched to sociology as a major because computer science had too much math.
And I picked sociology because I thought that I might want to pursue law. And I read somewhere that if you want to go to law school, a undergrad major is sociology. And it was easy enough for me. So I did it.
And yeah, I mean, why did I want to do that? I I guess I wanted to be in entertainment and I wanted to make money. And I was still kind of, you young. I mean, I think that it's sort of unfortunate. I mean, don't tell my kids this, but it's sort of unfortunate that it's put on your shoulders to like pick.
your profession at such a young age, like, it's very rare that somebody knows himself well enough to know what they want to do for the rest of their life at 17 years old, you know, when you're asked to pick a major. yeah, so I didn't know when I got to college that I wanted to be a hip hop journalist. There actually wasn't even such a thing in 1988. But by the time I graduated, yes, there was the source and there was Vibe.
Deshanta (20:07)
Great point.
Miles Marshall Lewis (20:23)
and more and more albums or hip-hop albums were going multi-platinum and I was like yeah that's what I want to do and if I can't do that then at least I'll be an entertainment lawyer and maybe I'll still be in like...
record companies, you know, with artists, like, looking at their contracts. And, you know, like, I never wanted to be in the courtroom. I wanted to be sort of signing contracts or drawing up contracts for different people in entertainment.
Deshanta (20:48)
That's inspiring. Let's switch gears a little bit. What was your first job?
Miles Marshall Lewis (20:53)
Hmm. Ever or like professionally?
Deshanta (20:56)
⁓ let's do both. Ever.
Miles Marshall Lewis (20:57)
Well,
yeah, I mean, my first job was probably McDonald's, you know. Funnily enough, they used to bus kids from Co-op City to work, yeah, to work in Connecticut because, I mean, where I worked was Darien, Connecticut, but I guess the same thing. Go ahead, go ahead.
Deshanta (21:07)
to Connecticut. ⁓
Alright, I'm need to stop you just for a second because
how did you work at Darien and I never met you? Because I worked at Darien. yes, I don't understand. And I'm not gonna ask, I'm so, because I've seen your name, of course. I've heard your name. You know, you know, I get it.
Miles Marshall Lewis (21:24)
Did you? ⁓ wow. Wow.
Deshanta (21:35)
So how do I not, we have not encountered each other as far as I know, but I worked at Darien, Connecticut for a few years.
Miles Marshall Lewis (21:40)
Mm-hmm. Oh, that's so deep.
That's so deep. Yeah, me too. Me too. It was like at least three years. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, I got that job at 15. And you're not supposed to work until you're 16. So.
Deshanta (21:45)
⁓ good times, good times. That's crazy.
Miles Marshall Lewis (21:59)
Once I didn't bring in my working papers for a week or two, they fired me because they were like, you're not of age or whatever. So I came back when I was 16 and they hired me and... ⁓
And I worked there off and on, you know, like a year and a half, I guess, until graduation. But Darien, yeah, the thing about Darien is that it was like one of the richest suburbs in the country. So the kids there, you know, didn't want to work at McDonald's. You know what mean? Like that was beneath them. Their allowances from their parents were probably like hundreds of dollars a week or whatever. they didn't have the money to work there. Kids, you know, and so basically they busted
Deshanta (22:31)
He
Miles Marshall Lewis (22:35)
them in from the Bronx where everybody needed a job and that was my first gig. But I mean my first professional job was at Black Beat Magazine. I used to read it in high school, you know, it was like a Fanzine like Right On or Word Up you know.
Deshanta (22:47)
Black Beat
Miles Marshall Lewis (22:56)
They got their share of interviews with people, but the interviews were sort of dumbed down, you know, because they were underestimating the intelligence of high school kids. You know, like I was reading Right On or whatever, Black Beat but I, I was also reading Rolling Stone. So like I could have, you know, I didn't need to be dumbed down. But anyway.
And then half the magazine was full of posters as well for kids to like, you know, stick up on their on their walls and stuff. But I was an assistant editor at Black Beat. And and even when I took that gig, it was probably like 1996, I want to say.
Deshanta (23:16)
He
Miles Marshall Lewis (23:33)
Yeah, 1996, I think is when I started there. even when I was there, I was already writing for Rolling Stone and like the Village Voice and stuff. You know, I was was freelancing for other places, but Vibe as well. But I needed like a steady gig to be able to pay my rent. And so that was what I did. I was assistant editor at Black Beat for like a year and half, at least.
Deshanta (23:55)
It sounds like you were in the right places at the right times because there's so many of us that wanted what you attained and that is so impressive. So I wanna give you your props on that. Cause I'm all about music, entertainment, da da da, da da da, but I didn't know I was out here trying to survive and you did it. Props to you.
Miles Marshall Lewis (24:04)
Mm.
I really... Well yeah, well I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
Deshanta (24:22)
So let's get into your childhood and some of the TV shows that you loved when you were growing up. What were some of those?
Miles Marshall Lewis (24:30)
Yeah, that's easy. Battle of the Planets was a favorite, which is funny because the more I researched that show, it was kind of the first anime show. It was originally some kind of Japanese cartoon, and then they overdubbed it in English and chopped it up a little differently for the American audience. But Battle of the Planets was dope.
There was the Magic Garden, definitely, you know, when I was like a little younger. That was what, Carrol and Paula and Sherlock the Squirrel and...
That was a cute little show that came on like three o'clock on Channel 11. know, right after school, you'd rush home and it'd be on and it was cute. They had the chuckle patch, you know, like a group of, I don't want to call it a group, but like a sort of a patch of dandelion flowers called the chuckle patch. You know, it was like a little surreal kind of show, which a lot of the shows back then were like,
What was the other one? HR puffing stuff? You know, that was another one. Davey and Goliath would come on on Sundays and have like Christian messages, you know, that made you feel less guilty about not going to church that morning. You know, at least you got it.
Deshanta (25:35)
Yes.
Do you know
you reminded, I forgot about that show, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And the chuckle patch, is that the one where it's like, see ya, see ya, hope you had a real good time, la da, hope you had a, yeah, I remember that. That's.
Miles Marshall Lewis (25:49)
Yeah. Okay.
Yup.
⁓ Yep.
Yeah, they're still alive.
They like go on tour and shit. Yeah, you can follow them on Facebook and there's like, I guess different retro sort of conventions that they show up at and sign autographs and stuff. They're still around.
Deshanta (26:07)
Are you serious?
I'm gonna look that up. I like that show. ⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (26:23)
Mm-hmm, that show was good.
And then, know, superhero stuff. Like, definitely Batman when they put Batman in syndication. The Batman TV show from the 1960s, you know, it was like brand new to me where Adam West was playing Batman and ⁓ Burt Ward was playing Robin. Yeah, I had a babysitter growing up in ⁓ Co-op and...
Deshanta (26:36)
Yes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (26:44)
Actually, incidentally, well, I had a babysitter. She was the mom of my best friend at the time, Brent, right? And Brent Fargus, right? Shout out to Brent Fargus. Brent Fargus's uncle was Antonio Fargus, who was like, Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch, right? So his uncle was like, famous. And he got to be on a...
Deshanta (26:59)
Stop it.
Miles Marshall Lewis (27:08)
Romper Room I think, because, you know, his uncle had connections at networks or something. So that was like deep, you know, but but yeah, I had a babysitter and my best friend was Brent. And we would sort of argue sometimes over who was going to watch what, you know, like, ⁓ Tom and Jerry came on at the same time as Batman and you know, ⁓ I wanted to see Batman and he wanted to see Tom and Jerry.
Deshanta (27:28)
He
Miles Marshall Lewis (27:32)
But yeah, all those Fritz Lang cartoons, Woody Woodpecker and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, everything really. I was a TV head, so we could go on and on. There was Happy Days, and there was Three's Company, and Wonder Woman, and what else? Yeah, Charlie's Angels definitely was a-
Deshanta (27:51)
Charlie's Angels, Bionic
Man.
Miles Marshall Lewis (27:55)
Yeah, yeah, I had the toys, you know, all of that, all of that. Voltron, you know, yeah, I was glued to the TV, you know, but yeah, Happy Days was definitely a favorite show of mine. And probably, you know, the love boat, you know, the love boat back to back with Fantasy Island was big. Eight is Enough, you know, I watched all of that stuff, you know, until...
Deshanta (28:06)
eight o'clock, I think.
Miles Marshall Lewis (28:19)
my brain melted. And at night, you know, I had no bedtime really. So I was definitely the kid watching like the Twilight Zone, you know, when it came on at midnight and ⁓ the Honeymooners at 11 o'clock and all into like reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore show at two o'clock in the morning. You know, like I was up way past my bedtime. I didn't.
Deshanta (28:21)
Yeah
Yeah, you're a real
TV head.
Miles Marshall Lewis (28:43)
Yeah, and I was up, yeah, till really three, four in the morning sometimes.
Deshanta (28:49)
Did you ever catch Love American Style? That came one late too. So who would you say back then was one of your favorite celebrities?
Miles Marshall Lewis (28:52)
Yep, I remember that. Yeah, that's true.
Hmm. good question. Who's my favorite celebrity? Wow. I don't know that I really had any favorites. mean, there were women that I was sort of having dreams about. There was Batgirl. Batgirl. No, listen, it is what it is. Batgirl was hot.
Deshanta (29:10)
You
Okay, who? Not trying to get you in trouble, but... ⁓ you like Batgirl? Okay. Barbara.
Miles Marshall Lewis (29:22)
You know, yeah, yeah. And that tight latex or whatever that outfit was made out of. There was Ginger, you know, and Marianne, but mainly Ginger from the Gilligan's Island, She was the movie star. There was who else? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like the Marilyn Monroe type, you know?
Deshanta (29:26)
Hehehehe
⁓
yeah, with the little mole.
Mm-hmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (29:44)
Janet Jackson, course, you know, it wasn't all about white girls. Like Janet Jackson, you know, when I was, I don't know, six, Janet Jackson at nine was like hot, you know what mean? ⁓ on good times. Okay. Yeah. Dressed like me. Definitely. And, ⁓
Deshanta (29:56)
Right, because she's telling people come and see me sometimes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (30:04)
Yeah, and then, you know, we grew up together in a way. mean, Janet Jackson later on, on different strokes, you know, that was like a big deal. And fame, you know, like you wanted a girlfriend like Janet Jackson and Thelma on good times. you know, I guess if I had favorite celebrities, you know, you could say that these women were among them because...
I just, I had crushes on them, frankly.
Deshanta (30:30)
Naturally, yes. Okay, so what about your favorite cereal? Let's talk about that. Did you have cereal back in the day?
Miles Marshall Lewis (30:37)
Yeah.
Yeah, hell yeah. More than I should have, you know? But Apple Jacks, Apple Jacks. If not Apple Jacks, Froot Loops. If not Froot Loops, there was Cream of Wheat. Cream of Wheat is underrated. The maple and brown sugar one. Yeah, that's the bomb.
Deshanta (30:51)
Cream of Wheat is so good.
Miles Marshall Lewis (30:59)
you know, I ate it all. I mean, but those were my favorites. I mean, I had honeycombs, you know, I had like the dig'em smacks. super sugar crisp, I guess is what they were called. I had, Cheerios were boring unless you sprinkle sugar on them, you know. I had the...
the other oatmeal, the Quaker Oats oatmeal that like had the different flavors or whatever. You you were supposed to boil water and pour it on the oats. But you know, when I was up, I just pour hot water on it. You know what I mean? Because I wanted to get it over with and I wasn't allowed to touch the stove like that, you know?
Deshanta (31:33)
You mentioned Applejack so in my head I'm like A is for Apple, J is for Jack, Cinnamon Toasty and this is what I wanted out of the show like I just wanted us to go back and just have a good time this I want this to be a feel-good-time show and you're doing that for me not saying my other episodes didn't do that I'm just saying I'm really enjoying this and I feel like I'm taking over and I don't mean to it's just
Miles Marshall Lewis (31:37)
Hahaha!
Hey.
Nah! It's fine. It's fine. Nah, it's for sure. Injection personality, you know?
Deshanta (31:57)
who I am naturally, but ⁓ yeah, crazy.
What is some of your favorite candies from back in the day?
Miles Marshall Lewis (32:07)
I wasn't so big on candy. I mean, I like chocolate and I like cookies. And so I remember fudge stripes. You know, this is before anybody knew anything about like high fructose corn syrup, you know, that they were sticking in everything to make you addicted to stuff. But fudge stripes.
Deshanta (32:17)
⁓
Hahaha
Keebler
right?
Miles Marshall Lewis (32:26)
Yup, yeah, that was a Keebler cookie. Yeah, I would kill a box of like fudge stripes in a minute. Kit Kats, you know, were a favorite and still kind of are a guilty pleasure. I used to eat Whatchamacallits. You know, I feel like I... Exactly, I feel like they invented Whatchamacallits when I was like in middle school or something. Right, so I was...
Deshanta (32:40)
Who do you call it? Whatchamacallit's
I think they did actually. I remember the rapper.
I remember it all.
Miles Marshall Lewis (32:52)
Yeah,
now I was an early adapter, you know, because I was into what you would call it. But candies, I wasn't really so big on candy, you know, like everybody else's grandma, you know, my grandmother had like the bowl of peppermints and stuff next to Ebony magazine or whatever. But, know, and I'd swallow those, but it wasn't like a real favorite.
Deshanta (33:15)
Fair enough. What were some of your favorite video games?
Miles Marshall Lewis (33:18)
Yeah, Frogger, Defender, Asteroids, Pac-Man, Mrs. Pac-Man.
There was a Star Wars game that was like probably the first Star Wars game. I don't remember the name of it, but I remember the goal of it. Like it was yesterday, know, Centipede I could never really get the hang of Qbert, you know, like I would play it, but I wouldn't last very long. You know, I wasn't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I couldn't really. But Donkey Kong also, you know.
Deshanta (33:42)
Is that the hopping guy? Yeah, yeah, I remember.
Miles Marshall Lewis (33:49)
all of those were like favorites. There was an arcade that was on Central Avenue in Yonkers and it was inside of a Nathan's actually. And I would go up there with my mom and my grandma a lot because they were...
shopaholics and they would go up there and go to like Caldor and the different ⁓ you know chain stores that up there on that avenue and eventually we'd end up in Nathan's and ⁓ my grandma would give me a whole bunch of quarters and I'd get lost in there forever you know
Deshanta (34:22)
You mentioned Defender, but I don't think I've played Defender. So school us on Defender. What was the object of that?
Miles Marshall Lewis (34:26)
Hm. Yeah, Defender,
it was like an outer space, sort of spaceship game. The spaceship was kind of triangular shaped. And you would just basically shoot things that came at you. Or maybe I'm describing asteroids. That sounds like asteroids. If that's Defender, then what's asteroids? OK, no, Defender.
Deshanta (34:48)
Probably the same thing.
Miles Marshall Lewis (34:50)
Defender, so this is what Defender was. Defender was still a spaceship, but it was on the left side of the screen. And you could really only navigate the ship from the bottom to the top of the screen. And you had to shoot stuff that was coming at you, like other spaceships or whatever. But it was fun.
Deshanta (35:11)
Did it explode when it got closer to you? I might be wrong. I'm trying to see if I knew what Defender was. ⁓ Okay, so what was your favorite video game system?
Miles Marshall Lewis (35:13)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Right.
Atari was what I had. They all...
like served the same purpose. So I didn't really, you know, I didn't really prefer one over the other. I knew kids who had Commodore computers and Atari, you know, 1600s and whatever. I had a computer actually. I never really had like a gaming council, but the computer I had, it was an Atari computer and it played the same stuff that the game consols you know, did. My parents didn't want to buy me just
Deshanta (35:33)
Woo!
⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (35:52)
straight-up game console They wanted me to kind of be learning something other than getting the high score of a game. And it was an easy compromise, let's say, because they still played games. yeah, I grew up with maybe two different Atari computers as a shorty.
Deshanta (35:58)
You
Miles Marshall Lewis (36:10)
and that was what I used to play games.
Deshanta (36:12)
How do all the games you've played? Did you ever beat any?
Miles Marshall Lewis (36:15)
Yeah, there was a game called Popeye that was based on Popeye. And yeah, I beat it, but it was like never ending, really. It was a never ending game. There was no real reward at the end. It was sort of like, knew there was like, how do I put this? There were different patterns to the game. And yeah, I don't know.
On the last screen of Popeye, I just knew that there was a pattern that I could just do that would keep the game going forever. And so in that sense, I beat it. But they never really let you win. You were just supposed to sit there forever.
Deshanta (36:50)
You mentioned earlier superheroes. Who are your top three superheroes?
Miles Marshall Lewis (36:55)
I'd have to definitely say Superman and Batman and a third one is harder. A third one is harder. I would have to cheat probably and say the Fantastic Four, you know, but not in general. know, like superheroes.
The truth is, with comic books specifically, they're really only as good as the creative team.
It's really about the artists and the writers behind their adventures. So yeah, I do love the Fantastic Four, but only in the hands of certain people. There was a guy by the name of John Byrne who was a Canadian writer artist. So he was able to write the stories and also illustrate them. And...
He had a great run on Fantastic Four that like made them one of my favorite superhero teams of all time. But he also did a great run on the X-Men and on Superman and Wonder Woman and different titles. know, he was a great ⁓ writer, artist. I think actually he even illustrated the cover of Time Magazine once in the 80s when he took over Superman.
Deshanta (38:03)
You named three superheroes, did he do all three?
Miles Marshall Lewis (38:07)
he never did Batman, actually. I mean, he wrote different Batman stories, but he never really took over Batman. There was another writer-artist by the name of Frank Miller who did a great series on Batman that sort of revolutionized character in the 80s.
Deshanta (38:23)
Is-
is Frank Miller, and I might be mistaken, did he do Sin City?
Miles Marshall Lewis (38:27)
He did, yeah, he eventually became a director and directed Sin City, yeah, and a lot of that movie was, a lot of the look of that movie came directly from the comic book Sin City that he created in the, I suppose, early 90s, late 80s.
Deshanta (38:30)
Yes, I do like him.
I didn't realize he reached so broadly. So why do you love Superman?
Miles Marshall Lewis (38:50)
Yeah.
Why do I love Superman? Hmm. I guess because, you know, I mean, the easy answer is that he represents hope, but that's not really the reason. But maybe it is.
I you know, told someone once that Superman, like, yeah, he flies and he has super strength and all of that, but his real superpower is his perseverance. You know, like he refuses to lose and he doesn't give up and, you know, he can't be defeated mainly because he doesn't stop.
trying to win. And I think maybe that's one of the things that sort of attracts me to the character. You know, he's just iconic in a way that other heroes aren't. You know, he's in many ways the original superhero. And so I give him his props, you know, on that. There's people that find him boring or there's people that find him sort of overpowered. But again, you know, it comes down to the creative team. ⁓
I've read some great Superman stories over the years and it probably was the first superhero movie I ever saw. There was a movie theater that was in Parkchester. I don't know if it's still there, but I remember seeing Superman there when I was a kid and feeling like I could fly.
Deshanta (40:01)
And for everyone that doesn't know, he's referring to, I believe, the Christopher Reeve version of Superman, the original that everyone came to love. So tell me why you love Batman.
Miles Marshall Lewis (40:11)
Definitely.
Yeah, well, the thing about Batman is that you feel that you could be him, you know, because he has no powers. So like, the conceit is that like if you're, you know, intelligent enough...
that you could put yourself in his shoes or you could be him. You could become Batman. You could never become Superman. He flies around the planet and causes time to go backwards. But Batman, he just solves crimes like a detective. like I said, it boils down to the stories. I've read so many really great Batman stories over the years that...
that it's shaded my view of the character in a positive way. He's a great character. Plus, mean, Batman had a sidekick, Robin, who actually is probably my third favorite hero. If I can't pick the Fantastic Four, I would pick Robin.
And I don't know that Robin was the original sidekick that was ever created or whatever, but he's definitely one of the most famous ones, if not the most famous one. There was the Lone Ranger and Tonto, sidekicks existed. But the thing about Robin is that when you read the characters as a kid, you put yourself in Robin's place because you're the same age, right? And it's like a father-son dynamic.
but like
Batman is not his biological father, but I mean you picture yourself and your father sort of in the roles of Batman and Robin or you know, like that's sort of psychologically how it's sort of subliminally fed to you, right? And so So yeah, I think you know, maybe that was another reason that I like Batman I mean there was Captain America and Bucky, you know, there were there were different sidekicks
you know, that were sort of with a father-son dynamic, but Batman and Robin's probably the best one. The thing about Robin though, if you're gonna ask me why he's my favorite, is because I kind of grew up with him as well. You know, I mentioned growing up with Janet Jackson or feeling as though I did. Robin went through a lot of changes when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties that like by the end of the eighties, when I was a teenager going away to college,
Deshanta (42:05)
Yeah
Miles Marshall Lewis (42:21)
Robin was also a teenager like shedding his former identity as Robin and becoming a new superhero character named Nightwing and like Coming out of the shadow of Batman and being his own person, which was exactly what I was doing You know in a way by
leaving New York City and going away to college and becoming myself. Robin eventually being Nightwing sort of came into himself at the exact same time that I did. So it felt serendipitous.
Deshanta (42:52)
I like the analogy
because I didn't know so thank you for the education. Did you have a favorite villain that you could relate to from their perspective?
Miles Marshall Lewis (43:02)
I don't think so. Nowadays with Black Panther, example, Killmonger is definitely someone who you can sort of see where they're coming from. ⁓ Killmonger is not necessarily wrong. And Killmonger did exist when I was reading Black Panther as a kid, but he wasn't written in quite the same way. So I couldn't relate to him like I relate to the one in the movie.
with Chadwick Boseman relatively recently. But no, I had favorite villains. mean, The Joker and Doctor Doom and people like that are Galactis They're pretty iconic villains, but I can't say I related to them.
Deshanta (43:42)
What's the love with the Joker?
Miles Marshall Lewis (43:44)
I think that he, his relationship with Batman is just really interesting. I think he enjoys the dance that him and Batman do.
It's sort of like a bromance or even some kind of latent homosexuality thing, you know, like as if he doesn't really want to kill Batman or defeat him. He just wants to sort of play with him or fuck with him, you know? And that's kind of, you know, it's an interesting view of the character. Yeah.
Deshanta (44:14)
I appreciate your perspective on it because I'm a fan, but I'm not a fan that would have known that. So I appreciate that. And now I'm going to investigate, maybe other people will investigate as well. So thank you.
Miles Marshall Lewis (44:22)
Mm.
Sure, the Joker movie is pretty great with Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah, somebody won something for that, I believe. At least it was nominated. Yeah, is.
Deshanta (44:35)
I saw the first one and it was really good. I just did is deep like Comic
Comic books are deep and I don't think people take them as seriously as they could because they're labeled comic books,
So, and that's what got me into like the Sin City thing or just the graphic novel whole display. Like it's really deep and layered.
Miles Marshall Lewis (45:00)
Sure, sure. mean, Comic books taught me to read, you know? Marvel comics in particular, they were, they didn't shy away from using like big language and stuff. I would get a thrill from being like five years old and being able to sound out like subterranean, you know?
Like that was a big deal to me. Between like Sesame Street and Electric Company and comic books, by the time I started kindergarten, like I already knew how to read, you know? And...
What else about that? I, as a shorty, used to go to comic conventions. Like now they're a really big deal now these days. The New York Comic Con downtown they started in the 70s.
where my dad would take me to the Sheridan Hotel downtown where they used to have those original comic book conventions and I would get to meet the ⁓ artistic teams behind the comics that I was into. So I, at a very young age, was aware of writers. I had my favorite writers because they were writing comic books at eight, nine years old or whatever.
but like Marv Wolfman and John Byrne, I mentioned, Frank Miller, who I mentioned, you know, who else? Roy Thomas, I guess, you know, was one of them. Stan Lee, naturally, who I got to interview eventually when I was like in my 30s, you know, before he passed.
Deshanta (46:19)
Can you, can
What was that experience like?
Miles Marshall Lewis (46:22)
It was great. He was a nice guy. We did it over the phone. I wish I had met him face to face, but I don't even really remember why it happened. I guess there was some Marvel movie coming out and there was a magazine called King Magazine that sort of asked me if I would do it. so naturally I did.
Yeah, I think I still have that interview on a digital recorder somewhere, unerased. Yeah, I was glad that I got to speak to him. He changed my life. And he's from the Bronx, actually. Yeah, he went to Clinton High School.
Deshanta (46:52)
Stan Lee is from the Bronx.
I did not know that and let's back up a little bit because you just said ⁓ some magazine called King magazine come on we know King magazine come on stop stop playing but yo you met Stan Lee well you had a conversation with Stanley that is a big achievement you've had so many big achievements and I'm probably gonna shout you out throughout this remainder of the conversation but
Miles Marshall Lewis (47:04)
⁓ I don't know. I'm like, it's not a print, you know? Or it's not, you know.
Deshanta (47:23)
For real, for real, somebody from the Bronx, who knew what their expectations were gonna be? And look where you have come and you're here with me. You know what I'm saying? So shout out to you again, because thank you so much. You didn't have to do this. Okay, so.
Miles Marshall Lewis (47:38)
Thanks. No, this is fun. I'm having fun.
You know, like, Bronx, listen, Stan Lee is from the Bronx. know, without Stan Lee, there wouldn't be this multi-billion dollar industry of Marvel movies. And for that matter, there's a man named Bill Finger who is from the Bronx as well who co-invented Batman, you know?
Deshanta (47:48)
There would not be.
Miles Marshall Lewis (48:01)
You know, ⁓ James Baldwin, who was a huge influence on me, went to Clinton in the Bronx as well. You know, so much comes out of the Bronx. Hip hop culture period, you know, like the Bronx, I don't know what the view of it is, you know, nationwide or around the world whatever. But if you know, you know, you know, so much comes out of the Bronx.
Deshanta (48:22)
If you know, know. Okay, Marvel or DC?
Miles Marshall Lewis (48:27)
⁓ when I was growing up, they said that ⁓ Marvel had the better stories, but DC had the better characters. that sort of stuck with me forever, you know?
But if I had to choose one, I guess it's so weird. I guess I'd choose Marvel. mean, that was always the knee-jerk answer back in the day. But you asked me my favorite characters, and all my favorite characters are DC. So it's a toss-up. And for that matter, DC is getting better and better these days. Wonder Man is about to...
debut as a TV series on Disney Plus, but it's really the DC shows like, well, Peacemaker in particular is a great show and sort of has an energy to it that all these Marvel TV shows I feel kind of, you know, have lacked for a while. I don't know how good or bad Wonder Man is gonna be, but.
But I hope the Marvel thing, cinematically anyway, can get their mojo back with the Avengers movies that are coming out soon. And I am still a comic collector. And all the comics that I'm buying right now are DC. I'm buying like four different Batman titles right now. And... ⁓
There was a Superman title that just sort of concluded like a Superman mini series or whatever. Captain America is doing a pretty cool storyline right now. I must admit that I'm buying that. But it's hard to say that DC is better than Marvel. Like that's not what anybody ever says.
Deshanta (49:50)
I love that answer. That's perspective
and that's experience. So thank you. Okay, so we're gonna shift a little bit just to the movie scene. What movie do you love that we least expect?
Miles Marshall Lewis (49:54)
Mm-mm.
Mm-hmm. Cool.
⁓ maybe Before Sunrise I don't know how well known it is or not, but, ⁓ it was definitely one of my go-to kind of DVD.
era movies to show potential girlfriends when they would come over and we would Netflix and chill or before Netflix, right? It's a story with Ethan Hawke and this French actress, Julie Delpy. They meet on a train ride in Europe or something. And I think they're going to Vienna maybe. And they just sort of meet. They didn't know each other. It's a romance basically, but it's a very talky romance.
So nothing really happens in the movie. They're just sort of talking about life and sort of flirting. And the whole hour and half is that. mean, by the end, spoiler alert, they end up having sex somewhere. And then she continues on the train to wherever she's going. they say that they'll meet again. we're not really
sure if they do. it's just the director is Richard Linklater. And yeah, that was a great film. I think that film, not to be hyperbolic, but I think it kind of changed my life because I would end up moving to Paris and...
and finding like a French wife, you know? And I think that what attracted me to that movie, part of it was like the cultural difference between the two characters, you know? Like, I think that that sort of spoke to me in terms of what romance is to me, or could be, you know? And yeah, I definitely recognize elements of that movie and the relationship I have with my wife.
Deshanta (51:43)
You had me at Ethan Hawke because he rarely fails. we are gonna get to you being in Paris a little later in the segment because I have questions about that, but that's very exciting. But yes, Ethan Hawke, I'm all about him.
Miles Marshall Lewis (51:46)
True.
Yeah,
he just got another Academy Award nomination yesterday. This is movie that's about two old songwriters from back in the day. I forgot their names because I'm blanking. But he plays one of them. And that's what the nomination was from.
Deshanta (52:06)
For what?
That's okay.
Awesome, I gotta look that up. So let's go back. I don't even know if you remember, Do you remember the G.O. movie back in like 180 days? ⁓ good. Okay. So what was your favorite G.O. movie if you remember?
Miles Marshall Lewis (52:30)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, so I don't remember the title of it. That's the bottom line. But there was a movie, and it was about a kid being bullied. And then maybe there was a new kid that came to his school who
was sort of a tough guy and maybe they became friends and maybe he taught the guy being bullied to stand up for himself or something. Yeah, that's what it was called. It was my bodyguard. Yeah, so it was My Bodygaurd Yeah, that movie almost got me in trouble because it was a kid who was kind of fucking with me at the time. And after I saw that movie, I like went to the locker, it's like looking for him. Like I was going to kick his ass.
Deshanta (53:04)
⁓ My Bodygaurd
Yes!
And I'm planning on doing an episode on that too because I think the guy's name is Adam Baldwin. I have randomly seen the guy that was the bodyguard and I was like, my God, that's my bodyguard. And I was like, I'm gonna do an episode. So yes, I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
Miles Marshall Lewis (53:25)
Are you?
Okay.
That was cool.
Deshanta (53:38)
that movie. There's so many movies. And this is another reason why I wanted to get everybody together who wants to be a part of this. Like, we've forgotten so many things. Like, why not nurture the inner child in us? You know what I mean? Because then that revives dreams and desires and just wishes that we had and that we can still manifest.
Miles Marshall Lewis (53:40)
Yeah, I haven't seen it since I was...
No doubt, no doubt. I agree.
Deshanta (54:02)
Okay, so
let me get back to my questions.
Did you say you played piano back in the day?
Miles Marshall Lewis (54:07)
I did, yeah. When I was, I guess, nine years old, maybe 10, nine to 10, I had piano lessons in section five with a Jewish lady by the name of Mrs. Joseph. And...
Yeah, I had a piano donated from my grandmother who, you know, wasn't really playing anymore. And so she sent her piano up from the South Bronx to Co-op to be like rolled into my bedroom. It was a upright piano. And so I could practice and yeah, stuck with those lessons for like a year, but it was just one of those things. You know, my parents were like, you're going to do this. And I was like, okay. And they said, you know, if you don't like it after a
years you can quit and you know definitely when the year was up I was like yeah I'm good so that was that you know I was 10 years old and I got my little certificate.
learning the piano. But then as a teenager, I picked it back up because of course, like scales and stuff were boring. But at a certain point going to record stores and whatnot, I found out that you could buy the sheet music to like "Purple Rain" and and "Control" and you know, like stuff that actually wanted to play. So I bought the sheet music and ⁓
mostly Prince stuff and I learned how to play those songs because you know as a kid I had learned how to read sheet music very slowly and so yeah I spent you know ninth grade to twelfth grade like learning whatever songs you know or albums that Prince put out during those years and I can still play them.
Deshanta (55:39)
Prince had us all on lock, so I get it.
Miles Marshall Lewis (55:43)
Yeah,
he was one of my earliest concerts, you know. The first concert I ever saw was, it was like a one-off show. It wasn't really a tour, but it was at Madison Square Garden and it was LL Cool J, Houdini, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, and...
It supposed to be Run DMC, but Run's lung collapsed and so he couldn't perform. So LL became like the de facto star of the show and killed it. And Curtis Blow was also on that bill. So that was the first concert of my life. But the second concert was Prince at Madison Square Garden also, like in 1986, before he broke The Revolution yeah.
Deshanta (56:22)
Wow.
haven't seen Prince and I won't but wow. ⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (56:28)
Yeah,
Deshanta (56:31)
Okay, let's talk about fashion for a little bit. Did you have a sneaker brand that you rocked faithfully?
Miles Marshall Lewis (56:37)
I guess it was Adidas. I guess it was Adidas. But I would switch it up. mean, when I say faithful, because maybe I had two different pairs of Adidas. I remember.
buying a pair that was actually too big for me, but I bought them because they had Velcro. And like Velcro on sneakers was like a big deal or something new that I never saw on sneakers before. So they didn't have shoelaces, had Velcro. And the other pair I had were the classic Shell toes around the time that Run DMC came out with my Adidas. But I will switch it up. Like I said, like there were sneaker brands that don't exist anymore, like Lottos, you know.
Deshanta (57:17)
I loved
Lottos
Miles Marshall Lewis (57:19)
Lottos had Velcro also where you could like change the color of them based on the color of your outfit that day. Those were dope and I had those. I had a pair of Dioradoras definitely. I guess they're still around but Lottos probably are not. When I went away to college I finally got my first pair of Nikes. know that was I guess probably around the time Air Jordans came out or whatever.
Deshanta (57:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (57:44)
I didn't want to defect to Nikes, but I think around that time, KRS-1 won mention Nike in one of his songs, of like, know, dissin and Adidas and mentioning Nike and Heavy D and the Boys, their first album, they had a song called Nike. So I was like, okay, you know, it's time to give the Adidas a rest, get with the times and get a pair of Nikes, you know, but.
But yeah, in fact, I had three pairs of Adidas because there was a blue and orange pair. There were like the Patrick Ewing Adidas that I kind of went away to college in, you know, and then the Nikes were like, I guess my alternate pair of sneakers. But yeah, those are those are the ones I remember the most. had a pair of Bally's, but they weren't sneakers. They were shoes. But that was a big deal at the time because of Dougie Fresh and Slick Rick mentioning Bally on
Deshanta (58:29)
Mm-hmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (58:33)
their song, know, put your Bally's on, you know, that whole thing. But my grandfather and my uncle, who was, you know, my grandfather's son, they would shop in, I guess it was Yonkers. There was a men's store called Lubin's and they would shop there. It was like in one of the malls up there by Cross County, like kind of near Yonkers Raceway, actually. And
They took me Lubin's once or twice with them and the stuff was too mature for me, but they sold ballets and I was like, yo, can I have those? And they were like, sure, okay, whatever. So then I got to come to school and say that I had Bally's like Slick Rick.
Deshanta (59:11)
Nice.
Mention a favorite sports team. Are you into sports?
Miles Marshall Lewis (59:16)
No, no, I'm not into sports at all. The only sport that I really dug was boxing, you know.
And even then I wasn't really super big into boxing. I was more into the personalities. I just liked Mike Tyson. I wanted him to win because I just liked what I thought he stood for. He was the hip hop heavyweight. And Ali, before him, Ali was the greatest, of course.
when I was a kid and he was still fighting, there was a famous comic book even like Superman versus Muhammad Ali, you know, like, yeah, yeah, that's old school. And so I had that comic, you know, it was like giant size comic, Superman versus Muhammad Ali and Ali won And yeah, he was like, he was a hero to me.
Deshanta (59:49)
Really?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:00:04)
And I went through a baseball phase. I guess the Yankees were my favorite because they were from the Bronx. I knew that was the only time in my life that I really knew the names of baseball players like Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter and Bucky Dent and people like that. That was like that 12 months that I cared about that and had their pictures on my wall.
Deshanta (1:00:27)
Yeah
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:00:30)
and you know all of that but like I never really was part of a baseball team or anything like that. I was in the bowling league there was a bowling alley on Gun Hill Road across from the McDonald's called Gunpost Lanes and I used to play I used to bowl there like I was I was in a team you know it was a it was a thing I had like bowling trophies as a kid.
Deshanta (1:00:52)
What don't you do?
You really do remind me of Gordon Parks
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:00:59)
really? That's cool. That's very flattering. He's a hero of mine as well, you know?
Deshanta (1:01:05)
Yes, we haven't met each other, but you've accomplished so many things. And then when you touched upon living in Paris, I was like, what? You've done so many things.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:01:13)
Lol
Deshanta (1:01:15)
⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:01:16)
That's funny.
⁓ It's fun talking to you. I got to meet Gordon. I guess you know that or no? Yeah. ⁓
Deshanta (1:01:21)
What? No, no, let's talk
about that. Tell me about that.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:01:25)
Well, are you familiar with the Great Day in Hip Hop photograph? So in 1998, was September 29th, 1998. And there was a...
Deshanta (1:01:30)
I'm not.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:01:38)
a assemblage of hip hop figures, right, over a hundred of them came to be in a photograph for XXL magazine. And it was a recreation of a photo from the 50s called A Great Day in Harlem, where there was a bunch of jazz musicians on a brownstone stoop of Harlem in like 126th Street, think, and Fifth Avenue. so they were going to XXL was going to recreate this.
this
photograph with hip hop people and get Gordon Parks to take the photo. So I was working at XXL at the time. I had just started working there and we went and did it.
And I wrote the essay for the issue that came out with the cover with the Gordon Parks cover. And recently, like in the past five years, Swiss Beats bought that photograph for like over twenty thousand dollars or something at Gordon Parks Foundation ⁓ Gala event that happens every year. But but yeah, like that day I was what, twenty seven years old or something. And I met Gordon as he was about to take the
Deshanta (1:02:28)
Mmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:02:40)
picture, you know, I interviewed him basically for the essay and and yeah I wish I still had that on tape, you know, he was he was in his 80s I'm sure and just very cool and and he was already a hero of mine for being like such a renaissance man, you know, and I loved his photographs and I loved his movies and you know I was aware that he was even like a composer and
and an author, you he's got books that don't even have ⁓ photography. And yeah, he was definitely someone I kind of looked up to. so being able to meet him was dope.
Mm-hmm.
Deshanta (1:03:13)
And
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:03:14)
He was really the great. Yeah. I ⁓ have a photograph with him that was taken that day ⁓ by his assistant and I had like framed that photo for years, you know, because yeah, he meant a lot to me.
Deshanta (1:03:14)
You're your own Gordon Parks. I'm my own Gordon Parks.
Amazing.
Okay so you left the country, why did you leave?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:03:35)
Um, it was 2004 actually and I had been to Paris before once but like I really liked it when I visited and I think I visited first in 1994.
And so 10 years later, yeah, there was like the Iraqi war was going on and there was a lot of talk of weapons of mass destruction, you know, that really didn't exist. And there were, there was a worldwide protest that happened that February of 2004 where, you know, nobody wanted America to go to war with Iraq. And like the president Bush too at the time, you know, did it anyway. And I just didn't,
I guess I felt kind of sanctimonious at the time. Like I didn't want my tax dollars going to the bullets and bombs that were gonna be killing people. for that matter, Paris just seemed sort of like a life school for artists and writers that I admired, like James Baldwin and Richard Wright and, you know.
like the writers from the beat generation and stuff. It just kinda seemed like a cool move. I didn't have a car note or a mortgage or anything really keeping me here, a girlfriend for that matter. So I bounced and yeah, that was, it changed my life.
I mean, my kids were born there. I got married there, met my wife there. I wrote books from there. And yeah, was, I stayed for seven years and.
Deshanta (1:04:56)
Mmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:05:02)
funny that I left for political reasons kind of because I came back for political reasons as well you know I returned in 2011 and we had
President Obama running things by then. And I didn't want to be in France like the whole time that America had a Black president. I didn't want to miss out on being here when we were running shit. I moved back. And he did get reelected. And that was dope. And yeah, it felt good. Those were the days of having a reasonable person in the White House.
Deshanta (1:05:37)
Thank you for sharing that.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:05:38)
Yeah, cool.
Deshanta (1:05:39)
Getting back into the entertainment back in the day, childhood stuff.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:05:45)
Sure.
Deshanta (1:05:46)
Did you have a favorite horror franchise and why?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:05:49)
I didn't. I didn't. You know, it was cool to have lived through the beginnings of Freddy Krueger and, you know, The Omen and all of that stuff, you know, but, but, nah, you know, I didn't really.
Like some of my favorite horror movies period are The Omen and The Shining, but they weren't like franchises or if they did try to do sequels, they weren't as good. Rosemary's Baby really, you know, is Rosemary's Baby and The Shining are like two of my favorites.
And I didn't see them in the movies initially because I was too young, but I saw them when I saw them and they really impacted me. Stanley Kubrick, who directed The Shining, is probably my favorite director or one of them.
Yeah, but now I wasn't really, you know, I had girlfriends who would want a girlfriend in particular who was really into Nightmare on Elm Street and would like, you know, like every time I went to her place, she was like playing Nightmare on Elm Street or Scarface, you know, and I guess those were two of the only, you know, VCR tapes that she had. But she, you know, she knew all the dialogue and stuff, but I wasn't really on that.
Deshanta (1:06:56)
You mentioned The Shining. Why did you like The Shining? What attracted you to that movie?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:07:02)
it was just really well made, you know? So many different aspects of it. Like the twins in the hallway that were like super scary. The scene where they sort of get lost in the maze of the forest. And you're not really sure where they're going with that. And then in the next scene, it's as if nothing happened.
you know, when I first saw it, I was probably the age of the kid in the movie. And so there was something, I guess, scary about the prospect of your father, like, losing his mind, you know? That was kind of maybe a draw, you know? Like, wow, you you never know if your parents could go off the deep end.
Yeah, you know, that's a dope movie to this day.
Deshanta (1:07:42)
Have you seen The Shining sequel?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:07:44)
Uh, did I? No, I don't believe I did. don't believe I did. Some of those sequences I see. But no, some of those sequences I did see. I'm thinking that the Omen had a couple of sequels, and even though they were bad, I saw them. You know, Jaws, in a way, is kind of a horror movie. And I saw a Jaws movie. Yeah, mean, the shark is the monster, basically.
Deshanta (1:07:50)
Go ahead. Sorry.
In a way.
I see what you
are on. you're fearless.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:08:13)
But Jaws, I saw Jaws 3. I don't think I saw Jaws 2, but Jaws 3 was a 3D movie and it was probably the first 3D movie I ever saw, you know. Co-op City used to have a movie theater called the City Cinema and Jaws 3 was definitely one of the films I saw there.
Deshanta (1:08:23)
same.
I'm mad that they changed that. Well, the last I knew it was some kind of like bingo lounge, but you can't fucking... Yo, that was a cinema like community based. I'm so mad about that. If I, when I get the money, I might fucking just turn that into another cinema. Cause why did you do that? ⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:08:39)
Right.
Right.
⁓ I hear you.
Well, that was Bay Plaza. know, once they had a multiplex across the street, there wasn't a reason.
Deshanta (1:08:58)
But it's not the same. But yes, you're right. The Shining has a sequel. Watch Doctor Sleep. it's pretty damn dope. But it's about Danny grown
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:09:01)
No, nothing.
Deshanta (1:09:09)
It expands on his gifts. He meets a younger individual that has bigger gifts than his that he kind of mentors. It's really good. I know decades later you would be like, no, really, it's really good. Watch Doctor Sleep.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:09:17)
you
⁓
Do know if it's written by Stephen King? Like, was it based on a book? Like, The Shining was or no?
Deshanta (1:09:30)
I don't think so, but we can look that up right now.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:09:33)
Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I really, wasn't, how do I put this? I've only read one Stephen King book in my life. It was around high school, junior high, whatever. He had a book called Firestarter that ended up being a movie with Drew Barrymore. ⁓ read, yep, they remade it, really? wow.
Deshanta (1:09:34)
Doctor Sleep is the bomb.
yeah, and they made it, they remade it. Yeah, I didn't watch it, but they remade it. ⁓
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:09:59)
Yeah, I saw
it when it was on cable back in the day or whatever, but I read the book. That was like the only Stephen King book I ever read. was good for what it was.
Deshanta (1:10:08)
It says based on Dr. Sleep by Stephen King. So Stephen King wrote it. It's really good though.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:10:14)
Okay, cool.
Deshanta (1:10:17)
What old school shows do you still watch? If any.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:10:20)
I don't watch any. I don't watch any. You know, I don't really, I absorb television very, what's the word, not sporadically, but I'm just sort of careful about how much TV I watch. I've been that way for like a long time. Like I watch TV, but selectively is the word I want to use. know, like sure, you know, I could binge old shows.
But a lot of those shows I just haven't seen since their original runs, know, like A Different World and Cosby Show and stuff like that. The Jeffersons, you know, like I haven't really haven't seen any of that stuff. There was a period when I was living in France that I bought Good Times on DVD.
because I guess I wanted to expose my kids to it for some reason. And so I got to watch it over again. But that was a long time ago. Yeah, no, don't really do that.
Deshanta (1:11:10)
Fair enough. I feel as if hip-hop had an impact on a great majority of us.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:11:16)
Mm-hmm.
Deshanta (1:11:17)
Do you remember the first hip hop song you heard or the first rap song you heard?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:11:22)
Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm old enough that the first rap song that there ever was, I heard it, you know. Rapper's Delight came out when I was like eight years old. So I remember...
I have an uncle who's like only six years older than me, my father's brother. And, you know, he would have been, if I was eight, I guess he would have been 14. And I remember going with him to like his friend's house and his friend, I remember was playing the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, which had probably come out a year or two earlier. And... ⁓
And I guess he went to his friend's house because he wanted to hear Rapper's Delay because his friend had bought the 12 inches or something. And so he played it. And I guess they were trying to figure out the words to it or memorize the words to it. But that wasn't even the first time I had heard it because it was on the radio. And my parents, they would always have the radio on in the car. So yeah, that was the first rap song I ever heard.
Deshanta (1:12:18)
And what impact did it have on you?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:12:20)
It was pretty huge. mean, I was a kid, I couldn't memorize it. And so it was like fascinating to me that my uncle could remember a hip hop, hip to the hip, hip hop, and you don't stop the rock, bam bam boogie say, jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie to beat. I was like, how did you do that? The fact that he could memorize the whole thing was cool. There was a line in there dissing Superman or calling him a fairy. ⁓
Deshanta (1:12:32)
Yeah
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:12:48)
I
remember taking offense to that, like, you know, why they gotta diss Superman though? That was big. Yeah, I was like, you know, why you gotta bring Lois Lane into it? But that was interesting to me and cool. yeah, I mean. ⁓
Deshanta (1:12:54)
You were a Superman fan.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:13:03)
I don't know, I liked it. I liked it and my parents were young. My parents got married, my dad was 20 and my mom was 19. And when I was born, that's the ages that they were. So...
They were young and not too old, in other words, to, like they should have appreciated hip hop more, but they didn't really seem to. Like they assumed it was a fad and they tolerated it, but they didn't think there was any future in it. My dad in particular kind of is a bigger music head than my mom is. And from the beginning, he was kind of like, yeah, it's not gonna last because X, Y, Z, you know? I don't know if you know this,
My dad is in a film, an Oscar winning film by Questlove. Questlove had this movie a few years ago called Summer of Soul. I don't know if you've seen it. Right, so Summer of Soul is about this concert.
Deshanta (1:13:52)
know, yeah, it's on Hulu.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:13:57)
that happened in Harlem in 1969 with Sly and the Family Stone and Stevie Wonder and the Staples Singers and a bunch of other people. But my dad went to that show when he was a teenager. So when Questlove was making the movie, he found my dad and interviewed him about the show and...
and put him in the film and then it ended up winning like an Academy Award. So my dad named me after Miles Davis, who he loved a lot. And I use all three of my names, right? Miles Marshall Lewis. So Marshall is the middle name of Jimi Hendrix. And my dad was a Hendrix fan and saw him in concert a couple of times before he died.
So yeah, my dad is a big music head and even so he couldn't really like he didn't have the vision that hip-hop would be around 50 years later, but I did.
Deshanta (1:14:48)
was gonna ask you about that honestly, about your name, because I sensed that you were named after Miles. The Marshall Lewis I was gonna expand upon, but thank you for the clarification.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:14:52)
Mm.
Right.
Sure, yeah, I got to see Miles live a couple of times before he died as well. I saw him once in high school. My dad took me to see Miles Davis at Avery Fisher Hall. Maybe I was in 12th grade or something, 11th grade, 12th grade. And it was a dope show. I remember it like yesterday. was like Miles Davis and Kenny G. And it was ⁓ dope show.
Deshanta (1:15:22)
Mmm.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:15:24)
Miles came on first and we stayed for like one Kenny G song and then we left. ⁓ And then maybe a year later, I saw him again, same place with my uncle who I mentioned earlier, who was also a big music head. He took me and it was also another great show. And that time, Miles Davis was there with B.B. King And we hung around a little longer to see B.B. King.
Deshanta (1:15:29)
Yeah.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:15:50)
but we still didn't stay for the whole thing. And so, and then he passed, you he passed in 1991. And incidentally, that was sort of the first thing that I wrote for the school newspaper. I was, I had transferred to Morehouse by that point. And of course they have a school newspaper, the Maroon Tiger. And I went to them and I was like, yo, you know, I'm named after this guy. I don't know if you're going to do like an obituary or whatever, but you know,
I would like to write. I didn't even actually say all of that. What I did was I wrote it and then I like gave it to the editor or slipped it under his door or whatever. And he called me and said it was good and they were gonna use it. And that was the start of me writing for the school newspaper.
Deshanta (1:16:33)
Okay, so let's switch gears again. What is something that you just had to have but your parents refused to get you?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:16:40)
Yeah, no, that's easy. I wanted ⁓ suede Pumas and I did not get them. And then I got them for myself like a decade later, you But when they were first out, and I guess that was for me like around seventh grade, I think, I was wearing Skips at that point. You know, there was a show, not a show, a store called Fayva back in the day.
Deshanta (1:17:02)
Yes, yes,
was in Shopping Center 2, I think.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:17:05)
Exactly.
Yeah, it was in Co-op and other places and Fayva sold a brand of sneakers that were called, I think Olympians. And so, you know, until I knew any better, my mom would take me to, you know, Fayva or Busta Brown or whatever and buy me
Deshanta (1:17:16)
Yes!
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:17:26)
Olympians, right? And so that was around the time where I was like, yeah, you know, like enough of these Olympians could have some Pumas And, and they were, you know, too expensive, quote unquote. And so they didn't get them. And, ⁓
And they were, you know, they were dope. mean, you could still, you can buy them now, you know, like it's a style that kind of lasted, classic alum, classic suede plumas, you know. So I didn't get them, but you know, I won the war, I guess, cause I ended up getting Adidas or something else, you know, like I was done with, with Fava by seventh grade.
Deshanta (1:18:00)
What is something that made you look forward to becoming an adult?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:18:04)
Sex Probably. Yeah, I can't... Yeah, that's the best answer. I mean, my dad was a big magazine head as well, right? So there was a whole sludge pile of magazines on his side of the bed when I was growing up.
Deshanta (1:18:08)
Yeah.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:18:21)
you know, like Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated and Boxing Magazine and Downbeat Magazine and definitely Playboy. know, like Playboy was good for their articles as well as their centerfolds. know, like James Baldwin used to write for Playboy and other esteemed writers, Alex Haley and people. you know, he wasn't just buying it for the women in it, although I'm sure that was part of it.
as a kid I would just sort of sneak through his Playboys and my parents didn't make a big deal out of it. It was the 70s and free love and the sexual revolution. They weren't trying to shield me from the naked body or whatever. So I could kind of do what I want.
And yeah, I was like, wow, that'll be cool to be old enough to see this for real instead of just pictures.
Deshanta (1:19:13)
What would your child self tell your adult self?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:19:16)
When my child self told my adult self? Hmm, good question.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. You know, like...
Hmm. Maybe don't become like your father. Don't become like dad. But I don't know. might, you know, he might be by that. But I mean, you know, well, my dad had issues with drugs, you know, when I was growing up and
Deshanta (1:19:28)
Is your dad gonna listen to this?
So what do you mean by that?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:19:40)
He went to rehab a couple of times, you know, he went when I was eight, he went when I was 16, and he went again when I was in my 20s and he was around 49 and that was when he kicked it, right? But you know, he kind of struggled with that and he was a bit of a womanizer as well. So...
So yeah, I don't know that my childhood self would have any real messages for me as a grownup other than like, don't do the negative things that he did.
Deshanta (1:20:12)
I appreciate your transparency.
What are you most amazed by regarding technology?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:20:18)
I just, love living in this time period. I was sort of an Afrofuturist little kid. My favorite toys were always sort of sci-fi related or had to do with space or the future.
I mean, Star Wars came out when I was a kid and, you know, that was hugely impactful. of my favorite movies, you know, during that era. And, you know, even comic books are very sort of fantasy related. And so it's like to really be living in the 21st century and to have this pocket computer, which is an iPhone, you know, in my back pocket at all times. And I can listen to any song ever recorded, basically.
you know through Apple Music for free or not really free but I have the subscription and just the amazing things you know I was
At the Hip Hop Museum we had a meeting the other day at the Microsoft garage, which is sort of a, you know, Microsoft headquarters downtown. And ⁓ they invested a lot in the museum. So I guess we can use their facilities from time to time. And we were, and we had sort of a, a presentation about Microsoft Co-Pilot. And I like, I don't want to do a commercial for them, but it's just their AI and you can talk to it. It's just like chat, GBT, which I think.
You can also talk to and it'll talk back. But I mean, just like Siri, but Copilot is really advanced. Like it can really be.
It just understands you like a human being does. You can ramble before you get to the point. And it really speaks to you conversationally. It's wild to be living in these times. Even outside of technology, like Viagra, who'd have thought? Back in the day, maybe your sex life.
kind of ended in your 60s or depending who you were, know, your late 50s or whatever point. And now like there's this pill where you can just, you know, like Al Pacino, I think is in his 80s and just had a kid with somebody like you can just, you know, have sex forever if you're a guy anyway. ⁓ That's deep. Like that's a huge thing. know, back in the day, people used to try to come up
Deshanta (1:22:23)
He
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:22:31)
with what were they called, aphrodisiacs maybe, like eating oysters or drinking concoctions like now. Through science, there's just this pill that allows you to be virile all the time. That's totally sci-fi. So yeah, it's a wild time to be living, AI, all of that.
Deshanta (1:22:35)
Yes.
So coming from the era of Terminator, how do you feel?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:22:58)
well, we have to be careful. I mean, it's out of our hands, to be honest. I don't know that there's anything that you or I could do to be careful, quote unquote. It's really up to the companies and to the government regulating these companies. You know, I definitely recognize the potential for things to get out of hand or for,
let's say AI to become, you know, sentient and destructive. I mean, we've been, you know, fantasizing in a way about that scenario for decades already. So, you know, it ain't impossible. We'll see what happens.
Deshanta (1:23:33)
Are you...
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:23:34)
What is interesting is that I think it's going to be taking jobs away from certain fields, maybe even mine included. I'm writing a Dave Chappelle book right now, but if I asked Chat GPT to finish it for me, it would be done in 15 minutes. I doubt I could get away with that, but it's just going to get better and better and smarter and smarter.
You know, I lived through the rise of the internet and saw how it affected my field in terms of...
I guess bloggers, you know, ⁓ being able to become writers without the gatekeeping of magazines and newspapers and editors sort of deciding who gets chosen, whose voices get to be heard and stuff. you know, that had pros and cons, but a lot of magazines went out of business, not because of blogs per se, but, you know, because everything is available on the web, you know, like,
like why buy Vibe if you can just read the same information, you know, online, you know, like it really did sort of decimate the magazine industry and that was my industry, you know, and I'm sure it affected other spaces, you know, just as detrimentally. So AI will probably end up doing the same thing, you know, depending on what you do for a living.
Deshanta (1:24:57)
No disrespect to Dave Chappelle, but why Dave Chappelle?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:25:01)
I think it got brought to me. think my last book was which was about Kendrick Lamar, like a cultural biography of Kendrick Lamar that came out maybe four years ago or so. It did really well for my publisher, St. Martin's Press, and my editor asked me or my agent, I guess, if I had an interest in doing a book on Dave Chappelle.
And I did, you know, I don't really consider myself to be a music writer anymore. Or maybe I really never did, you know, my real...
My real zone of interest is just black culture period and the arts. so that could be music, but that could be film, that could be photography, that could be comedy. Whatever black expression there is, want to be down to chronicle it and explore it. And Dave Chappelle comes from a deep tradition in our culture that goes all the way back to mom's
Mabley and pioneers like Red Fox and Richard Pryor. And they're all gonna get mentioned in the book because he stands on their shoulders.
Deshanta (1:26:15)
Thank you for that. What creative artist or group do you think is slept on?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:26:21)
Hmm. There's an artist, there's a singer named Joi who I don't think people really know about. Joi came out in the 90s and was part of sort of an alternative R &B scene that...
predated neo soul by like a heartbeat She has an album called the pendulum Vibe. That's really dope. That was her first record Her second album was about to come out It was called the Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome and it was about to come out on EMI records and they folded and the album never came out and I think another record company maybe bought it but then you know
folded before they could put it out. And it never came out, although I'm sure there are bootlegs on the internet or whatever. I've been listening to it for years because I got an advance copy from one of those record companies before they went out of business. But Joi
She is a friend of Erykah Badu's at this point, or has been for decades. She's sort of eclectic and married one of the rappers from Goodie Mob from back in the day. And...
Madonna tried to bite her style at one point because like Joi was so underground and Madonna figured, you know, nobody really knows about her anyway. I'm going to jack her style for this album I'm doing and use her producers, which included Dallas Austin from Atlanta, who was, you know, big in TLC's development. Madonna used him on her album, Bedtime Stories, which if you listen to that album,
You know, lot of that stuff could have come from Joi So, yeah, Joi ⁓ J-O-I, she's slept on.
Another one is Bette Davis, the ex-wife of Miles Davis. She goes back to the 1970s. She got married to Miles at a time when he was pushing 50 at least and kind of needed an injection of youth, let's say. And she gave it to him. She was much younger than him and kind of flipped his style, like the way he dressed.
turned him on to certain music, you know, that he maybe wasn't hip to because he was aging. And I bring her up even because Joy won her second album that never came out. She re-recorded a song by Bette Davis called, If I'm in Luck, I Just Might Get Picked Up. And it's sort of like a black rock style.
that was really dope. Betty Davis, she used the band of Sly Stone for her first album. For some reason they were in the same studio and they were kinda sitting around waiting for the Sly to show up and he wasn't because he was addicted to drugs at the time and time was very fluid for him. And so they ended up recording tracks with her instead. And...
It's a very dope record. I think it's just called Betty Davis, like self-titled. But yeah, her first two albums are really good. And Joi's first two albums are really good.
Deshanta (1:29:22)
I'ma have to check those out. Thank you.
There's so much knowledge in this conversation.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:29:28)
Good!
That's a good thing.
Deshanta (1:29:30)
I feel as if all of us are impacted by certain celebrity passings. Who would you say affected you?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:29:38)
Well, yeah, that's easy. That's Prince. I met Prince eight months before he died. I met him in the 90s. That's another story. that was just a high by really. Although it was a one-sided conversation, let's say. But eight months before he died, I interviewed him. I went to Paisley Park. ⁓
Deshanta (1:29:41)
Hmm
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:29:59)
We spoke for hours and I asked him everything that I wanted to know since I was 13 years old. And I played his piano and all I know is Prince songs. So I got to play Prince songs on Prince's piano. ⁓ At the end of the interview, he took me out to his sports car and played me an album that hadn't even been released yet.
And that was like a really special moment because, you know, he was a hero of mine. never got to meet Michael Jackson or Miles Davis or haven't.
met Janet Jackson. There are people I haven't met yet, right? But Prince was really paramount in my life and I met him. So when he passed, definitely, yeah, that was a big one. You I don't really get shaken up by celebrity deaths. I'm not the type of person to start playing somebody's music a lot, you know, the day they die or whatever.
But yeah, I cried over Prince. Eventually after he passed, weeks later I played Purple Rain. And by the third song, I just started crying out of nowhere. It was like, wow, I didn't expect that.
Deshanta (1:31:04)
Can you walk us through the opportunity that you were given to meet Prince?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:31:10)
Sure, yeah. It was August of 2015 and.
I was working at Ebony at the time. I was working at Ebony.com actually at the time I was the arts and culture editor and I got a call from his people and they said he had an album coming out and for the first time in his career he was going to produced by somebody else and they wanted me to interview this person. So I went out to Minneapolis and I interviewed the guy. He was this like 25 year old
do Joshua Welton. And when I went out and spoke to Joshua Welton, the interview really only lasted for 10 minutes. then Joshua told me that Prince was around and wanted to meet me. And at that point, it kind of became clear to me that the whole thing was kind of a ruse, you know? Like, I wasn't really supposed to interview Joshua. I was supposed to talk to Prince.
Prince started to talk to me basically. So 10 minutes later Prince comes in and we just, you know, he gave me a hug which was surprising. And I figured I might see him, you know. I I wasn't completely surprised, but it was one of the, I guess, it's my favorite interview, you know.
Yeah, it's the one that means the most to me. I've interviewed Michelle Obama and Diana Ross and other people, but yeah, that was major. When I went out there, it wasn't under the pretense of interviewing him, but that's what it turned out to be.
And other people have interviewed Prince, but like after the interview came out, it turned out that ⁓ it really struck a chord with Prince's fan base. know, it turned out to be what has come to be considered like one of his greatest interviews, you know, in terms of the late period of his career.
Deshanta (1:33:00)
Where can a fan find that interview?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:33:03)
⁓ It's been republished. There's a book called Prince on Prince. I forgot who compiled it, but it's easy to find. on Amazon. It came out like maybe two years ago or something.
It ran also in Ebony magazine when Prince passed, which is easy to find on eBay or whatever. When he passed, ⁓ Ebony put him on the cover and they reprinted the interview there. so those are at least two places that can be found.
Deshanta (1:33:31)
That's an amazing achievement.
What are some of your favorite moments in life?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:33:36)
Well, the birth of my kids, certainly. That was big. I was in my mid-30s, I guess, when they were born. have two sons. yeah, nothing beats that for any parent, you know?
There was a Prince concert actually that was huge. I mean, it was in Paris and it lasted for four hours. It didn't even start until two in the morning or something. So by the time it was done, the sun was coming up and people were filing out amazed.
Deshanta (1:33:52)
Prince.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:34:09)
And, you know, it was like a word of mouth thing. Like, you know, I almost wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't been in the right place at the right time. And yeah, I mean, those are those are some of the those are some of the moments, you know, I as a writer, I've had the chance to travel and write like travel stories for different websites. And so
that resulted in me going to Greece at a certain point. Like maybe four or five years ago, I went to Greece and what else? I went to the island Crete when I was there. That was the point of the trip. And I wrote about it. ⁓ It's on maybe The Grio or Ebony or someplace. that was a fantastic trip.
I ate at a restaurant that was like, that I'll never forget, although I am forgetting the name of it. But it was someplace that like Vanity Fair had voted the number one organic restaurant in the world or something. And it was really, it was delicious.
It was just a special night, you know, like the group that I was with by that point, we had bonded to a certain extent and we were all just kind of sitting there like, wow, you know, this is, this is amazing, you know.
Deshanta (1:35:19)
Tell me about Greece.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:35:20)
Greece was very cool. mean, Greece has like over 200 islands and they're not all inhabited, where Americans are concerned, they tend to go to Santorini or Mykonos, but there are like hundreds of other islands to visit there. so Crete is one of them.
When I went, stayed for like maybe eight days and I got to just eat delicious food and drink delicious wine and the Mediterranean diet that a lot of people around the world try to like replicate in order to be healthy and regulate their weight and all of that, like that is sort of their everyday thing, you know? And...
We went to some beaches. was really like, I would recommend it. Crete is a great place.
Deshanta (1:36:04)
Tell me about a time you realized life wasn't easy.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:36:09)
Now, let me think. What was the time when I realized life wasn't easy? Maybe law school, you know? Maybe. I mean, not that it never occurred to me before law school, but definitely I remember some hard times in law school where I guess I was starting to realize that that wasn't really what I wanted to do. And I was maybe falling behind in certain classes and...
You know, I was living at home with my mom during law school. So, you know, there were growing pains there because I had already been on my own at Morehouse and, you know, to be under her roof again was kind of weird. You know, like I had kind of outgrown it. then I had friends who had dropped out of school and were already on their own in their own apartments and doing their own thing. And, you know, it was sort of like, like, wow, you know, it's not.
This is not really that simple. But you know, in times like that you just sort of have to, if you're going through hell, keep going. know, like, what more can you say?
Deshanta (1:37:08)
What is something you wish you could redo? If anything.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:37:11)
Hmm, well yeah, probably law school. I mean, it produced some cool things in my life. And you know, it's like in life you can't really change anything, because if you move anything, you know, it's like the Jenga toy or whatever. Like if you pull out a block, then the whole thing collapses. Like, because I went to law school,
I was able to visit Paris because I used the money that I borrowed.
you know, that I'm still paying off to go to Paris at one point. And if I hadn't gone to Paris, I wouldn't have met my wife because that was the first time we ever met. I wouldn't have realized that Paris was some place that I wanted to live. I studied abroad when I was in law school. And so I studied in London. And while I was there, I wrote a book and the book never got published. But I guess writing it gave me the confidence that I could write.
a book and I wouldn't have had that experience if I hadn't been in law school. And so, you know, it gave me other things other than becoming a lawyer and you know what mean? Life experience sort of things. But at the same time, you know, it was kind of a waste of time. not a lawyer and
Coming out of like Morehouse, I didn't owe anything. My grandfather paid for everything. And so I was debt free coming out of undergrad, which a lot of people can't say. then I got into debt going to law school and unnecessarily, you know.
I intend to pay it off one day.
Deshanta (1:38:32)
You will.
What is something from back in the day that you rarely see from today?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:38:40)
Well, phone booths, for example, you know.
It's so funny they have these charging stations where like you can charge your phone if you have the patience to stand there with your phone plugged in. Because all those places kind of used to be phone booths, know. Back to Superman, you know, back in the day he would duck in a phone booth and change his clothes and fly out or whatever. Like now Superman has no place to change his clothes.
Deshanta (1:39:06)
What are some of your favorite quotes?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:39:09)
Yeah, I don't really have any. I know that there's a quote from the Bible that says, are year all gods. You know, I like that one. Like I grew up in the Bronx around a lot of Five Percenters and.
They would walk around saying that they were gods and I was not brave enough to join their movement because I grew up in a heavy sort of Christian household. I could come home and say that I had changed my name and that I was God.
I would have been kicked out. I kind of got where they were coming from, you know, eventually, because a lot of that has to do with self-actualization and the laws of manifestation and all that, you know. So yeah, year of gods, that's sort of a quote that's...
that's a favorite of mine from the Bible. But otherwise, yeah, I was never that great at quoting folks. I have my favorite rhymes from hip hop and stuff like that that I can kind of recite along with the record when it's on. But I was never really that great at that.
Deshanta (1:40:11)
Like what?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:40:12)
you know, Rock Him, like I came in the door. I said it before. I'll never let the mic magnetize me no more, but it's fight me, bite me, invite me to rhyme. Can't hold it back. I'm looking for the line, clicking, taking off my coat, clearing my throat. The rhyme will be kicking it till I my last note. The rhyme remains divine. All kinds of ideas. Self-esteem makes it seem, you know, that whole thing.
Deshanta (1:40:25)
I've been eating too much.
Ayyyy Hey, that's all I wanted to hear. You know, I'm making sure, I'm making sure.
Wanna shout out anybody in the community making a change?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:40:41)
Yeah, I'll shout out the new mayor. I voted for him and he's kind of young for the job.
But I have faith in his bold vision for the city. And I grew up in the days of Ed Koch being sort of a beloved mayor who kept getting elected over and over. And I hope that maybe Mamdani can usher in sort of a new era of that, where the same person can be in charge long enough to make a real
different.
Deshanta (1:41:17)
Where can people connect with you on your content?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:41:20)
Yes, so I have a website. It's mmlunlimited.com. But that's kind of what I use on all platforms. MML unlimited is that's my name on Instagram. And I'm not on X since Elon Musk bought it. I closed my account. But I'm on threads. I'm on TikTok. I'm on
you know, all the things and on my site, mml.unlimited.com, you can have like hyperlinks to a whole bunch of things that I've written in addition to like video content from interviews that I've done or that have been done with me.
Deshanta (1:42:01)
You mentioned having a letter to the editor of Captain America being published on Marvel That's so dope. What did the letter say? Yeah, yeah, like what? I read that and I was like, what? Like, what? Cause that's a big deal.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:42:08)
Thanks.
⁓ Yeah, that was...
It was kind of my first byline. It was a letter... Well, so back in the day, I don't think that it's like this anymore, but back in the day, comics had a letters page at the end.
of the book and the letters page was from fans that had written letters and you know they had to decide which ones they were going to publish and they would answer your letter if there were questions in it or whatever. So I mean it's funny because I
I often am called upon to critique art, right? Like if I go to a art exhibit, you know, I'll write about it for Ebony or someplace else and I'll say what I thought of it. So basically that's what I was doing at 10 years old. I had read this Captain America comic book and I decided to write what I thought about it. And I sent the letter to the editor and...
and they printed it and so, you know, I was excited to see my name in lights and I brought it to school.
you know, the kids were proud or jealous or whatever they were. And I published two other letters, you know, there were like two other comics. I forgot what they were, but I mean, once they published it, I was like, wow. So they liked my writing, great. So I did it again a couple of times when I was like in high school and yeah, they got, I got published like three times by Marvel.
in the letters page of whatever comic books.
Deshanta (1:43:42)
Your music catalog is so diverse. Do you think growing up in Co-op City played a factor in that?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:43:49)
⁓ no, actually. I'm trying to think like, what exactly is my music, like, what's the correlation between Co-op City and music for me? ⁓ I know that like, when we would go to the handball courts, I was more of a handball guy than a basketball guy.
Deshanta (1:43:59)
Yes.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:44:07)
people would have their boom boxes and generally we were playing the late night master mixes from WBLS or Kiss FM from DJs like Red Alert and Mr. Magic and ⁓ Marley Marl and Chuck Chillout and people like that and WHBI as well with the Awesome 2 and that was all hip hop music. There wasn't really much diversity there.
but it was hip hop, you know. ⁓ The diversity, I think, probably comes from my dad on one hand and then back to Prince, you know, on the other hand. Like I was very aware that Prince didn't come out of nowhere, you know, that Prince was the result of James Brown and Sly Stone and Parliament Funkadelic and The Beatles and ⁓ Santana and, you know, a bunch of other like...
you know, people before him. So I would investigate those people for myself. definitely, you know, my parents had a huge record collection. My uncle had a huge record collection. And so I didn't have to go very far to like get into Miles Davis in high school, for example.
Deshanta (1:45:15)
We are almost done. From graduating from Morehouse to studying entertainment law at Fordham University to writing for Source magazine to writing your own novel to writing multitudes of published essays What achievements are you most proud of?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:45:17)
Okay.
Right.
Hmm, I mean professionally, professionally, I guess I have a short story that I wrote called the Wu-Tang candidate and it was published in a literary journal that I started called Bronx Manual and
Bronx Manual had like two additions to it. I don't want to call them issues. They're more like books and or anthologies. Let's say they're bound, you know, they're books. But in the second issue or whatever you want to call it, the Bronx Manual 2, there's a short story called The Wu-Tang Candidate. And it's about it's a short story. It's fiction. It's about an MC who wears blackface. So if you've seen like Spike Lee's Bamboozled
It's sort of like a cross between Bamboozled and I don't know, Krush Groove or something. I mean, you know, I was sort of making a statement about minstrelsy in hip hop or what I deemed to be, you know, sort of...
a minstrel element in hip hop culture that I kind of, you know, wasn't a fan of when I wrote the story. yeah, I'm kind of, that was, mean, of the fiction that I've written, you know, my fiction has been anthologized in different books over the years. I've written a bunch of short stories for different people, erotica as well, but that's probably my favorite short story.
Also, I'd say even I have a short film that I directed. It's called BXNY, know, like DKNY. And it's like an ode to the Bronx. I attended New York Film Academy for a workshop, a filmmaking workshop some years ago. And everybody in the class was charged with directing three short films. ⁓
while
we were there. so it was like the second film I directed. And I just went to a whole bunch of different locales in the Bronx and created sort of, like I said, an ode to the Bronx. And it was my favorite film that I made when I was in school. I liked that.
Deshanta (1:47:30)
What can we look forward to from Miles Marshall Lewis?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:47:34)
Well, Dave Chappelle, one day. I imagine, as my latest book, comes out next year sometime. People can keep their eyes peeled for that.
That is the main thing I'm working on aside from just the opening of the hip hop museum because as cultural historian, know, my words and viewpoints about hip hop are going to be all throughout the museum when people come visit. So they should definitely do so when we open our doors.
Deshanta (1:48:00)
Which is an amazing thing. I also remember reading I Can't Say Where, so I apologize. But I feel like you potentially may be venturing into film. Is that accurate?
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:48:16)
Mm-hmm. It is, yeah. It's sort of my next area of focus once my latest books are finished. like I mentioned earlier with the short film that I mentioned, you know, I have...
a lot of ideas for things that I'd like to get popping off in the next five to 10 years. I definitely have a lot of friends in the film space who segwayed out of writing and hip hop journalism into that area. And so I intend to follow in their footsteps.
Deshanta (1:48:47)
that
I thank you for being here tonight and just spending this time with me.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:48:54)
No problem. thank you for inviting me again. This was fun
stay warm.
Deshanta (1:48:59)
You too. Take care. Bye.
Miles Marshall Lewis (1:49:00)
All right, see ya. Bye bye.
Deshanta (1:49:00)
I hope y'all enjoyed listening to tonight's episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. One thing I want to clarify.
Earlier when I mentioned Africa Bambada coming to my grandma's house, it was to see my twin uncles Anthony and Andre. After listening to this episode, I was like, I can't have grandma out here looking like Mrs. Jones.
But seriously, I miss you Uncle Anthony and Uncle Andre. I know you'd be looking out for me.
And on the next episode of GenX Gon Give It To Ya I'll take you back to the year 1977. Out of all the years I've been on this earth, I have so many vivid memories from 1977.
A lot of memories that affected not just me, but a whole nation of people. What did Frank Sinatra say?
It was a very good year.
Deshanta (1:49:41)
So gather your friends and family so I can tell you all about it, cause this GenX Gon Give It To Ya
And don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Lata