00:00music they love music they love music i'm not going to make you sing to me today john because
00:04normally when i interview john i was having serenade me just a little bit but you are such
00:10an amazing man i mean we know about your work as an activist we know about your work um you know as
00:16an artist obviously and as a very public family man i want to know about how did you become engaged
00:24in activism and why was that important to you well i just grew up in a family that
00:28uh we believe that if you've been blessed then you're supposed to pay it forward when you
00:36have success part of your success is giving back and so i always knew when i was a kid that if i
00:44ever succeeded in life part of my responsibility as someone successful was to make sure i extended
00:51my hand out to young people who were trying to succeed themselves that i would stand up for
00:57justice and i would stand up for equality and um i knew that was my goal even when i was a kid i
01:04wrote an essay about it when i was 15 years old and uh i've been trying to live that ever since
01:10that's amazing i think to know know that so young is so powerful and you obviously use your music to
01:16do that right yeah we use music we use the television and film projects that we do
01:23and we get engaged with communities that are trying to fight for justice we uh we get involved in
01:31elections we get involved in uh changing laws that are that are that are locking up to many of our
01:38people we get involved in improving our schools we we get involved because we care about making sure
01:45every kid has an opportunity to succeed in this country and uh and making sure we we change the
01:53narrative about our people i love that and changing the narrative is so important
01:57you
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