Malcolm-Jamal Warner on 'Hiding In Plain View' (National Poetry Month Special)

( Photo credit: J Squared Photograph )

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, and for today's show, we're bringing you conversations about Poetry for National Poetry Month. In 2022, my next guest became one of the inaugural nominees of the Grammy's new best spoken word poetry album category. The album is called Hiding In Plain View, and it's the work of Malcolm-Jamal Warner. The title could be a nod to Warner's Long Career as an actor.

His IMDb page is stacked with credits as an actor, director, and producer. The Cosby Show, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Major Crimes, Suits, The Residents, and the new Fox Legal Series Accused. Malcolm has been right in front of us as an actor all the while he has been a poet, long before he became a celebrity.

The title of his album, his Fourth, Hiding In Plain View, also refers to the way Black men and boys are often judged but not really seen. The album has nine tracks with titles like, Dope, Banging Knuckles and Black Fist Beautiful. Warner referred to the 2022 Project as "his most important album", and he joined us in studio earlier this year to discuss the album and his long career. Let's take a listen to that conversation.

Throw your hands in the air, wave them like you just don't care, care.

Now keep them there. It's a brand-new dance called The Stop and Frisk.

Yo, Yo, sitting around simply getting pissed at an establishment

that was designed to legally keep you second class

as an exercise in Don [unintelligible 00:02:14] futility,

Because we have the ability to make change

for we are master magician.

We Harry Houdini our way out of positions meant to contain us-

Alison Stewart: What is your very first memory of poetry?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Oh wow. That's a really good question. I say that only because I've been around poetry my entire life. My dad went to Lincoln University with Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson. My dad went to Lincoln because Langston went to Lincoln. I was steeped in poetry like in the womb. I could tell you, one of my favorite books was Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X.

I remember I would take that book to school and put it on my desk and kids would tease me and they'd go, "Hey, what? Somebody wrote a book about you, ha, ha, ha, ha." It occurred to me, wow, none of these people know who Malcolm X is, and if they are reading poetry, they're not reading poetry as sophisticated as what I'm reading. This was elementary school.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: My dad was really was really instrumental in not just the poetry and the arts, but making sure that I was connected from whence I came. I used to go see him on my summer vacations, and he had this thick book, Great American Negroes, and chapters on Langston, Richard Wright, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Anderson. He would make me read these chapters and write book reports. This is during my summer vacation. I'm 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old. It wasn't until being in class and the Malcolm X book incident that it finally registered what my dad was doing. He was filling me up with a connection with my history. He had been doing it through the arts.

Alison Stewart: You say that, I just remember when I was cleaning out my late mother's home, I found a book Langston Hughes signed to her when she was young.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Wow.

Alison Stewart: It's just one of those moments. I know, right? It's an "Oh wow," moment. It's just one of these prize possessions. You realize, to me, that is one of hearing Langston Hughes's poetry. I know she always loved it, but I never knew that she actually had gotten a book signed by him.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: That's awesome.

Alison Stewart: What was the first poem that you shared, that you had, you shared publicly?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Wow. Oh, that's great. It wasn't until I was in my early 20s. I might have been 23. Though I had always written poetry, this was the first time I was introduced to a venue where people were actually reading their poetry in front of other people. I remember going to this place in L.A. it's called Juke Joint. I remember Jada Pinkett was reading a poem, Tichina Arnold was reading a poem and all these women were reading poems, but their poems were all male-bashing poems.

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: My buddy and I we're like, "Man we're going to go write a piece and come back next week and do a piece." I wrote this piece called My Woman, and it was about the woman's side of how relationships go awry. We can be responsible for things as well. I wrote the poem and I went and I did the poem and just what hit me was of course, all the guys were like, "Yes, yes, yes. Right", but even the women were like-

Alison Stewart: Sometimes.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: "Yes, you got a point there." It was the first experience for me where realizing, oh, wow, what I'm writing actually resonates with other people, and it's not just the guys because I'm saying guy's point of view, it's like everyone is acknowledging what I consider my truth, but it seemed to be other people's truth as well.

Alison Stewart: What does writing a poem do for you personally, emotionally?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Oh, it's an outlet that I didn't realize I needed until again, I was in my mid-20s and I was at a place where-- I had a couple of experiences at that point that really hit home for me, the politics of this industry and recognizing, well, if I keep all of my eggs in these two baskets, acting and directing baskets, if that's all I do, this business is going to break my heart. It was through writing that I realized I needed that outlet because the writing and the music, being a bass player, it all allows me to express myself in ways that I can't as an actor or as a director. I have all these avenues of expression available to me and I literally need them all,

Alison Stewart: - and fewer gatekeepers.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Right? You can write a poem, you can create a piece of music, you can put it online and people will who need it will find it.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Yes, and it's unencumbered by any record labeled executive telling me what I should be doing.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the name of the album is Hiding In Plain View. It is up for a Grammy. I want to play Black Fist Beautiful. It begins with this statement about hip hop's value as an art form. Whose voice is that?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: That is Dr. Daniel Black. He is an award-winning novelist. He's also the assistant professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta.

Alison Stewart: Then after his voice, is a child's voice.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Yes. That's my daughter.

Alison Stewart: Ah, now, is that a, "Honey, come on in, dad's making a record," or is she one of these people who's always underfoot and in your stuff?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: That was a, "Honey, come on in," but I think because of that experience, now she's in my studio quite often touching stuff.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a little bit.

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Black fist is beautiful

Black is beautiful

Black is so beautiful

Sometimes my daughter see spirits in her sleep.

I see Boogeymen when I try.

I close my eyes and see images of Step and Fetched and Amos 'n' Andy,

Damn, these visions that keep me awake at night.

Visions like airplanes from above spraying the sky with ignorance like pesticides.

And the repressive residential red lines make it too hard to hide for too long.

And all these beautiful Black bodies are scared because we don't know how bare we must become

not to succumb to the heat of the hovering sun that keeps closing in.

And aren't you tired of run off a shade.

Aren't you tired of being enhassled and played?

And aren't we all tired of crying about how hard it is to be Black in America

even if it looks like we've got it made?

Freedom has this limit, so here we are.

Tear-streaked and salt-stained faces.

Traces of trauma and pain lace our DNA like our Black pride is cut and laced with self-hate.

And we still think it’s dope, just like the music we’re programmed to celebrate.

Can you tell me the fate of a people who consciously take the bait

and embrace the very traits placed upon them by their captors,

who by design are inclined to keep them believing they’re second rate?

I’ll wait.

Alison Stewart: That is Malcolm-Jamal Warner from the album, Hiding in Plane View. I'm curious, you said earlier on about this industry, possibly breaking your heart if you hadn't found the outlet of poetry. A lot of that portion we picked talks about a lot of the imagery we see, and a lot of the language that we used. As you were coming up as an actor and as a performer, how often did you have to say no to roles because you're like, "No."

Malcolm-Jamal: That's been my whole career. Just coming from the experience of Cosby and everything that that show represented. I knew that I couldn't go from that and do work that would continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes of who we are. For a long time, I held judgment against activists who would take some of those roles that I had turned down because they were going against the work we're trying to do. Then at some point, it occurred to me that everyone didn't necessarily have the financial wherewithal to turn work down. It made me really grateful for that blessing and less judgmental, because bills have to be paid.

It just made me, "Let me just focus on my work to be done. Don't focus on what other people are doing and how they feed their kids. Let me focus on my path and my lane and be grateful for the blessings that I have, to be able to do the work that I do." I have to say that between the work that I've turned down, work that I have gone out for and didn't get, there have been longer stretches of unemployment than I may have liked. At the same time, everything that I have booked, every role that I have done, have all made up for the work that I didn't get.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. Do you remember that moment when you acknowledged your financial privilege? It's so funny, sometimes we don't think about our privilege then, someone's like, "Oh snap. I have that."

Malcolm-Jamal: It's a constant reminder because it's something that's easy to take for granted. I think in being thoughtful and being mindful, would be something that I'm always striving to be. It's in those moments that I also get very grateful for my path.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the name of the album is, Hiding in Plain View. When you think about the title, what does it mean to you?

Malcolm-Jamal: I think about two things, what you hinted at, at the very beginning is how I've always seen how I live my life, hiding in plain view. I'm not the person who will walk into a room and be like, "Hey, I'm here." Just hang out and just be there. I know my presence. I know my aura. I know my vibration, and I can just hang out, and I'm just there. It's also like the temperament of a bass player. Basses, they can be upfront, but for the most part, they'll lay back and be the support.

There's that, and then also the other angle of hiding in plain view is something that we all do, how we wear these masks, and we hide parts of us because we're afraid someone else might not like us.

Alison Stewart: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mask?

Malcolm-Jamal: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Just got to throw it in a poet. Continue on, sir.

Malcom-Jamal Warner: Actually, I'm sure I thought about that when I was writing, his poem, when I was writing that piece. That's just such a universal thing. It's something that I've done. The older I get, the more conscious I am of that, and being more comfortable in my own skin and realizing that the more I can be comfortable in my skin and let my light shine, how much of an influence that can have on a young kid who's watching me, who is hiding parts of him.

If you can see people who let their light shine, they're comfortable in their skin, you get exposed to those kind of people enough, then you go, "Yes, it can be safe. It can be a safe place to just be me."

Alison Stewart: When do we get to see you be an actor again, if I can ask?

Malcolm-Jamal: Oh, well, every Tuesday, on Fox, The Resident. Then they have a new show coming out, Accused, which is a new Fox show.

Alison Stewart: You and Wendell Pierce together. I watched it the other night.

Malcolm-Jamal: Wendell and I go way back. Wendell and I, we did A Midnight Summers Dream at the Law Hill Playhouse, in '95. That's all I have know Wendell. It was a treat for us to get back together working.

Alison Stewart: He's amazing in Death of a Salesman.

Malcolm-Jamal: I heard.

Alison Stewart: He is amazing. The name of the album is Hiding in Plain View. It is up for a Grammy. My guest has been Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Malcolm-Jamal: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's go ahead on the title track.

Malcolm-Jamal: Vulnerability can be a scary thing, even when we're on the mend.

Black boys boast bravado not to seem broken, and often, so do Black men.

I see you looking for clues, searching for cues, longing to know what I'm not telling you as if

As if I'm hiding in plain view.

Even though I speak my truth, for some it just doesn't seem to be enough.

But when red tables turn timidly, some say they tell too much when they talk.

My most intimate thoughts belong to me.

Like a woman's body when she says no.

So I reserve the right to go as far as I'd like

And though I live in the public eye, I don't subscribe to the dog and pony show.

I've learned to discern who cannot accept all of me.

I read the room before I speak, because I find that folks flee from honesty, like we retreat from love.

Vulnerability can be a scary thing, even when we're on the mend.

Black boys both provide all not to seem broken, and often, so do Black men.

My relationship with rejection wreaks of stale smiles and toxic tear stains that shed secretions of trepidation.

Since the stooped shark sense fear so sharply, sometimes I feign confidence like young girls dumb down and grown women fake orgasms.

And sometimes I refrain from revealing how I truly feel and just hang out and hide the parts of me you possibly might not like.

Vulnerability can be a scary thing.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner about his latest spoken word poetry album, Hidden in Plane Sight.

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Up next, acclaimed author, Sandra Cisneros published her first poetry collection in 28 years last September. In it she gets vulnerable about love, sex, aging, and politics. We'll hear about the collection titled Woman Without Shame. That's next.

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