(gentle music) (crowd chattering) - [Announcer] Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(audience applauding) (audience applauding) - 1986.

I was 14 years old and I was standing in an apartment on the east side of Detroit with a gun to my head.

I was being robbed.

I'll never forget this moment of thinking that at some point I would hear the sound of a gunshot and feel the kick in the back as my young 14-year-old body tumbled down the basement steps.

I was a young drug dealer, and that was week two on the job.

So I know you're wondering, "How does a 14-year-old kid end up in the hallway on the east side of Detroit with a gun to his head?"

So I'm gonna take you back.

I grew up in a household that on the outside looking in was the embodiment of the American dream.

We lived in a working class/middle class neighborhood.

My dad was in the military, the Air Force, and he also worked for the state.

And my mom was a homemaker, raising six kids.

Our neighbors on the right, they had beautiful pear trees.

Our neighbors on the left, they had incredible peach trees.

And we shared a grapevine.

But in that manicured home, on that manicured block with those carefully manicured neighbors, there was something else taking place inside our home.

It was the highest level of physical abuse.

My mother beat my siblings and I, and my father was complicit.

And I'll never forget making this decision when I was about 13 or 14 years old.

And I said I no longer want to be subjected to that level of abuse.

And so I ran away.

And I'll never forget thinking to myself that I would run away and someone would see this smart, really handsome little boy, and they would take me in and they would wrap me in the warmth that all children are deserving of.

But instead, here's what happened.

I found myself seduced into the crack cocaine trade.

And I use the word seduce very intentionally because oftentimes when we think about young inner city kids that end up in the street, somehow we think that they're just bad kids who don't listen.

We think that they're rebelling and just showing out.

But what often happens is that these kids run away and they find themselves under the dominion of adults who are very manipulative.

That was the case for me.

For two weeks after I ran away, I slept in basements and garages, and I often say I slept on bricks for pillows, which made my head hard and my heart harder.

And it was in that world that this man, he saw this vulnerable kid and said, "Hey, I can help you out of those circumstances.

Just come with me."

And he took me to Burger King and we went to have food.

And then he brought me to this house and he said, "Listen, there's more where that comes from.

All you gotta do is sell drugs and protect the money."

And so here I am at 14 years old, have never fired a firearm in my life holding a sawed-off shotgun in the East Side dilapidated house selling crack cocaine.

I remember my first paycheck.

I took that money and I ran down to the grocery store and I bought every type of cereal you can think of, Capt'n Crunch, Honeycombs, you name it, I bought it.

And I even added to it chocolate milk and strawberry milk.

Because at 14, that's what you do when you come into an abundance of money, you buy all the things that your parents never would buy for you.

Within that first year, my childhood friend was murdered.

I was robbed at gunpoint and I was beaten nearly to death.

And I'll never forget laying on a cold bathroom floor in a pool of my own blood and asking this essential question, "What kind of world do we live in where this is allowed to happen to kids?"

Unfortunately, many years later, I have no answer.

But I continued on to that culture.

March 8th, 1990.

I was 17 years old.

I was standing on the corner of a block on the west side of Detroit when a car slowly rolled up the street.

I remember watching the car as it rolled to the street and just thinking, "Oh, this is somebody just casually strolling through."

And then the car stopped and there was a guy in the car and we exchanged angry glares.

And then we exchanged angry words.

And I invited him to a old-school fisticuffs.

I thought he would get out of the car, we would have a scrap, and we would go on about our day.

But instead, he pulled out a gun and he shot me three times.

Pop, pop, pop.

I remember running and thinking to myself, "I hope he doesn't hit me in the back of the head or in my back."

And I ran into this lady's house and I gathered myself and one of the neighbors helped me get back around the corner.

And I sat on the porch waiting and waiting for an ambulance that never came.

And then my friend said to me, "Hop in the car, elevate your foot, breathe in, breathe out.

That's how you mitigate the pain."

And the reason he knew this is because he had got shot the prior summer in an incident where his friend was killed.

And so he rushed me to the hospital.

They brought me in, they extracted two bullets and they left one bullet in.

They patched me up.

And within a matter of days, I was right back in my neighborhood.

Not one doctor, not one nurse, not one therapist, social worker, psychiatrist, psychologist, thought to ask a 17-year-old boy, an essential question.

"How do you feel?"

Not one adult thought to tell me that, "You're going to experience something that is unfamiliar to you.

You're gonna become paranoid, you're gonna become distrustful, you're gonna become angry."

And so I took this volatile cocktail and I turned it into a narrative, a narrative that said, "I am not safe in my own neighborhood without the protection of a gun."

And I made it up in my mind that I would carry a gun every day no matter what I was doing.

Eating dinner?

Gun on the table.

Using the bathroom?

Gun on the bathroom sink.

Going to sleep at night?

Gun under the pillow.

Wasn't the smartest choice by the way.

But in addition to that, I began to make up a narrative.

And that narrative said that if I found myself in conflict, that I would shoot first.

16 months later, July, 1991, at around 2:00 AM in the morning, I found myself in that conflict.

An argument escalated and there was a moment where I turned and took one step to walk away, but I never took the second step.

Instead, I turned and fired four shots that tragically ended a man's life.

I was subsequently arrested, charged with murder, and sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison.

I was 19 years old.

I'll never forget standing in front of the judge and hearing that sentence being handed down and thinking to myself, "My life is over."

At 19 you can barely see two weeks down the line, let alone two decades.

And so I went into prison with this mindset that this is where I'm gonna die at.

Going into prison I got into every type of imaginative trouble you can think of.

My first year in prison, my security level was increased to maximum.

And I was told that I was irredeemable and incapable of functioning within lower security levels.

That's where I turned 20 at.

But it was also in that environment where I met some of the most incredible mentors in the world.

Now, these weren't men who were navigating free society, entrepreneurs, scientists, philosophers, thinkers in a traditional sense.

These were men who were serving life sentences.

And these men saw something in me that I didn't see in myself.

They thought that I was redeemable.

And they would come to me and they would say, "Hey, young blood, stop getting in so much trouble."

And I would say, "Go on, old head.

I don't want to hear that."

"Hey, young blood, one day you gonna get outta here."

"Man, get outta my face, old head, I'm gonna die in here."

But these men were master teachers, they were master philosophers, they were brilliant strategists.

And they found their way in through the written word.

See, I was lucky.

I believe in life that oftentimes we don't even acknowledge or recognize the sheer luck that we have.

Sometime you're lucky to be born in a certain zip code.

Sometime you're lucky to be born into a family of wealth, a family of joy, a community where people care about each other.

Sometime you're lucky to have some of the most incredible genetics in the world, and you can become LeBron.

Or maybe Bam, that man put up 83 points the other day.

It's crazy.

My luck was that I was actually literate in an environment where the average reading grade level is third grade.

And these men saw that and they gave me books.

The first book I read in prison was a handwritten book on about 15 pieces of paper folded over.

And it was written by a man who was in the cell across from me.

And it was the most fascinating story about his neighborhood, drug trafficking, murder and mayhem, all the things that characterized the environment that I came from.

And I fell in love with those words.

And he said, "If you like this, you should go over to the library and check out these books by Donald Goines."

And so I went to the library and I found this fascinating world that was written by this author who had authored about 13 books or so with titles like "Dopefiend," "Black Girl Lost," "Eldorado Red."

And these were stories of pimping and prostitution and drug trafficking and social impact.

And I read those books.

And then I read Iceberg Slim's book "Pimp."

And then those books ran out.

But I had already been struck by something, the curiosity and the love of the written word.

And that's when they gave me Malcolm X's autobiography.

And I remember the only reason I read Malcolm X, because I thought to myself, "This name sounds really gangster."

(audience chuckles) And I was like, "I should read that."

And what I discovered was this organic intellectual who talked about reading poetry and philosophy and reading the dictionary from A to Z. And I said, "I can do that."

And so I devoured those books.

But it wasn't enough.

I was still trapped in a cycle of anger and bitterness.

I blamed my parents, I blamed the system.

I blamed everybody except for myself.

And so I continued to fight against myself.

I'll never forget this moment, I was in a cell block one day and a guy on the cell block came to me and he said, "Hey, can you write a article for the paper?"

And I was like, "Why would you think I would write an article for the paper?

I'm out here thugging on the yard.

I got drug transactions to do, I got hits to order."

And he said, "Because you seem smart."

And I was like, "Wow."

So I gave it a shot.

I wrote an article about a visit I had just had with my family when I discovered that my sister had became addicted to crack cocaine.

The same drug that I sold, the same drug that I watched destroy my neighborhood, destroy women in the process.

And I thought about the hell that my sister was about to endure within that culture.

And I remember writing that piece and I gave it to the guy.

And the paper didn't come out until months later.

And I was leaving work and I'm walking and I see these two guys approaching me and I'm thinking, "It's about to go down on the yard," 'cause that's what happens in prison.

But instead, one of the guys said, "Man, that article you wrote, your sister remind me of my mother."

Another guy said, "Your sister remind me of my aunt."

And they asked me for a hug.

I went to work, my supervisor was reading the paper, and he kept doing this kind of weird thing where he would read the paper and he would look up at me and he would read the paper and he would look up at me.

And then finally he said, "Did you write this?"

And I said, "Yeah, I wrote it."

And he was like, "No, like, did you write this?"

And I was like, "Yeah, I wrote it, Tom.

What are you talking about?"

He was like, "But, like, did you write this?

Did these ideas, these words come outta your mind?"

And I said, "Of course, Tom.

They did."

And later on, Tom asked me one of the most powerful questions that anyone ever asked me while I was in prison.

Tom asked me what else could I do with my mind.

What else could I do with my mind?

And I remember that question unsettling me because I didn't know.

Eight years into my prison sentence, I got into a conflict with an officer.

The conflict escalated into a fight, the officer went to the hospital and I went to solitary confinement with a new sentence, an additional two years tacked onto the 17 I was already serving.

In addition to that, I ended up in solitary confinement for four and a half years straight, 23-hour lockdown, five days a week, 24-hour lockdown the other two days a week.

Solitary confinement in America is one of the most barbaric and inhumane things that we allow on our watch.

It is the most chaotic, dysfunctional, and broken part of our system where human beings who are already suffering from debilitating mental illnesses are kept under lock and key on our watch.

The noise level is unimaginable.

The sound of lockers beating, men beating on toilets, the sound of hollering, the smell of pepper spray when the officers decide that they've had enough and they come and extract men from those cells and put 'em in suicide watch cells, the smell of feces as feces wars are waged between cells.

It was in that environment, in that world with unimaginable hurt, no hope, darkness and depravity, that I found what else I can do with my mind.

And here's how it occurred to me.

I got a letter from my son and he told me that his mom told him why I was in prison.

And he said in the letter, "Dear dad, don't murder again.

Jesus watches what you do."

And I remember how devastating those words were to hear from a kid and how the facade of hood toughness, prison toughness melted away.

And I was left with the reality that not only had I destroyed my life, I had failed my son by ending up in a prison cell instead of by his bedside.

Now, during this time, I had got into philosophy.

I was reading all these philosophical books, and one in particular stood out to me.

It was Plato's "Republic."

And I was reading Socrates' apology.

And he said, "The unexamined life isn't worth living."

And I thought to myself, "What does that mean?

What does it mean to interrogate one's existence?"

And I started thinking about that and pondering that question.

And I had this moment where I said to myself, "How did you get here?

How did you go from this kid with dreams of being a doctor and a artist to serving out your most promising years in prison?"

And I went to pen and pad and I started writing and I started asking myself these really hard questions.

What happened to me?

And I was able to inventory every abuse that my young body had held silently.

And I was able to reassign responsibility to the perpetrator of those traumatic events.

But I was also, for the very first time in my life, able to accept that I had some responsibility.

And then I discovered in that process that I had never finished anything in my life.

I started a lot of things.

I started to go to the military, I went and took the first test and never followed up.

I started to stay in Job Corps, got kicked out before I could complete any trade, started to go back to high school so I can at least get a high school diploma, but never followed through.

And I said to myself, "If I'm going to give my son the father that he deserves, and I'm gonna turn my life around, I have to finish one thing."

And I looked around that cell at that barren bed, at that sink and that toilet combo and at that little desk.

And I realized, "There's nothing in here.

What am I gonna finish?

What am I going to complete?"

And then I had this incredible, it's kind of ridiculous now, idea that I should write a book, but not just write a book.

I should write a book in 30 days.

And if I can write a book in 30 days, I can turn my life around.

Now let me tell you, there was no laptop, no MacBook, no iPad, no smartphone.

There was not even a regular pen and pad 'cause in solitary confinement, they don't give you regular pens.

They're scared you might poke somebody through the food slot.

All they give you is this little flimsy pen.

And I remember looking at this flimsy pen and looking around my cell and saying to myself, "It's no way possible, No way possible that you're gonna write a book in 30 days with that thing."

And I was like, "Ah.

There goes that thing that happens.

When life gets tough, you make an excuse.

How are you gonna make a way this time?"

And then I had what I call my hood Einstein moment of clarity.

What if I take that pen and I rolled it up in some paper and I had this experience of rolling things up in paper.

(audience chuckles) Don't, don't judge me, y'all got a lot of dispensaries around here.

(audience chuckles) And I wrote for 30 days straight.

And I finished that book.

And I remember I was so overjoyed with finishing a book that I literally jumped up and kicked my heels like the old school Toyota commercials.

Like, what a feeling.

It's crazy.

And then I said to myself, "Well, a book really isn't a book until somebody actually reads it."

And so I laid on the floor in my cell and I hollered up under the door, "Yo, anybody wanna read this book?"

And a guy hollered back down the cell, "Don't nobody wanna read this shit.

This ain't Oprah."

(audience laughing) I was like, "Damn!

I'm trying to turn my life around, now I gotta shank this guy?

He's gonna be disrespectful like this?"

And I stepped back from the door and I thought about something that I've learned as one of the most invaluable lessons in life.

When you say that you desire a change in life, you are going to be confronted with things that's going to challenge the idea about whether you're ready to change or not.

And I was like, "Oh, that's the first lesson.

That was the test.

So now what do I do?"

I said, "You know what?

He's right.

This isn't Oprah.

But what do I want to happen with my work?

Where do I want it to live in the world?"

And so I started writing down the most ridiculous, audacious things possible in regards to what I wanted to happen.

And meanwhile, a guy across the hall said, "Of course I will read your work."

And I remember sending it under the door on my fish line, we make fish line out of the threads from our socks or our underwear.

I always chose my socks 'cause I like to keep my drawers on, especially in prison.

Pretty smart thing to do.

And I slid the fish line under the door and I watched that book slowly going under the door.

And then I freaked out 'cause it was my only copy.

And I was like, "Man, what if he don't give it back?"

And y'all know, like if you create a thing one way, you can never go and do it again the next way, right?

But he got that book, and I didn't hear from him for a while, but when he finally came back, he said, "Man, this is one of the best books I've ever read."

And I was like, "Wow."

That was a feeling.

I felt it in my soul.

And then I had a moment of clarity and I was like, "Well, he's in solitary confinement, (audience chuckles) probably bored as hell over there."

He's like, "Yeah, this story's amazing."

But it gave me an idea that I had to get my books out to other audiences so I can at least have a fair and balanced perspective.

And so I started sending my work out, short essays, poetry, stories to college newspapers.

And I would get feedback and they would say, "You're a great writer."

And so I wrote a second book.

And at that point there was something being born inside of me that I wasn't even aware of until I started a third book.

And what was being born inside of me was the idea that I can dream bigger than my circumstances.

And halfway through writing that third book, I fell into the deepest depression that I had ever experienced in my life because I realized that a dream had been born inside of me in an environment that was only meant for nightmares.

And so for a few weeks I couldn't do anything but sleep, try to get a little exercise in, and feel sorry for myself.

And then I had this moment of clarity where I started turning back to what started to give me imagination in the first place, which was books.

And one book in particular, James Allen "As a Man Thinketh."

And I remember reading this book about this big idea that you can attract into your life the things that you really want, your deepest desires, and the laws of attraction will bring 'em to you.

And I said, "All right, Mr.

Allen.

Let's see if this works."

I went back and I started reading my journal entries and I realized that the narrative I had bought into had landed me right in that cell because from the very beginning I heard I can only be dead or in jail before I turned 21.

And I was in prison at 19.

So that part was true in the negative.

And so I thought about it, "What do I want more than anything in the world?"

I want to get outta solitary confinement so I can take these books that I hand wrote and type 'em up and send 'em out into the world and see what happens with 'em.

And so I wrote the warden and I wrote the warden this very philosophical letter.

I was reading a lot of philosophy, y'all so I was testing it out.

And I said to the warden, "I wanna establish something here.

Everything I'm about to tell you in this letter is predicated on one thing.

What do you believe about the truth?

If you believe that the truth is the only thing that matters as you read forward, I look forward to you responding."

And in that letter I said, "When I came into prison, I said I was not following the rules.

I have 36 misconducts so clearly I'm a man of my word.

If you believe me to be a man of my word in the negative all I'm asking is that you believe me to be a man of my word in the positive.

If you give another shot at being in general population, here's exactly what I'll do.

I'll mentor the young men on my block who can't read, and I'll help them become literate.

And I'll type up these books that I started writing in solitary confinement.

And one day, those books will become something that I'm proud of because they'll be out in the world on shelves.

Only thing I'm asking you to do is to believe in what's true."

Shockingly, the warden wrote me back and he said, "Despite my hesitation, I somehow believe you and I'm going to advocate for you to get out."

And I remember looking at the warden's letters, words on that page and thinking to myself, "Man, this philosophy shit really works.

(audience chuckles) It's amazing."

It was two more years, two and a half more years before they let me outta solitary confinement.

And not because of the warden, his higher ups didn't think that I was ready.

But what his words did was they gave me something that anyone going through hardship needs.

It's a little bit of hope.

The little bit of hope that one day that that nightmare would come to an end was all I needed to keep writing, to keep dreaming, to keep imagining that my life did not have to end with me dying in a prison cell.

And so I held onto that hope until they released me from solitary confinement.

When I got outta solitary confinement, I took those handwritten books, and I was a man of my word, I typed them up, I mentored the young men on the cell block with me.

They became like my little brothers and my sons 'cause now I was getting a little older and I began to dream even bigger.

And I started sending my manuscripts out to publishers.

I started sending my manuscripts out to rappers, you name it, I would just send 'em on out.

And I never heard from any of those people.

But I was undaunted.

I bought a book on self-help, called "Self-Help Publishing Guide: How to Publish your Own Book."

I saved up the money that I scrapped together in prison and I published my first book from prison in 2008.

I can tell you, I've had some incredibly special moments in my life.

There is no moment that was as special as holding a book that I had written in my hand in the cell block and sharing it with the men around me and to see their excitement, to see these men lining up and signing up on a list to check my book out.

And right in the midst of all that exuberant energy, I got sued by the Department of Corrections for the cost of my incarceration.

They thought I had got a book deal, which was impressive because I was like, "Well, I did, at least I did a really good job of published in this book from a prison cell."

But it was heartbreaking.

That same year, I went up for parole 2008 and I got denied.

I went back 2009, better parole board hearing, better engagement, got denied again.

And initially I decided I wasn't going back.

But I went back.

And on June 22nd, one day after my 38th birthday, I got paroled.

The first thing I did when I walked out of prison was I sold my first book in a parking lot and I began to hustle books.

And it was one of the most powerful experiences to follow through the word that I had made for myself.

But I'm gonna tell you something, right on my way walking out of the door, there was something that happened that forever changed how I thought about my engagement with other human beings.

Walking outta that door, an officer said, "I'll see you back in six months."

And I was like, "Wow."

How cruel of a thing to say to someone who's just now experiencing freedom after 19 years in prison and seven years in solitary confinement.

But here's what actually happened.

I came home, I was a man of my word.

I won my first award called Black Male Engagement Leadership Award, even though they said I'd be back in prison in six months.

2012, I became a fellow at MIT Media Lab just two years outta prison, even though they said I'd be back in prison in six months.

Now I want you to think about that for a second.

I just came outta 19 years of being in a cave-like existence.

And now I'm at one of the most technologically advanced schools in the world, even though they said I'd be back in prison in six months.

It was at MIT Media Lab where I started this idea of an atonement project.

2013, I co-partner with my dear friend Ashley, Professor Lucas, and we co-founded the Atonement Project class right here at the University of Michigan even though they said I'll be back in prison in six months.

In 2014, March, I delivered a talk at Ted's 30th anniversary.

At that time, I had to stream my talk from New York because I have a felony and they wouldn't allow me to go to Canada because we don't believe that people are redeemable or truly deserve full second chances.

But I streamed that talk.

That talk currently has almost 2 million views, even though they said I'll be back in prison in six months.

- [Audience Member] Woo!

- Yeah, thank y'all.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) In 2015, I get this phone call and the woman on the phone says, "Hey, Shaka."

And the phone hangs up.

Following day, same phone call, unknown number.

"Hey Shaka, it's Andrea.

I apologize for hanging up yesterday.

The kids got in the way.

But I was just calling you to see if you were available because Oprah Winfrey would like to interview you in Hawaii."

I was like, "Let me see if I can fit Oprah up in here.

(audience laughing) I might be able to slide her in somewhere."

They call back and said, "Oprah no longer wants to interview you in Hawaii."

I remember being disappointed because I had already planned out my whole itinerary in my head.

It was like, "Instead, she actually wants you to come next week to her home in Montecito.

I'll never forget.

The night before I laid my clothes out on the bed like, you know how before you go to school?

And then I tried 'em all 'cause I was like, "Yo, I gotta make sure these socks is popping when I'm sitting across from Oprah.

We need to have a whole situation."

And then Oprah and I had a conversation that was supposed to be 45 minutes.

We talked for three and a half hours.

Oprah went on to say, not only was it one of the best conversations in her career, she said it was one of the best conversations in her life.

And then Oprah texts me, 'cause Oprah be texting me, yo, I just want to put that out there, (audience laughing) let y'all know that part.

And she said the conversation was in the top five.

Three books later, me and Oprah still rocking.

The following year, 2017, paperback version comes out.

I'm with a friend.

I asked him to come to a party.

He says, "I can't come to the party because I got a dinner with President Obama."

I was like, "All right, dog, whatever."

(audience laughing) And then he hit me back and he was like, "You know what?

I'm not gonna go to dinner with President Obama.

I'm gonna come hang out with your party."

And I was like, "Wow, that's super dope.

I don't know if I'd have did that, but it's cool."

But the following day he said, "Hey, I wanna go pay my respects to Valerie Jarrett 'cause I know that they're trying to fundraise for the president."

And I was like, "That's cool."

He was like, "You wanna roll with me?"

I was like, "Sure, but I'm doing an interview.

I'll sit in the car.

You go and handle your business."

So he went in and handled this business.

I'm doing an interview.

And then his driver said, check your text messages.

I checked the text message.

They said, "Hey, can you come in for a minute?

It's important."

And I'm like, "Yo, I'm doing an interview."

He's like, "Yeah, it's important.

Just if you could pop in for a second."

And I pop in and I walk in the room and this man is standing before me.

He's like, "So I heard you got a book."

(audience laughing) And I was like, "Yes, Mr.

President, I do got a book."

And he is like, "So the president can't get a book?"

Now listen, y'all, I'm from the real Detroit.

I hustled books from Rouge Park to Belle Isle.

I sold books all around here and Ann Arbor.

Of all the days I don't have a book me.

(audience laughing) But I said, "Mr.

President, I promise I'm gonna get you a book."

The following year, Mr.

President invited me to be a keynote speaker at "My Brother's Keeper" even though they said I'd be back in prison in six months.

I'm gonna close out with these last two stories really quickly.

During the pandemic, which is when I was supposed to be in here the first time, I remember getting that call, them saying, "You're not gonna be able to fly out," and how disappointed I was.

And right as I was settling into that disappointment, I got a text message from Nas.

I'll be getting text messages from Nas too, y'all.

Just so y'all be clear about that.

And he said, "Shaka, can you write something for this song?"

And I was like, "Yo, this is the craziest thing ever."

And then I just said yes and I was like, "You know, I'm thinking I'll have some time."

And I'm like, "When do you need it?"

He's like, "I'm in the studio right now.

Can you send it?"

And I'm like, "No pressure.

It's just Nas."

(audience chuckles) And so I write this voice memo, I shoot it to Nas, and then I don't hear back from him.

And I was like, "Man, Nas, you wild, bro.

Don't even hit me back."

And I was like, "Well, here's the worst-case scenario.

I got the screenshot that he asked me to be on the song.

I can blow that up, turn that into a poster and I'll have a great story."

So months later I see Nas' album roll out and I see the album cover and I'm like, "This is crazy."

The colors of the album were identical to my book that was just coming out.

And I remember texting Nas and being like, "Yo, bro, you ain't gonna believe this.

My book cover and your album cover are pretty much the same colors."

And he is like, "Oh, man, I can't wait till you hear our song."

Even though they said I'd be back in prison, I ended up on a Grammy-nominated album with Nas.

My love for Nas started in 1994 when I heard his album Illmatic.

And he had a song on there called "One Love."

It was a letter to friend who was incarcerated.

And what I learned from that song is that the power of the written word to touch human souls, even when not directed toward him, was something that was immeasurable.

Just this past month, I flew to Detroit, in my hometown, and I ascended the elevator in the Michigan Central Train Station, a train station that had been a symbol for people to fly all over the world and say, "Detroit has fallen and it won't be redeemed."

A place where hip hop artists went in and enjoyed the beautiful graffiti and people outside of Detroit criticized us as a failure and a bankrupt city.

That building now is one of the most majestic buildings, not just in Detroit, but in the world.

What's even more special is inside that building is the Shaka Senghor Literary Lounge that- (audience applauding) Thank you.

And that writing on the wall, that writing on the wall are those original journals and one of those first novels that I wrote in prison when they told me that I would never get out.

And now kids in Detroit will be able to go in there and write their own stories, even though they told me I'll be back in prison in six months.

Thank y'all so much for the time.

(audience applauding and cheering) Thank y'all.

Thank y'all.

Thank y'all.

Appreciate y'all.

Thank y'all.

Thank y'all.

Man.

Appreciate y'all.

(theatergoers chatter)