the american dream it's a phrase that means a lot to a lot of people what does it mean to you will the american dream is like uh you work hard you apply yourself and you can make all of your dreams come true um you work hard you apply yourself and you can get up out of that nightmare
there's people that have come from you know poland in the past ireland in the past iran in the past you know armenia in the past and even currently and they they they were refugees of like war-torn countries and they come to america and they tell that tall tale of like my dad came to america with
nothing and you see those people and you're like wow how are you living like that that's the american dream but then there's people that are that are that are living in war-torn countries like in ghettos in america and it's hard for them to escape that the way those you know immigrants have come to america and and
they're awesome the folks that have contributed and built businesses but the same doesn't apply for folks in the inner city for some reason there's like a force field that keeps folks from the inner cities achieving that same american dream that many you know immigrants have have
reached we've lost the compass on the american dream and then there's so many people fighting for that american dream like stacey abrams like the american dream right there but then what just happened right now in the in the capitol building that's like the opposite of the american dream and not to take away
their passion because they obviously have something they're passionate about but that's just the wrong way to go about handling your home right like we're americans we're supposed to like come together and find that bridge so we we're all all right everyone black white brown rich poor i i
don't understand how they can do that to our home so i was trying to figure out like a way to see it from that perspective i just can't see like your capital like the pinnacle of what america stands for you know outside looking in and inside looking in that's just a bad symbol optimism
progress and togetherness is the mindset we need to have you know i was talking to this with a friend of mine just before we spoke and i was saying you know technology plays a significant role in this social media whether it was intended to or not has created an environment where
misinformation can be spread really easily and for people who aren't actually who don't who don't know the difference between what is correct and what is false it's just a matter of of context then it's the matter of opinion well i believe that to be true and i wonder kind of how what has been
happening in recent memory not just in america but all over the world the way that the political landscape the socio-economic landscape you know borders are changing brexit information is at the core of all of that information in the hands of people who i don't know whether they're
qualified to spread it unregulated platforms when you spread information could be detrimental to the stability of society yeah and if you're if you have a platform that is truly a publication but not regulated like publications then we have what we have right now so the technology is magnificent the
the freedom and the liberty and how it connects us is awesome but unregulated where i not only can understand you and all your trigger points but i could send you designer information to inflame your emotions to send you a muck yeah and like be at odds with your neighbor
so all it takes is for these platforms or whatever people to use these platforms to plant that thought in someone's mind and an emotion is never far away right and right now that's not regulated yeah right right right now technology has moved faster than you know governance yeah yes and now
the internet and social media is now dictating how media is supposed to behave now false you know false truths fake news that's now the norm and that is detrimental and that's why you need to like educate folks in inner cities and not even just inner cities everywhere especially inner cities
just the construct of the platform that we all trust before we talk about how you're helping others tell their story it's important i think for the people out there that know you as an entertainer and a performer an entrepreneur and as a futurist what was the key moment for you that put you on your path because it
wasn't going to be easy for you either my mom really it's my mom sent me to an awesome school an hour and a half outside of the ghetto that i was raised in the projects in boyle heights and i went to a science magnet school ever since i was seven um first grade and i attended you know
an awesome school where a kid gets eight thousand to ten thousand dollars a year for their education and receiving that type of education and seeing what like successes and being around families that or their parents like have careers because when you're in the ghetto you
don't know what poor is because everyone else is poor and there's you really can't compare it but then when you get around wealthy not rich when you get around wealth you you see the difference and the the conditions of education the classroom the attention from teacher to student the activities and programs
and there's a is at night and day when you see kids and their you know educational um environment in brentwood and palisades versus east la and boyle heights it's two totally different worlds and what was boyle heights like when you were growing up boyle heights was you know growing up in the 80s
crack pcp police brutality you know that the kids were on a path to something you just couldn't really identify it in the 80s the way you can see it clearly now the prison industrial complex you didn't really understand that in the 80s um and now we see that we see that trap that we were put in
where you know there's a liquor store check cashing place bad food everywhere and right next to those shopping malls those little poison centers in our in our blocks there's that elementary school or junior high school or high school and you know the teachers are not getting paid
to the level that really equals opportunity and a better path towards excellence so i made it like a life goal to provide a pathway for for kids that's the key word is pathway you stepping into a space like this and investing in this you figured out the only way you were going to change the system
that's keeping people from achieving things was to actually inspire generationally right to get in there and to get kids inspired so that they would go out there and do the same thing and come back and inspire and create a new cycle and a new system yeah the system really is business people don't realize that the ghetto
is a business to keep people sick is a business for the pharmaceutical industry and that's a very dangerous thing to say but it's factual nutrition is everything but if you would ask the doctor right now like how to fight high blood pressure diabetes and you know high cholesterol they're gonna
give you a pill they're not gonna say like eat better and if you live in the neighborhood in a neighborhood that has if that's riddled with like bad food how do you eat better yeah so nutritional education is super important and we don't have that in the hood and because we don't have that in the
hood that is a business a kids that are not funded with a good proper education are more likely to end up in prison systems that's a business too and it's unfortunate that there's some very very like wicked parts of capitalism that are just like inhumane and um and the way you you compete with
that is to just change the business and what if these kids were not you know on the pathway to a prison but on a pathway to college not to not a pathway to college to have you know a diploma in debt but a pathway to fill jobs that are unfilled and create jobs that we can't imagine right
now how do you get a kid from the hood to to be in the position to create jobs that we can't imagine right now that means you got to teach these kids skill sets science technology engineering and mathematics you got to give them these skill sets right now it's super important that's like that's what we
should be like fighting for that should be the american dream for us to compete you know you really are very fascinated by what's coming next and you're unafraid to look even if it scares you that's one of the things i really admire about you is we've had conversations that scare
me but your eyes are wide and you're all in when did that click for you because to inspire others with i am angel you got to be inspired yourself when did you become a futurist when did you realize it like it was more than just entertainment or did that happen even as a kid were you always fascinated by
by what you didn't understand as a kid i think it's just my curiosity my passion to want to create my mom is a super creative and she would we would do arts and crafts paper mache um and she really truly encouraged us and to the point where one day i i said a wild dream
like one day mom i want to buy you a house and me my mom were talking about this a couple of days ago i was like mom do you realize that you've now lived in the house that i bought you longer than i lived in the projects and i bought her the house when i turned 24 to four years of when we live leaving
the projects to then buy my mom a house and move her out of the projects and i remember she was like really how much is rent i'm like rent there's no rent mom she's like what do you mean well how are you paying for this you paid for it all i was like no it's a mortgage she's like well how much
is the mortgage i was like you know five thousand dollars a month she was like five thousand dollars a month how are you gonna pay that i was like i don't worry about i'm gonna figure it out i'm gonna figure it out she was like well you know how much rent was in the projects
i was like no she's like 75 dollars and it moved up to 150 dollars still to this day it's 150 bucks how are you going to afford that and and financial literacy is not you know like that's why that check cashing is in the neighborhood because we're not taught to save we're thought we're
taught to get money cast a check spend money and there's a liquor store for you to spend your money on right next to a check cashing place that combination is is uh as a deadly cocktail and the one thing that i think is was wrong with that project was the investment for education right that there wasn't the you know
equal awesome education where kids from the project aimed to go to yale aim to go to you know harvard and stanford and mit that's not what you're thinking about and dreaming about in the projects yeah education is the core to all of our problems and um that's the reason why i wanted to
like equip kids from my neighborhood and other neighborhoods that reflect that with tomorrow's skill sets so we should be transforming our neighborhoods ourselves folks from the community we need to be policing our communities ourselves folks from the community and it all starts with education
so what have you learned as far as education goes in the first 10 years before we talk about your commitment to the next 10 years in this song and this video and you know the donation that the pledge that you've made around american dream we're going to pivot into that in a second let's find out what you've
learned how you've educated yourself through this process of of committing and investing in these futures in the last 10 years what i learned was i started off with 65 kids i remember sitting down with lorraine paul job because i watched this documentary called waiting for superman
and it was about the worst schools in america and how america is failing in education and one of the schools that they highlighted was the school that my mom went to roosevelt high school so when i when i asked lorraine can i take your program to my neighborhood she was like well we're we're just in
the bay area i was like let's figure out a way to please because my neighborhood could use that program so she was like well if you're serious about this well this is like a 10 million dollar commitment and 10 10 years at the least because once you start with a kid you have to see that
kid all the way through high school and through college it's an investment on every level so if you're in this is what the commitment is this is not like you know this is how you feel this year and who knows how you feel next year because it's not fair to the kids so i was like let's do it
and at that time when i started the program in 2008 i didn't have money like that to like commit to 10 million dollars in 10 years of my life that was a scary moment that was scarier than my mom saying how are you going to pay for this mortgage but because i realized that i could like
go up the mountain with the family on my back and do it that one didn't scare me i just like let's do it let's go let's talk about the song and the ground shifts beneath our feet so fast will that when you made american dream you couldn't have possibly imagined that it would mean something today that it
meant when you first recorded it it's heartbreaking you know it truly is heartbreaking and what i was thinking when i wrote the lyrics they'd be talking equality but they don't mean it for people like me they say opportunity but i don't see none in my streets statistically i'll be in a penitentiary
so i'm gonna get on that college track and go to an ivy league like i was just thinking about like progress and contribution to society and what do i what if if i was if i was 16 years old 15 years old and music wasn't the path what would i be reaching for right there's there's a lot of kids that
maybe they don't want to do music maybe they don't want to play sports and they love technology they love gaming but they don't have anybody that looks like them so let me let me go down this college track path let me apply myself in these sciences i was thinking about that the simple
like method to contribute and then i see you know people storming the capital and then i'm like wow now when i say the american and there's an american nightmare happening right now how are people going to take that sentiment because everyone's sensitive everyone's emotions are
on edge i hope they see the beauty in togetherness yeah i hope they see the beauty and open-mindedness i hope people see the beauty of tolerance i hope they see the beauty of collaboration i hope they see the beauty of fusion like black and brown like if you see it's going to be a lot of people that
are going to look at that be like really well i am like i see your school has a lot of mexicans in it that's my neighborhood yeah and before i can move to somebody else's neighborhood what no matter what the nationality is i gotta take care of my neighborhood and now that i've done that for 10 years
now i want to go to other neighborhoods and this program the i am angel foundation we keep kids off the streets we keep kids off the block and we give them a path we got kids going to brown and dartmouth like freaking off georgetown i got a kid going to georgetown for for poli sci computer science
at brown stanford you know we we have kids that are on their way to be professionals and we all need to contribute that way you know i've taken care of my neighborhood for 10 years i'm going to continue to do that for another 10 years and i'm going to go to other communities now
and when we say the american dream if we all could chip in and do that and take care of neighbors whether they look like you or not whether they think how you think that's an open mind that's tolerance and we need to collaborate better and what i saw at the capitol that was not collaboration
that was frustration that was like misinformation that was hate that was like what imagine if that was like a foreign nation coming into america americans did that to america like what how did we get here imagine that was me and my students what would have happened to us like i said the majority of our students
are latin and black but we we're not storming the capitol building we're storming building capital starting with capital of of information and and and like purpose and dedication and discipline and we all need that we need a lot of that so i got to do my best especially in these 10 years to
create paths for these kids i just know how much change i can i can do in the neighborhood i come from and neighborhoods that reflect that i applaud you for what you're doing with i am angel continually and what you've done with the song to generate attention and to create
a moment so as to draw attention to it and i'm i'm so glad we had a conversation that hopefully has done just that yeah i just also want to point out like the kids that my program they're not just learning technology there's also there's awesome kids that are going to school for political science for
uh environmental science we have awesome kids that are going to school for like uh criminal justice you know we we have so many different you know curriculums for the kids to aim their stuff towards and mentors to guide them towards excellence and you know the teachers are awesome the uh the mentors are great
the support is awesome and i'm really proud of more importantly of the kids you know i started off with 65 kids like i said and now i we serve about 1200 kids with the waiting list and we want to we want to serve more and now that you know it's a proven success it's time for this next 10 years to take
it you know to more areas that need it and that's the reason why raising raising more money is so that we could duplicate it and uh spread it across america yeah it's a hit and to quote to somebody who we both really admire what do you do when you have a hit yeah you follow it up and you tour
well how can people get involved and help um you know i want to finish i want to give people a chance to invest themselves in this in any capacity even if it's just seeking more information where do people go gofundme.com backslash i am angel uh a hundred percent of our kids
graduate to go to uh for go off to four-year colleges um we have an im scholarship we have i am robotics program in partnership with first robotics we provide safe passage for kids towards um excellence and contributing to society so if you can help me and my uh mission and all of our
partners like lorraine powell jobs ron conway thank you for all your support mark benioff um whatever you could donate a dollar five dollars a thousand ten thousand dollars whatever you could contribute to get to our gold so we could help kids for the next 10 years that would be highly appreciated