Armstrong Williams Interviews Nissim Black

welcome to this special edition of the armstrong williams show joining us to discuss the continuous discussion on the impact of rap music in hip-hop is nissan black who originates from seattle washington and now lives in the holy land in jerusalem his story is an extraordinary one one to rebellion crime drugs finding god and then finding his passion building a family and he has been a quite a sensation in this genre let me welcome nissan to the show nissan thank you for joining us from jerusalem thank you so much for having me i really do appreciate it talk about your journey and your native america to now your home israel uh that was a big journey um started out you know being exposed to regular street life growing up in the urban city um i was exposed to drugs at a very very young age i was already smoking pot by the time i was nine by the time i was 12 i was already dealing i started running with a street gang bgd are better known as gangster disciple nation now these days and got myself in a lot of trouble i was expelled from the school district and you know started off in the wrong path in that system and uh as time had went on i sort of got myself around and involved with the right people who were at different faiths and there's one faith center was in gospel mission that got me involved at least in faith and that's what really got me interested in faith and started starting to seek and from then on when i became an adult on my own and finding myself also back into the same type of environments and the same type of trouble that i'd seen when i was a kid um you know i got myself into a killer be killed situation with another rap artist and after i was spared from that situation i started to look upwards started praying started going deeper inside the text and eventually that led me to judaism which a few years later would lead me to moving to jerusalem uh you know your parents both your parents have a strong background in music especially hip hop in fact they were on the cutting edge of the founding of this genre what about your parents in your direction during the early years of your life so yes you're right both my mother and my father were both a part of hip-hop groups the emerald street boys and the emma street girls which both of those groups together pioneered hip-hop actually in seattle um in the in the early 80s um so i was sort of like to some degree born into it um and also with that also too obviously they had their their own dealings with uh with drugs and different things like that but see the transformation actually lost my mother to overdose when she was 37 so i was 19 years old when i lost my mother my father today has gone on to make a major change in his life now he stands as a professor doctor theologian and heads a addiction program he also passes a church so transformation seems to run in the blood you know talk about um how you found obviously hip-hop the music that you embraced today um the rap music is it's in your dna but you know we were talking to someone earlier who made it clear that the rap music hip-hop music is responsible to so many murders and so many rapes and so many people being in jail today and it's just been a game changer in so many societies especially in the urban and indie city centers where so many people want to emulate that kind of music to be those gangsters and they use the words of profane language they degrade women disrespect women and a lot of a lot of young people embrace that as being as some kind of manhood and womanhood to where it's had very detrimental effects you know my answer to that is you know i think hip-hop originally in his origin you seen was a lot more about having fun i remember talking to my father you know about this when he was younger he said it wasn't about all the gangs and all the violence and different things like that when he was younger it was more so about fun you know having parties they were battled not only in rapping but they were battling dancing back in the day about you know bopping and different things like that and it was much more so uh you know outlet um you know for innocent fun um and time progressed even a little bit uh you know a few years later when uh you know like a jungleson time came out it was much more so talking about our issues that we were having in the black community uh more than the violence and then later on as time went into the 80s and nwa and you know others came out which much more um gangster music has sort of started to shape the culture and it almost became a way where it came it brought itself to a place where if you weren't doing that you may have been alienated from rap culture and i think you're absolutely right it's been something that is definitely in my opinion you know everything going on in the world today everybody wants to know what the biggest threat to the black community is i think has definitely been what we've been doing with hip-hop and allowing ourselves to you know uh uh continue to to feed back into our communities you know violence and disrespect of women um definitely uh definitely has been a major problem you know you know you know that's interesting because of the you could have embraced that and continued that legacy but yet you chose something different and many record executives will corrupt these young men and women they could not even get close to record deal unless they embrace this kind of um this this this narrative of degrading disrespect the prophet but yet you chose a different way and one would have been led to believe that there is no way that you can produce wholesome lyrics guide the lyrics lyrics that uh that accentuate and uplift values and virtues and be a million uh selling to millions of fans around the world what was different about you and your trajectory you know i think the difference was just a change of change of environment which led to a changing of the mind honestly i think very much so if things had not gone gone in a way towards the right they would have definitely gone away towards the left and towards the negative behavior that i was involved in um my wife has a friend who was struggling also with the father of her children and she asked my wife she said why is your husband want to be there for the kids and you know i'm having all these issues with my father and she had many children that happen to have been by the same father um and she said to her you know you know i want to know why is my situation not the same what's different about your husband and this is obviously a good friend of mine somebody i grew up with and you know we we knew each other and i think the biggest difference was a matter of change of perception um when you have uh you know what's going on on tv and entertainment all these things are starting to raise their children and that's what tells a person is cool but when you get around wholesome individuals and you're able to see something different and and really tap into the inside of you that really doesn't want to be a part of that lifestyle then you can change your perception on what's really cool and what's not cool there's nothing greater than being able to raise a family and then the from the fruits of that family that you raised to be able to be around for your for your grandchildren when has it ever been cool not to be there for your grandchildren so talk about your music and what is so special about it i think the biggest thing about my music and what makes it more special is that i didn't deviate away from culture and the way that it goes sonically for at one point i did and i came back to realizing that you know the best way for me to be creative and the best way for me to actually have an impact you know on the community as a whole is for it to feel at home and to speak the language that everybody else is speaking but to say something different i've always said to myself and i said to others that you know music today you're listening to it for two to three minutes that's a big responsibility to have somebody's ear and their attention and for them to basically give themselves over to you um for two to three minutes so it's a big responsibility to be able to say something that's going to bring joy to uplift them uh to make them think and to better that person a person has to realize it you know i've heard many different people who came from a street background who sold drugs and they've been they may regret that but it's almost doing the same thing that if we're saying hurtful things or that we're going to hurt somebody else and then by doing so actually cause the listener to go and do something that uh that that may change their life or or someone else's is a very very big responsibility and i said for myself i wanted to be responsible with the attention that i had would you have had the same success if you'd remain in the united states versus moving uprooting yourself to israel you know i think it could have happened could not have happened you know um i don't control those things things were actually happening for me when i decided to leave music all together right before as my transformation was taking place i decided to leave for a couple years and at the height of that i was on a very big album um at that time on a compilation album which led to my album uh doing very well i had a single that was on mtv that was in full rotation i was headlining major concerts and at the peak of all of that is when i actually left you know to pursue spirituality so i think had i stayed on that path then you know it only would have went up from there but um i was willing to sacrifice it all to make sure that i was doing what was right to me talk about your spirituality journey my spiritual journey originally actually in islam is where i actually started my grandfather my mother's father was a sunni muslim unfortunately he spent most of his life in prison he came home for about a year i think he was out that he stayed with us and during that time i would pray with him five times a day that was my introduction to religion altogether i went to him uh with with him to a mosque you know on fridays and um that was about the the end of that shortly after he ended up back in prison unfortunately where um he would spend the rest of his life and then um around 13 is when i got involved with the different christian centers the groups because they had a hip-hop program that was sort of the way they got me and that which was really great for me because it kept me out of the streets and i have really close relationships still with a lot of people that were there um and then like i said after the the my running with music one of the biggest things is it's funny you mentioned that earlier is that i was actually sought after by record label that my positive music was uh was not good enough you know when i was still involved in in the christian center and so one of the things they wanted was harder music and slowly over time i gave them that and it turned into straight gangster app and i got to a place where i was confused about who i was um that led me into another altercation with another artist which led me to soul searching on my own and for the first time i was away there was nobody there pushing me towards this way or that way you know i sort of grabbed the bible and started going going to work and i dug deeper went into a lot of different epic pic pick refer books went into the church fathers and i started going very very deep and i actually grew up in a jewish neighborhood so i was actually interested to find out more about judaism so one thing led to the next and uh eventually i found my path on the found my way on the path to a jewish conversion nissan tell us about the advice and wisdom that you would share with aspiring rap and hip-hop artists today you know my biggest piece of of of wisdom and and if i can really to give over some strength is that you know we definitely will have to be responsible for the things and for the turnout of the things that happen inside of our community and you know as i said before you have a big responsibility with two to three minutes four minutes however long a song is to be able to pump life into something instead of death and i think it's a very very um huge task but it's definitely something we have to do the record labels and i know there's many people involved record execs and different people who may not culturally come from the same background but they'll be able to go and sleep and have a peaceful night at the end of the night wherever they are but then we have to go back to the turmoil that we're in and that we perpetuate by continuing to make music so i want to say it's a big responsibility and if we want better we can do better and finally how do we change and turn around the devastating impact that rap and hip-hop has had on the world you know i look at it as an individual um situation i always tell people like this you know i have an opportunity now who i was years ago talking about you know hurting my fellow brothers and and and speaking in negative ways you know a lot of music i can't listen to i don't know if i had one word on the on the record that wasn't a swear word i was cursing so much um you're looking at me now i've been cursing over 13 years on or off a song so i'm looking at it and saying seeing that responsibility that i had back then and it made me turn around and say listen i got to go back where i was to be able to redo um the situation and so now it takes nothing for a person to to change the the the music itself but what has to happen the task is to change ourselves from within and i feel like if we're able to do that and to start helping uh people who who necessarily haven't necessarily thought of themselves as being out of these type of situations helping us get there it sort of starts there we have to change our idols we have to change the people that we're looking up to nissan black it's been our pleasure discussing this with you today we wish you well in your beloved jerusalem and thank you for joining us and we'll be back with much more thank you