Episode Details

Chizabam Umesi What We Carry Chizabam learned early that survival can leave a person carrying things long after the moment is over. He was four years old the first time he learned his mother was dying. At eighteen, he buried her after spending his first semester of college as her son and caretaker at the same time. By nineteen, he was starting over in Dallas with no real roadmap, carrying things he didn't yet have words for. Music became where he put them. An Atlanta-born artist, producer, and storyteller, Chizabam was raised between a Nigerian father's discipline and a Louisiana mother's fire. He came of age around Southern hip hop, street culture, faith, family, and all the contradictions that come with surviving environments that can shape you and scar you at the same time. His new album, *Trauma For Sale*, turns those experiences outward. Through stories about addiction, violence, fatherlessness, teenage pregnancy, sexual abuse, masculinity, faith, suicide, family, and survival, he asks a larger question: **what do people carry from the things they've lived through?** But Chizabam's story doesn't end with music. He's a father, producer, entrepreneur, and lifelong student of history and culture who is just as interested in *why* people become who they become as he is in telling their stories. That makes the conversation bigger than an album. It's about Black life. Manhood. Fatherhood. Faith. Creativity. Survival. The things families pass down. The things men don't say. And what can happen when somebody finally decides to say them. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.