Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on Rock the Bells Radio's "The Drama Hour"

July 26, 2024

Shamele “DJ Papoose” Mackie: If you're hearing my voice, that means you are now tuned into another episode of the Drama Hour. I go by the name of Papoose. This is Rock the Bells Radio. This is SiriusXM Radio. Y'all know one thing about me. Not just anybody can come up here. No fakes, no frauds, no cons. All authenticity. Over the past 10 to 15 years, I've been doing a lot of charity work.

In the process of me doing that charity work, you know who's out there in the field because you're out there yourself. A lot of people talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk. The brother that I have here today on the show, I've seen him out there putting that genuine work, y'all. When that pandemic happened, this brother was out there on the front line, giving out supplies, doing the right thing. Without further ado, live here today on the Drama Hour, y'all, we got Mayor Eric Adams in the building. Y'all, make some noise, man.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. What you said is so significant, because that word "authentic" is a powerful term. When you are authentic, people want to depict you and describe you. I'm like this ball-headed, earring-wearing, authentic guy. Cigar-smoking, Tito's-drinking, and they're not used to that, and they create this narrative, and our folks buy into that narrative instead of seeing the longevity. I remember you and I, you were out there, brother.

Mackie: Definitely, man.

Mayor Adams: You know what I'm saying? We were out there. Then when you do an analysis, and get away from the headlines and do an analysis, what has this brother done? It is mind blowing what we've delivered for Black and brown people in the city. We just want to continuously go into that. Just as they did with David Dinkins, turning their base against him as he was delivering for us, this is the same script. Man, they pulled out the same book.

Mackie: Very interesting, man. Very interesting that you mentioned Dinkins, man, because I remember when he got elected, I was very excited. Same thing for you, because I'll tell you a story. 
Growing up, I remember being a child, and I was in grade school. I had a Webster's Dictionary in front of me. In the back of the Dictionary, they listed all of the presidents of the United States. As I'm looking, and I'm in grade school, I'm looking, I noticed that all of the presidents were caucasians. I asked the teacher, I said, "Hey, why none of them are Black?" The teacher responded. He reached over to me and said, "When pigs fly." That always stayed with me. That was very discouraging. 

The fact that you mentioned Dinkins, when he got elected, it was very inspiring for me. I said, "Wow." Then Obama got elected. I said, "Oh, man." You understand what I'm saying? Seeing you go from being in the street and me doing your charity work. You know what I mean? I remember when you was borough president. I also do acknowledge that you was a police officer, but seeing you elevate to the level of being the second Black man, correct me if I'm wrong, in New York.

Mayor Adams: You're right.

Mackie: Powerful. Very inspiring. I grew up in Brooklyn in BedStuy. I lived on the borderline of BedStuy and Brownsville. I had to go to school in Brownsville. In the summertime, we went to the pool. We went swimming in Brownsville. I used my journey making it out of that. Thank God for hip-hop, I used my journey as an example to all the kids across America or across the world that you can be like that.

Mayor Adams: That's right.

Mackie: You can be an artist. You can be an executive, which I am now. You, being an example that you can come up out of challenged neighborhoods and become the mayor.

Mayor Adams: No, without a doubt.

Mackie: Speak about that.

Mayor Adams: Like you, born in Brownsville, grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, and I'm perfectly imperfect, man. If you look at imperfection in a dictionary, you'll see me sitting there smiling, man. I've made so many mistakes in my life. My brother and I were arrested when we were 15 for a charge with burglary, number runner, buying a nickel bag, making the joints to make sure mommy get that extra three to pay the rent. 

Dyslexia. I walk in the classroom every day, brother, and I tell people the story. I used to get up in the morning and pray, "God, don't make me read." Because if I read, kids would joke and laugh at me all day. They used to put a sign in the back of my chair, "dumb student". I was undiagnosed dyslexic. When you tell your story, and these stories are so important because me being mayor is not only substantive, it is symbolism. 

I got rebaptized on Rikers Island with the inmates because I wanted these brothers to know that, "Listen, I see you, man." I've been on Rikers Island more than any mayor in the history of this city talking with the inmates and the correction officers because they're both folks of color, and they got us all together. We need to realize that we are in this together. 

It is one thing to be the Black mayor, but it's another-- I turned the city around. This city, I inherited a mess, man. 40 percent increase in crime. No job. Black unemployment was four times the rate of white. No one was focusing on foster care children. NYCHA residents didn't have high-speed broadband. No jobs were coming here. Two years later, we got more jobs in the history of the city. More small businesses have opened in the history of the city. NYCHA residents have free high-speed broadband to do telemedicine and tele-education. We cut Black unemployment, it's under 8 percent, first time since 2019. 30 percent decrease in Hispanic unemployment.

When you look at my administration, first African American woman to be first deputy mayor. Second one to be a chief of staff. First Filipino to be a deputy mayor. First Dominican to be a deputy mayor. First Spanish-speaking to be a police commissioner. First Spanish-speaking to be a correction commissioner. You just look at my administration. First Korean to be a small business service. People are mad, man. All this chocolate I got around me, man. That's why people are hating, man.

I'm messing with people's paper. People were making so much money off the dysfunctionality of our city. Then I'm coming in and saying, "Wait, we're not doing this anymore? We did $6 billion in MWBEs, Black and Brown business, and women businesses are now getting access. Folks are sitting around, they're like, "Oh, who do you think you are?"
I'm just finishing that 30-year gap between Mayor Dinkins and me. It was 30 years. He started a lot of this stuff. Now I'm picking up the baton because we had a 30-year gap, and I'm picking up the baton, and just doing it right now.

Mackie: Right. Wow, man. I want to talk about some interesting data came in today. Since your administration been in power, unemployment has a 30 percent increase, decrease, I'm sorry.

Mayor Adams: Decrease. You're on it, brother. You're on it.

Mackie: 30 percent decrease since your regime has been in power, talk about that.

Mayor Adams: It's so important. This is what I learned, that Black and brown folks were not getting the jobs because, number one, folks may not even have money for the MetroCard. You know how intimidating it is. We all can walk into a corporate business. You're cutting deals, so it's no big thing, but if you don't believe in yourself or people have cracked on you all your life, it's hard walking into these places to apply for a job. "Where's your resume?" All of this stuff.

What I did with Henry Garrido, the head of DC 37, I said, "We have to go to the people. We can't be in a sterilized environment of City Hall and hope people come to us." We started doing these hiring halls, community centers of NYCHA in schools. Right in the backyard of the people. People started showing up. They started showing up. 

Cats would be outside playing Ceelo. I would step over to them and say, "Yo, man, there's a hiring hall in here. Let's fall in." They're like, "Wait a minute, the mayor is stopping kicking," or a DJ now would be out late at night driving through, and folks would close down their barber shops and close down their beauty salons. They'd be in the back doing cigars and some Hennessy, we'd pop up in there and say, "Yo, man, there's a hiring hall the next day."

Mackie: Right.

Mayor Adams: You got to meet people where they are, not where you are. You got to meet people where you are and take them where they want to be. Because of that, you're starting to see this drop in Black and brown unemployment. We're now hiring cats to see that when you gainfully employ, you don't have to be out there slinging. You don't have to be out there doing madness, man. Folks don't want to be on the street corners, they don't want to, but you got to eat.

Mackie: Definitely, you need opportunities. I want to switch gears a little bit. I got my brother, General, here. He's actually one of the chairman at the hip-hop museum, which is an amazing establishment that's coming to New York City. We birthed this hip-hop thing. I wanted to ask you, because I know you played a major part in it. Why did you feel it was important to help secure $5 million [inaudible.]?

Mayor Adams: I want to talk about that, but first, man, I need to rock [inaudible]. I'm going to take my chain off and give it to him.

Mackie: You're a gentleman. Heavy on the [inaudible].

Mayor Adams: Hip-hop is taking accolades for what it has done in the international music, because it's international. Young people all over the globe are doing the hip-hop thing, but you're missing the indirect impact. Right now, hip-hop is running the most powerful country on the globe, and a lot of people don't connect the dots. When you look at VP Harris, she's a hip-hop baby. She's here running for the president. When you look at Hakeem Jeffries, who is the first person of color to head the minority party in Congress, he's hip-hop. He's often quoting Biggie, and he's quoting the legend.

Look at Letitia James, the top AG in the country, hip-hop. Jumaane Williams, hip-hop. Adrienne Adams, who's in charge of the speaker, hip-hop. Eric Adams, mayor, hip-hop. All of these committee chairs, hip-hop. Major corporate leaders. Look at the mayors across the country, Atlanta, my brother, hip-hop. We have the Black mayors coming here, these are all hip-hop mayors.

We sat down, and while we were preparing for where we were going, we were listening to hip-hop. When I do my walk-on music, doing my press conferences, you hear Jay-Z. We are hip-hop. That's us. When it came down to putting that paper in to do a hip-hop museum, which is an amazing space in the Bronx. People are going to go up there.

Mackie: It is. No, it really is.

Mayor Adams: It was a no-brainer. I had to repay who invested in me. Hip-hop was always part of my life. It was my motivator. You know how boxers, before they go into the ring, before I used to do the debates, during the campaigning, I was sitting inside the room, and I'm playing hip-hop, man. I'm going out there on the stage, I'm hyped. Think about it for a moment, millions of people are watching this debate, and folks are looking and saying, "Man, who's this cat here thinking he's going to debate on this scale?" They don't know I was fueled with hip-hop that said, "You can do anything."

Mackie: That's a fact.

Jarrod Whitaker: It was so important, too, that the mayor did that because that $5.5 million that was raised, after that, we were able to get other public and private institutions to pile on. We're now at $58 million closing out to get to $65 million opening in the fall of 2025. On behalf of Rocky and everybody on the board. Thank you, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: It's impressive, man. Let me tell you something, that museum on the water –

Mackie: It's amazing, man.

Mayor Adams: It’s going to become an anchor that we're going to build the entire community around. More housing, affordable housing. You got affordable housing upstairs. When you think about it, there's something sweet and romantic about the fact that Bronx, which gave the birth of hip-hop, is now coming back and being the revitalization of the Bronx.

Mackie: It's a worldwide attraction. I feel like people are going to come touring from all over the world.

Mayor Adams: Oh, without a doubt, man.

Mackie: My next question I wanted to ask you, there's been a lot of incidents where prosecutors have been using rap lyrics as evidence without even presenting a higher burden of proof. For me, it's discrimination against people of color because they're constantly penalizing Black and brown creators. I can tell you as an artist, our creativity is what separates us. Our creativity is what helps us go to the next level and enables us to feed our family. It's our livelihood. We have to have our First Amendment right protected. 

You look at the situation in Atlanta with Young Thug, they have a lyric where he said, "Ready to go to war like Russia." Just as a metaphor. They're using that as an overt act for conspiracy.

Courtney Snaps: Seven years just for that lyric.

Mackie: I'm telling you, as an artist, brother, we're always being creative. That's what makes you legendary. The more creative an artist is, it ups his status. You understand what I'm saying? Recently, I went out to Albany to advocate. It's called, what's the exact name of this concert?

Snaps: The Rap on Child.

Mackie: The Rap on Child. I wanted to ask you, brother, and I want to show you that this is not a getting out of jail free pass. The only thing it states is, initially, the lyrics are out of bounds. Creates a test for the prosecutors. They can bring it in. If someone is foolish enough or stupid enough to commit a crime and rap about it, and for me, a person who follows your success, I feel like this is in line with some of the things you represent, which is, you want the police and the district attorneys to be able to do their job, so I feel like that falls in line with that, so I wanted to get your take on it.

Recently in California, they signed a law that's consistent with freedom of creative expression, and I wanted to know, how did you feel about that law to New York? It passed the Senate three times. It seemed like it keeps getting stuck at the assembly, but with your support and the City of New York, can we get a comment. I wanted to get your take on it.

Mayor Adams: No, I love that. Because when we talked about some of the drill music stuff, when I had all of the drill rappers at City Hall, this sort of falls in line. I think going and charging folks with conspiracy over their creative entertainment and how to do so, you're crossing a line. You're crossing a line. That's no different than having Brad Pitt go do a role where he's assassinating someone. Then all of a sudden you're going to use a clip from the movie and say, "Okay." You're crossing a line.

That creativity has always existed when it come down to Black and brown people, like what they did with the first Black Heavyweight Champion with the Mann Act because he brought a white woman across state line. They created the Mann Act and said he brought it across because of prostitution. Creativity has always been on how you come at us. What we must do, when I brought in the drill rappers, because my son is a rapper.

He just sent me when I was coming, he sent me his new album that's coming out. What I told my drill rappers, who many of them are producing some good product. When you have that direct connection of someone just took out someone, and now you're stomping on their graves, you are antagonizing their crew to come back and retaliate, that was what we had to meet in that City Hall. I said, "Listen, you have to be very careful, man, because this is going to connect you to a crime."

If you're just saying, "I just popped so and so, he just died the other day,” and you're stomping on his grave, and you're being disrespectful to his parents, that cause retaliation. We don't want those retaliatory shooters that's taking away our young people, is something we have to push back for. All these creative drill rappers that are doing some good product and talking about, just in generality about the creativity of the music, no one has a problem with that. You can't have those direct correlations of someone just got shot on Tuesday, now you're in their grave. "Yes. I just took this MF’er out, and I'm disrespecting him." Now we're seeing retaliatory shooters based on that, and we don't want that.

Mackie: Listen – 

Mayor Adams: I'm with that Bill. I think it needs to get through.

Mackie: Oh, man. Now bringing drama out. Hold up.

Mayor Adams: I support the Bill.

Mackie: Wow. That's powerful, man.

Mayor Adams: I think it's going to get through, you have some very strong assembly people and senators that's up there that's going to push it through. What I think is important, that what I like about what you are doing, and I was on yesterday with my girl-

Mayor Adams: Angela Yee. What y'all doing, Charlamagne, what all of you are doing is you're taking the complexities of running cities and government and bringing it down in a very common person language, because that's a sleeping giant in our country. If you can energize your listenership, it's a game changer. VP Harris is president without even blinking. If the young people that listen to you all of a sudden say, "You know what, I'm going to get up and just cast this vote for her." Is she going to be perfect? Is she going to be everything you want? No, I'm not everything I want.

Mackie: Exactly.

Mayor Adams: You know what I'm saying. You could always be creative and find a reason that, "You know what? I'm going to hate on this person." Listen, but she's better than what we have seen in the past. You know what I'm saying?

Mackie: Right. Definitely. Listen, man, I love to hear you say that, brother. Just to add on to what you said, as far as the actors, man, when Neo in The Matrix, the more creative the movie is, the badder we want to see it. When Bob Marley said, "I Shot the Sheriff," you know damn well what –  

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: I like that.

Mackie: It's an amazing thing, man, to hear you say that. My next question I got to ask you, if I don't ask you this, I can't go back to Brooklyn.

Why do you think, because I know you didn't implement it. You know what I mean? Why do you think there are so many traffic cameras in the alternate side of the street parking things going on, in the neighborhoods where working-class Black and Latino people are? When I go to Poughkeepsie or certain parts of Long Island, they don't have that. It makes us feel like it's targeted towards people who actually make less.

Mayor Adams: Right. Right. Right. Right. Now, I got hit with a couple of summonses, man. Don't let anybody fool you. From time to time, I had a lead foot now. They used to drop those summonses when I was borough president a lot. 

The summons allocation and location of the cameras should be citywide. Now what they do do, they look at areas where you have a real problem, because they're around schools. We saw a historical decrease in accidents and fatalities around schools after cameras being placed around schools. Because a lot of people were speeding through schools. They don't see any of these children.

The laws up in Poughkeepsie and other parts of the state is different. New York City, we have a whole different mindset because they call us a million-plus. A lot of these local cities and towns upstate don't have a million-plus people. There are laws that are passed that just deals with New York City because it's a million-plus. We definitely do analysis to see where they place them, because they shouldn't be one-sided.

That was a law that came out of Albany. One thing you learn in government, everybody don't know their senator, their assembly person, their congressperson, but everyone knows their mayor. You know what I'm saying? When people are pissed off, man, they know. Cat stepped on me a few months ago and said, "Man, I'm getting divorced, man. It's your fault, man."

Mackie: Wow. Wow.

Mayor Adams: Because men complain of everything, man.

Mackie: Wow.

Mayor Adams: We don't control the MTA, we don't control – the top thing people are, you want to get some folks riled up particularly in the hood, talk migrants and asylum seekers. They're like, "Man, Eric, what are you doing, man? You got these guys stepping in, taking our jobs, taking our home." Listen, 207,000 migrants and asylum seekers came to the city. 207,000. 1.5 is the size of Albany, a whole 'nother city came into the city.

Mackie: Wow.

Mayor Adams: I can't stop buses from coming in. It's against federal law. I can't say, "When you're here, you're not going to get three meals a day, a place to stay." 40,000 children we had to educate. We got to wash clothing, we have to do everything. Got to give you a place to sleep. There's a local law saying, "Eric, you are required by law to do it."

I can't even allow them to work. Federal law says, "No, you can't allow them to work." I had a team of the migrants and asylum seekers. I said, "Listen, I want y'all to be my cleanup campaign. We're going to remove graffiti, clean the streets, and we're going to give you a small stipend." Federal government said you can't do that either. 

I have all these jobs that are open that folks don't want to do, and I'm restricted. It costs us $5 billion to manage the migrant and asylum seeker issue, and people are angry without really understanding this brother don't have nothing to do with this, man.

Snaps: Is that because New York is a sanctuary state?

Mayor Adams: I'm glad you asked that, because people conflate the two. Sanctuary city and state means that if you are an undocumented person and you come here, we can't deny you the services. If you need to go to the hospital, if you need to call the fire department, we can't turn you over to ICE. The migrants and asylum seekers, they were paroled into the city. They have nothing to do with the sanctuary city. They were paroled into the country. They're here legally. It has nothing to do with sanctuary city.

Those are for everyday immigrants who find their way here. These migrants and asylum seekers are paroled here into the city. People think that it's the sanctuary city that impacts it, it has nothing to do with them at all. Now we got a dangerous gang that's from Venezuela that is making root here, overwhelming them of the migrant and asylum seekers. They just want to come here, and they want to just move up the ladder. When I go to the shelters, they tell me, "Eric, we don't want your food. We don't want anything from you. We want to get our hustle on. We want to come in and get our hustle work."

Mackie: Hey, listen, man, congratulations on that new data that came in. It shows that you're doing your job. My last question, I know you are busy. This is my last question, but this is the Drama Hour, who is Mayor Eric Adams' the top five MCs of all time? I got to ask you.

Mayor Adams: Tell me, do we put it into MCs rappers or just?

Mackie: Rappers.

Mayor Adams: I got to start off with number one, Papoose.

Mackie: Y'all heard that loud and direct, baby. Y'all heard it loud and direct from the Drama Hour.

Mayor Adams: I'm a KRS-One guy.

Mackie: KRS, man, I love KRS.

Mayor Adams: He was a real pioneer, and I won't be able to come back across the bridge if I don't say Biggie. Biggie is definitely on that list. I will not be able to go back home if I don't see my son, Jayoo.

Mackie: Shout to Jayoo.

Mayor Adams: He's definitely going to – 

Mackie: We got to get some of his music up here.

Mayor Adams: My girl, I saw a few weeks ago, MC Lyte.

Mackie: Oh, wow. Light is a rock, man. Shout out to MC Lyte. We appreciate you, brother man. Thanks for coming on the show.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, man.

Mackie: We know you're a busy man. We wish you nothing but the best moving forward.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Next time I pop in here, I'm going to be wearing my diamond crest.

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