SupaDopeFresh Episode 007 Greg Burnham - Creating Heroes, Building Minds

In Episode 007 of the SupaDopeFresh Podcast, we sit down with acclaimed independent comic book writer Greg Burnham to talk about creativity, culture, purpose, and the power of storytelling.

Greg is the co-creator, alongside Marcus Williams, of the hit comic series Tuskegee Heirs. He has also written Search for Sadiqah and The Story of Solace, contributed to the Milestone/DC Comics legacy, and helped shape Noir Is the New Black from its beginning.

As an author of books including Brooken Glass and Grandpa Shoes, with Perry’s Perilous Ride on the way, Greg creates stories that encourage children to think critically, make positive choices, and believe in their own potential. His work reflects a deep commitment to empowering young people through meaningful characters, strong values, and culturally rich storytelling.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation about independent comics, representation, Black creativity, mentorship, and why reaching young minds early can help shape a better future.

Hosts
• DeBlak — instagram.com/mariodeblakrobinson
• BoloFresche — instagram.com/bolofresche

Guest
• Greg Burnham -  @greg_burnham7 
•  @thesearchforsadiqah 
•   @tuskegeeheirs 
• https://tuskegeeheirs.com/ 

Show + Partners
• Shop: supadopefresh.com
• 8 Robinsons Brand Management LLC: 8robinsons.com

Calls to action
• Subscribe to the SupaDopeFresh Podcast and leave a rating/review.
• Follow the hosts on Instagram (links above).
• Shop merch at supadopefresh.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:31

What's up? Welcome to the Super Dope Press Podcast. This is May Man Bolo Press the Black. And we got the big homie Greg Burnham in the building. Atlanta writer, extraordinaire. That's the whole name right there. We got extraordinaire in Mr. Gray. It's good to have you here, sir. We're great to have you in the house. We've been following your journey for years now, maybe even more than a decade now. Oh. Just um two? Let me count them back. No, I could have 15 years. I was trying to hear. Remember the first time I met you. I I don't, I think um, it had to be back when we was at the relapse theater in Atlanta. We were doing a lot of work down with the uh local B-boy scene. And uh I think you had a couple, what's that your company? Uh the state battling thing? Probably somewhere near the beginning of the HBO crew. Well, not I don't think at the beginning. It was 05. A little bit a couple years after.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

It was 05. Um, state battling with the crew, uh, me and Marcus Williams, who I still work with on the comics. Yeah, dope artists. Um me and him formed it, and we, you know, brought some other people in. But you know, the turn, I'm not gonna lie, I can't I can't remember exactly how we got into that. We got a table at that first battle. Oh man, yes. Um when I met Zap and Gizmo, like younger brother, it was like we instantly was like, cool. Zap was like, man, you can come anytime I throw a battle. Come on, ladies, come on leave. Next thing you know, me and Zap are throwing battles together. Right. I remember that. So remember we had the what was it, the Breaking League? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

And then you had a video platform, like a website platform where you sharing videos from every battle. And uh I remember just watching that grow, just just kind of admiring from afar, like, okay, these brothers are serious, but and that's I guess that's something good because I think I noticed that uh seriousness about when you commit to something, you go through with it. And you you go through it with everything you got. And and that's not you don't see that a lot coming from the scene where we come from, especially on the hip-hop scene. Yeah, you know, because people run out of money, they run out of, you know, they get families. I think that's what we talked about all the time. We just shot an episode I brought a rizzle. And um, I think you you have kids, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the children's grown. Yeah, so how how do you balance that?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Like starting out back then, uh, it's what we were talking about. Like, I don't know if y'all remember, but um, I got it with Zap. I was like, um, we need drinks, refreshments. Oh, yeah, that's right. I would bring the drinks, I'd have my kids uh work the table. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Stuart show people. Yeah, yeah. I'm making an explanation for us starting all this. It might not have been no press about just seeing him and a couple other guys from the start. I was watching out he was doing with the state battling club. You know, the crazy thing is that is still a gap in the b-board scene when I go to events. A lot of times there's still no food, there's still no drinks. I'm thinking the whole time about we clean up.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

If you just had some drinks in here, kids, people will be in there sweating out. The ball sweating. Well, that b-boy phone.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

There's nothing like that b-board phone. No, they ate before they came. And the relapse didn't have no central AC. No, no.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

We just remember we just opened the doors from time to do that. Yeah, we stayed in the phone. But I mean, those were the best days, man. In that time, you know, my kids learned a little bit about entrepreneurship because I went, you know, like at the end, I would tell them, like, it's 6040. Since I paid for everything, right? I'm gonna get 40% since I bought all the water and then all the drinks, and then you guys, however many, because I had uh I was married at the time, so I had three stepkids and then two of my own. So I would be like, Who's coming to work today? And the ones that wanted it, they get up. That's all we know.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

We did the same thing here, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

And then you know they get, you know, that I would split that 60% up amongst whoever worked that day. Give me that thumbs up. So they was getting bread, like um, you know, my my my biological oldest son, he fell like man, he he doesn't break or anything, but when I walk in the house, he's getting ready to be 23. When I walk in the house, man, he'd be playing music. I'd be like, Wait, what is this? You know, I don't ever have to worry about you know music that doesn't ride with my spirit, you know. They picked it up.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah, our kids are the same. Like they picked up on that. Uh I don't remember one time uh my son playing uh a red, an old red man song called Downfiatio. And he was like, Man, that's my favorite joke. He'd be like, What do you know about that? Yeah, what you know about that, young boss? Out of the blue, they're like, okay, y'all, y'all picked up on it. You picked up on it, man. It makes you learn about musical through people. Yeah, yeah. So how did you were you always into writing? Because I know this that's kind of your theme, or and then um during that time were you writing back then?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah, we try to work these transitions because about uh yeah, man. I I fell in love with writing like early. I just like I'm talking about early, early, like third, fourth grade.

unknown 5:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

But um there was no type of engine to push me towards it. Uh there were no writers around, like nobody, like I would write stuff, and you know, my teachers would be like, like nobody, but I was like, this is dope though, you know. Um, so yeah, even with Stay Battling, uh I was writing, you know, articles. Uh Were you in Atlanta in school? No, no, no. I'm a military kid. So some of it happened in Idaho out there, okay.

unknown 6:04

Uh some of it in Missouri.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Uh I was little when I lived in England.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Young black boy, way out writing down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know that somebody is probably pushing you with, you know, man. You need to play some football, some basketball, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And I and I did those things too. You know, I played baseball. You know, I know I know how to go. Ain't nobody pushed you into no right academics. Right. So I didn't even see that that was something that could be done. Right. Okay. Uh it's part of what me and Marcus do now, as you know, like we get out in front of as many kids as we can and say, look at me, man. I don't even cover my hair. Right. So I can do this. You can do it too. Yeah, I think that's a dope message. They came to my school, man.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

The kids with bonkers, mad teachers, media, the media center lady, man. I mean, because uh what y'all did, y'all established immediate uh legitimacy. I remember the the first Kickstarter y'all did. That was for was that the Tuscillia hairs were like the official first Kickstarter. Yeah, and by the time I caught it, it was like this. Let me get some money on this. Because even boys, and I put and I was actually late in it. But I remember I got my t-shirt, I got my little badge, like I got every all my stuff for helping out, and it it I felt like I was a part of it. And I imagine that thousands of people attached to your story like that. Like, um what kind of made y'all go to Kickstarter route?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Man, that was like we had basically uh got forced to. So I actually did little known fact, I did a Kickstarter for my first children's book. It fell miserably. We didn't know what we were doing, but we're always the kind of people that like me and Marcus were always gonna like reverse engineer. We don't look at failure as failure, we look at it as a chance to fix stuff and figure out how to work it, you know. So um, you know, we we started studying like successful Kickstarters. Then Marcus did like a smaller Kickstarter for a book that he was doing, um, and he got funded. And we realized, you know, that you have to, you know, up the visibility. You know what I mean? So um when we did the uh when we came up with the idea for Tuskegee Airs, like I'm sitting here coming up with characters and kind of world building, and Marcus is helping, but he's also drawn at the same time. He put like one image online and it went nuts. Like it was like people just lost it, and everybody was like, uh, take my money, and there's like threat. You know, so it was like uh in like a month, we went from having like the concept not existing to having like 2,000 people like just liking our Facebook page. Oh yeah, that's dope. And so um, you know, we had already had our mind wrapped around these uh basic algorithms like you need this many, 10% of the people that follow you are actually gonna spend money. You know, we had all that.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, those I'm working advertising at uh autotraders.com and Home Depot. So uh those numbers actually are true. Like everything is really a numbers game.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Right. And so when we you know we launched, we were trying to get $10,000. Um, when we launched, we had $10,000 in like eight hours. Yeah, it was just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

It was out the roof with it.

unknown 9:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

And then like people started calling us to interview us, and so we did like a creative loafing interview, and then that spawned into MPR and all these different things. The key to the city. Yeah, we like I didn't Atlanta was done. Like two years later, uh, somebody came to me. No, I was Googling us because I was looking for an article, not because I'm self-centered or anything. I'm gonna Google myself, but I was good, yeah. I found like a USA Today article, and I'm like, what? And so, you know, I look it up, I'm losing my mind. Like, we got featured on the USA Today website, man. And so I'm like calling on my friends, and one of my friends, she's like, Yeah, you didn't know about that? And I was like, How do you know about that? But yeah, it went crazy, man.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, that's a good journey though, man. That's a lot. So that the uh just watching that process from the Kickstarter. Um, and I think I've known a couple people that went on Kickstarter. Did you find any challenges there with like once you're getting funded to delivering your product? Like we talked through some of those.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

So we our like our problem with Tuskegee Airs was that we we had an idea that like if we just sit and crank this workout, we'll get it done by this date. Right. We didn't understand the everything that came with it. You raised that much money, you're now popular. So, you know, comic conventions, oh that's right, you know, media and pulled away from work, yeah. And it was like um, you know, just your head is just kind of spiraling because you're going in so many directions at one time. And so um the thing I learned, like when I did I did a Kickstarter for the search for Sadeka when I do a sport, what I learned with that is go ahead and finish the book first and then launch the Kickstarter. Oh, okay. So you know you're not waiting on the level. Well, the people aren't because like there's people and a lot of people they support you and they're really understanding, but it's just like I feel like it's good karma, you know, to just you know jump in. Like when that one was released, it was like when I launched the Kickstarter, like the I had a book to show people the book is done. Right. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, that's important right there.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Okay, like we still like we have people, because what happened? It took us a while to get Tusky Airs done. So I sent out some, you know, we've been sending updates asking people to, you know, refresh their address or let us, you know, just if you have a change of address, you know, send us a message. So there's still a lot of people that haven't done that, you know, where I'm going in manually and saying, hey, you went to, you know, but it's our fault because it took so long, you know. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

But um I think it's good though for people to learn about some of those things where where they can improve on it. You're basically giving them the game right there. Yeah, I'm taking the game right now, man.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I'm taking notes, giving you the game. So that's a you know, Kickstarter, any type of crowdfunding, I say finish it first. Uh the projects I'm working on now that we'll be releasing some Kickstarters for, the majority of them were gonna finish the book first. Oh, nice, okay. And then you said projects you're working on now.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

How many projects do you usually juggle at once? Oh, this means.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So um I'm you know a free agent, man, as of like September last year. Oh, so you get it. I don't have my job anymore. Um career of 18 years, so I'm you know trying to do this. So yeah, it's a different story. I used to turn down like tons of stuff, but now people come to me with projects, I self-filter it. Okay, you know, because it's like um if it's not really jiving with my spirit or like what the type of thing that I want to do, I'm not gonna do it. Right. But um, yeah, I I'm I'm a free, I'm a free agent. I take I take payments for writing. Um, some of them, like uh this, if you don't mind. Oh yeah. I'm gonna show you this one right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Uh this is a new camera right here.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

You can let them this is a new joint I'm working on with uh Deadron Sneed, who's also uh local uh North, like he's in the uh I guess Lawrenceville area. Okay, yeah. Um we got him. We got this uh villains and vinyl, it's coming. And he came to me, he already had like some of the idea, most of the idea, and then he was like, You want to partner with me on this? Yes. So um we are, you know, I'm not here trying to crank right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

But I think that's important. Um, just because too, I've I've heard a lot of, you know, I've been a business entrepreneur for years, but but we see a lot of people come and go. And and just to see somebody that's that's able to work towards sustainability, that's a word you don't hear thrown around a lot. Sustainability is is huge. So I'm gonna idea, your goal should be okay, when do I reach a point of sustainability? Basically, when can I pay myself? When can I support myself? And um just to see you doing the work it takes to get there, I think that's inspiring.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

And you know, like um, you know, everything is a lesson, right? So I even look back to Stay Battling, which I mean and Marcus, we loved it. We realized like we still talk about uh, you know, like trying to you know bring it back. Like if you look here, real close, you probably can't see, but if you're close up on there, she's wearing a stay battling shirt. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we, you know, we you know, but the thing was what we learned from that is to make sure that like if you team up with other people and you know you're writing down coming creating contracts and all that stuff, then you need to be absolutely sure that those people have you know the same vision that you subscribe, you know what I'm saying? So like there's a lot of things you and you guys know there's a lot of things in regular business that don't really go over so well in hip hop, right? You know what I'm saying? Like um, we've seen culture vultures. I was just about to say, you see, that's what you're getting at.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

We ain't trying to be no culture vulture, so you ain't gonna come in with no mess with us because this real hip hop, right? On this show, that's one of the things. Like, this is a hip-hop show. So uh isn't it's by no incon no coincidence that we invite you here. We we saw you coming up through the ranks and hip-hop on the hip-hop scene, on the local Atlanta scene, and your ability to transcend beyond that. I think that's what I'm trying to get y'all audience to see like you can keep going.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

And man, like you know what the crazy thing is? When you look now um at a lot of us that came up in that time. So y'all remember Tammy, Cadence, right? I I'm at a comic convention walking around, like I hear somebody say, Greg, and I'm like, huh? And I look, and it's Tammy, and she's sitting behind her own.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

She's got like her own uh she was doing the eye of the cypher back then.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, she was doing what we was doing, like pictures, videos, and all that. But she's got her uh, it's Corgi. I'm gonna butcher it. I'll find I'll try to find it for y'all. She got her online, she's popular. Nice. She be getting money at comic convention. We hung out in DC. Um, you look at like Flux, you know, Fred Flux singleton. Like these dudes is killing the arc age, so it's like a lot of us have, you know, transitioned from what we were doing to other things, dropping gym to home boy job.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah, I know. I was at the uh some week, I'm partnering with a company uh called your party that does some companies, and I'll be at conventions and I'm walking, I'm like, and I hear someone, I'm like, man, I know y'all, you know, and uh and y'all have the books, and I always make sure I go over and get me a book, give me an autograph. I told them about dressing up for the next one. Hey, going all the way cosplay is going down. Yeah, yeah. Get in it. That would be dope right there, though. Just uh it's like everything comes full circle, though. I I know that collab too, man. I got some ideas. I know that feeling on that heart. You just you just in a random city and you walk around and you see somebody you know, you know, selling their product, and like it's it's a really good feeling that just to see that.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

I walked in, um, it's probably close to a year ago. I walked into Target by my house, and uh this dude had on a stay battling t-shirt. Really? You know he's from day one if you got that. You know, I usually don't, because I see people with Tuskegee hair shirts. Right, you know, sometimes, but it's all about how you feel that day, you know. Right. I ain't really just jumping in people's business like that. But I saw that Stay Battling that was printed in like 2006. Right. And I was like, yo, where did you get that shirt? And he was like, Man, my I can't, I don't even remember. My girlfriend got it for me. I just love it. I've been wearing it for like 13 years. I'm like, right. There's still a no money.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

We got the picture, uh, somebody found took a picture and sent it on Instagram of one-off shirts in a thrift store. And and they were like, why is this in a thrift store? But we took it as the ultimate compliment. They done made a few cycles. You've been around long enough for your shirts to end up in a thrift store. Like, we were like, wow. Like you can tell it was on our first shirts because the print was making it on screen, so the superdown fresh was not clear. It was it was like grungy. But people thought we were doing it on purpose. But it was really because the first couple shirts was smooth. When the ink started drying, I did it in the garage. Right. Maked it in the oven.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I remember the first time you bust up on the scene with the shirts. Yeah, so many of y'all's influence, bro. You know, watch what y'all get done with. That influence was uh cyclical, man, because I remember like me, like I remember, like I used to break when I was a kid. That's like I wanted to stop playing. We should have found video because all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah, somebody somebody sent us the video.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I just wanted to break. Right. And when I was like 12, I'm dating myself, but when I was like 12, I moved to Louisiana. We were still breaking in in Missouri, we were still breaking like in '86, '87. Okay. I moved to Louisiana. They was like doing the wap and the cabbage patch and stuff. And I just felt out of place. And so it's like I stopped. You know what I'm saying? I stopped breaking because there was nobody around breaking.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

That's a lot of us all the folks been through that that little that little.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So when I came to uh I came here, I think it was like the first time I went to MJQ. I seen I I think Tony oh, remember Tony from uh Yeah, we still have Tony. Yeah, I think he won't even remember, but I think he was the first one I seen breaking. I was like. Let's stop right now.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

We're gonna we're gonna pick up. We're gonna pick up right now. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll talk forever. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, uh Superdown Fresh Podcast. We're gonna be right back. Yeah, welcome back to the Superdown Fresh Podcast, man. It's main man Bolo Fresh and D Black and here. We got the man that Greg Burnham in the building. And we already talked about some things, man. We we've been talking about this this whole transition and and link ups, hip hop, the writing, and everything else. Let's get it. Yes, sir. I know we left off, we were talking about just uh the MJQ days, and you telling me some stuff I didn't really know that you was breakdancing. Because by the time I hit you.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Well, I wasn't breaking like when I got here. Right. Um, I you know, I was out of it. I I had like when I moved here, I was coming off of like a knee injury. I had been in a car wreck. So even if I wanted to break, like I wanted to, I would watch out. And I'd be like, nah, dog, you gotta do it. You throw it all with the crew though, it's all good. Yeah, I was like everywhere. Consider me like a documentary, like I was uh I was taking my camera, like we go on those battles.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, a lot of times in the battles, if if you wasn't there, we wasn't, we would, we didn't have video.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Right. It was it was that essential. Yeah, and that was part of the the model for Stay Battling was you know to be able to put the stuff up. So I would put battles up. We started putting them on YouTube. There's still some, they're starting to get taken down now for copyright uh music. But I still have a few up there, yeah. Okay. But um yeah, that was part of our model. We was just trying to show. And like I will say, you know, we can agree. Like overall, Atlanta had like at that point, I'd say maybe three, four, four like strong crews that could compete outside of Atlanta. But um it was like watching that we were like documenting while that scene was building up, right? You know, like the dudes when I first set foot, the guy, the people that was, I ain't gonna say names, but that were quote unquote supposed to be, you know, everything, like they got surpassed quickly. Right. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

So it's happened, like these younger kids, man, older, the kids are uh because they're learning from the OGs, and and they're they're they're they're aggressive. Like, and I know we work with Rockwell Dance Academy, and just watching those kids learn from people like Orco and Honey Rockwell, like they're they're getting an advantage because they're learning straight from the source.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

And I I mean, but I gotta say, I mean, you remember, I remember the first time, well, I remember when they were teaching uh Jay Killer how to do a flare. Like I remember that we were in Gainesville, yeah, Gainesville, Florida. I remember like all like one of the things that I would say is because Zapper and all of y'all were like so loyal to the true elements, like the true origin of him here, that them two, man. Remember when Mother Pitt was like murdering we talk about the shortest coming up through the SBO crew. I'm talking about these eight, nine, eight years old, seven, eight, nine-year-olds.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

But the thing wasn't, I just wondered. I watched these little kids, like it ain't like a lot of kids now. They have kids' battles. These kids grew up. They never went kids' battles with them. All the regular grown folks. They was in the clubs. They was in the club with us. A lot of times they weren't even old enough to be though. The bench? Yeah, at the bench. Yeah, um, I seen Murphy, man. Kadis was still doing the uh photography that I took photos from her from there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah, I seen that like I think he got he went, yeah, I think he made like the semifinals. It was adults. Like young people.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Right. I know we talked about uh the MJQ days. What's your experience with the MJQ? You know, that's a that's a classic venue in Atlanta on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yeah, it was, you know, I was like clubbed out, you know, from high school and college, all that. So when I moved to Atlanta, I wasn't like I went to 112, like those kind of things, but it wasn't my speed. And then uh one day, me and my homie, we went up in MJQ, and the music was right that I think I was talking about uh Tony and them like was breaking. Risen from the ashes, risen from the ashes. Shout out to my peeps, yeah. Lovely, wonderful people, man. Um so I was like, Yeah, man, I think I'm gonna come here every Friday. And you know, and it built, it kept getting better. Remember Rasta Root used to have his joint second face off Fridays? Yeah, uh, dress and uh yeah, man. And you were yeah, so y'all was like being responsible humans. Y'all wasn't coming on Wednesday nights with us. Uh we would go into the drunken unicorn, yeah, and we would uh make uh make that space so they can rock in the drunken unicorn. Your little one, your little brother Gizmo, man.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Uh AK and uh Instagate stayed in that straw, man. Man, every time I go to the queue, y'all come.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

It'd be so hot in that because you know the unicorn was that little bitty room, you know what I'm saying? Right so hot in there, man. Yeah, back from the club.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

I was in full family mode back then. That's when I had gotten married once I had two boys.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, I was going on. I was uh getting home at three in the morning and getting up for work at six.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Yeah. Hey, that was some of the real hip hop time back in the day where you just straight from the venue, straight from the jams, we threw, because you know, me and Zach, we threw a couple of uh events at MJQ.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

And um I remember one night, man, I remember driving from MJQ to work and sleeping in my car.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

I teach straight there. Right. You gotta do what you gotta do. And you're you say you have the new uh project, the villains and vinyl. Yeah, like do you use some of those elements in your story? Like, do y'all keep some of the Atlanta in there?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, well, it takes place in Atlanta. It's it's a futuristic thing. Uh as you can see this little uh robot back here. I can't tell everything just yet, but um, yeah, it takes place. We're trying to get Atlanta, we're trying to get them. It takes up the zones are gonna be heavily uh used. Like each of the zones of Atlanta. Um, you might see some of the spots like the MJQs, some of those spots. You may actually see those in the comics.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Is Atlanta wonder if Atlanta is the only city that where the zones are so heavily regarded? Like I remember when that first started, it was like, man, why y'all I'm zone six? Zone four, like where did this come from? Like at some point, I think it's well, it became important to be uh the zone you're from.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Yeah, I know I know New Orleans has the wards, from North Houston has the wards, New York has a borough. So I think it's like every city figures out a way to kind of section off and people can feel like that. I know we were coming up, it was more about where you lived at.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

So it was your apartment complex name or or your project name, like like you you born bowing homes, or you know what I'm saying? You bank it course, you know what I'm saying? Hollywood courts, like we grew up around those areas, and then at some point it started uh actually maybe heaven when they start tearing down projects, like you start ripping them up, so now these groups are coming together so they gentrification. We all play a game, yeah. Okay, yeah, that's cool. That's definitely dope right there. Just to just to see how you're incorporating that.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

It's gonna be the like the core, you know, elements of hip-hop uh are gonna be like really, really uh shown through the book. But uh, we're doing it, you know. We live in Atlanta, and so we're doing it in Atlanta. Yeah. Right. And it's dope, but we pay respects to like the greats. It's it's I'm really, really excited about the project.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Oh I can't wait to see that's gonna see how they work in that got the hip-hop still strong, ain't no culture for syring. That's a word.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Yeah, we um like we uh when we created uh a little sidekick dude, right? Um, I was like, I want him to be Puerto Rican. Yeah, yeah, looking like Puerto Rico's stronger. But I needed that, man, because you know, everybody wants to just say hip-hop was a uh a black thing, you know what I'm saying? Right. Puerto Ricans was right there. Brown brothers were strong in the beginning, yeah. And not just Puerto Rican, Dominican, you know, but um you just want to, you know, give that whole representation stuff. Big up to the Brown brothers.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

But that's something that I always appreciated about a breakdancing scene, because much like our family, like it was always diverse. And we just talked about that on another show where one of the few areas. Yeah, nothing nothing we've done has ever been just uh for black people, right? You know what I'm saying? It's is we've we've found ways to make sure that it's diverse enough where everybody can get something from it.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Everybody's gonna get this good vibe. And I'm not like in no way am I saying I don't do stuff for black people. And send something to the kids' books and everything. This is hip-hop, and this is something that I love, and so we want to kind of like it's almost like uh in a way, it's like a retelling of you know how hip hop began. But I think in business it's important, though.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

You you have to learn uh what we call your finding your target audience. Yeah, you know, like you got the Tuskegee Harris, and I'm sure that that African Americans love that, like that's they get you in the door.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

But you know what? Like the and the cool thing that we've seen with that book is that it doesn't like like when I looked at the Kickstarter, you know, when back then when you know every time somebody pledged, you know, they would they would show their pictures and stuff like that. And I was like, whoa. We've been told all our lives that if you put five black kids on the cover of something, right, certain people ain't gonna buy it. You know, there's uh the unwritten uh rule of three in Hollywood, which means that if you have three black, like main black characters, then it's considered a black property and it's only gonna be marketed as a black property. We definitely heard that. So when we did that, and then we see all these non-black people buying, and when we go to comic conventions, New York, like San Diego, all that.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

That's a powerful thing, though. Like, what would like do y'all even have like a target age in the world?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

We call it uh all ages, uh the same with the search for Sataka. So there's a style to it where where the content is not anything that's inappropriate for kids. Okay. But we don't dumb the book down, we don't write it like we're writing for kids. We're writing it to where you know adults are still like, okay, when's that next one coming out? Right. It's very important though. So it's a style. You know, you Avatar Last Airbender was like that. It was like me and my son. My son was eight, and I was 30. Right. And we sit there like that. I feel you on that. I feel you on that.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

You guys came through to my school and and you know, I'm big on the Tusky Gaz and all the things you do, but the kids went bonkers, and this is six, seven, eighth graders, and they just went crazy about it too. So we all in there talking about it together.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, and when we go to colleges, same thing, high schools, same thing, comic conventions. We have, man, it's so awesome. There, we have like people that are like in their 60s that cosplay our characters. Uh though you know, yeah, it's just you know, so it's that wide reach.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Do you have a favorite that you've seen so far? Or is it loving up?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

We'll be looking at the favorite. There's there's many, man. Um I guess as anything surprised you, like just caught you off guard. Oh man, so like two years ago at New York Comic-Con, and we see this family, you know, every year when we go up there. Right. Nice, really nice people. They buy the books, all that kind of stuff. And the dad and the mom walked up and they're like, hey, how's it going? And we're like, cool, cool, cool. Just talking, and then they split. And they had their baby girl, I think she was like six or seven at the time. Right. Dressed like full on, like Ayana, which is one of the girls. She had the helmet, she had the little baby, not the baby, little girl. That one, I ain't gonna lie, you know, allergies got affected that day. Uh go, go. So we've had, you know, we've had those uh last. Like the ultimate compliment, though, man, is to see somebody's yeah, when you you're talking about that came out of your brain, you know, that was like, hey, we should do this, and then we put it together and do it, and then it resonates with people to where like they've made the jacket. They made, you know what I'm saying, like with the T on it, like the whole thing. And that's the beauty of cosplay, you know. You know, some people, and it's it's nothing wrong with it. It's you know, some people don't have that time or whatever, so they buy costumes, right? But a lot of people make costumes students who who make in the weapons and the clothing and so like when you so you're thinking, man, like this person, they're not getting paid for it. Right, you know, they all that's gonna happen is some pictures are gonna be taken, they're gonna spend a lot of their time because you know, we're not Spider-Man or Batman. So people be like, Who are you? Who are you? You know, right, and they still have the story gets out even more though. That's like a conversation piece. But just that they want to spend their time to you know dress like our. That's amazing, dude.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

I didn't know a lot about the cosplay and all that until I started looking at, you know, you know, following some of y'all stuff and then looking at those convictions and like this. Man, that's big. The characters world and the world creating is so big. Now I just seen an article where a CGM model just got uh got signed. That's a great actor. And then I found out they they set up in 2016. These guys just created this 3D person, and they got maybe 2.5 Instagram followers, 2.5 million, then Twitter, about 500,000 followers. And she got so popular, they started getting contracts and and uh sponsorship deals. But I'm looking at somebody like you, you have a world, you have you have a universe, you have multiple universes, multiple characters, like you're already on that trajectory, like they've kicked in the door for people like you for creators. Yeah, that's crazy that you can now take a fictional character and put it into the world as somebody real and get deals based on that. Right, yeah. It made me wish I was a writer, man. It's like, man, I'd have me a whole family set up just waiting, like, okay, somebody wants this family.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

It's crazy because I got a friend, he does you guys know the Funko Pops. Yeah, he does like custom joints. So I had him do some for uh Sadaka for the Kickstarter. Um I just you know asked him, can he do a Tuskegee Air one? I just went for myself. Um because that even like you just look at the rant so they're gonna be fun. The thing about it is they they're cut, he makes them by hand. Okay, so they're expensive. So, you know, if somebody wants one, like I've had a few people.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

I'm just saying digitally, like yeah, profile and and put them in poses and create a whirlpool.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, Marcus did that too. Yeah, he created a couple of. Uh and we, you know, we reached out to Funko, they were like, Yeah, maybe one day you'll guys.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

But man, it's I think it's it's just an exciting time. Like I see, I see everybody's pushing, especially now, it's it's all about content. It's all about everybody wants content from from things they can read, things they can see and participate in. And uh I think what you're doing is is right right where you need to be. And it's it's all gonna get bigger and keep growing.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yeah, yeah. That's the plan, man, is to just like keep pranking until you know that wall cracks. Yeah, that's that's really all you can do.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

We tear down crossing all barriers. Yeah, before we go in here, I I did want to ask you like just about writing, I know, to create these characters. Like, where do they come from? Are your characters based on people you know? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Research before you like it, it's it's always gonna depend on like what type of characters I'm creating. What I will do, it's a secret. I don't even know if it's a secret, but um, I try to attach like personalities and temperaments of people that I've come across or people that I've known.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

You know, I was trying to get to that.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Like, if you got all these personalities that you got one of your kids and but like like for real, so you know, we don't um like with Tuskegee Ayers, there's five main characters, two of them are modeled after my kids, and two of them are modeled after Mark's kids. Same their names, everything, right? Um but you know, it's like it's it doesn't have to necessarily be that somebody that close to you. I think what I tr what I'm cautious of, let me explain what I'm cautious of. I don't want to make caricatures, I don't want to make stereotypes, I don't want to say uh this is the way an Asian person has been portrayed on TV. So I'm just gonna appreciate that you're saying that. Like I think that's we want to do that. So so I'm gonna give you characters that like they have their own personalities, right? So if somebody says, I did no, no, no, I know a human being that does this, right? You know what I'm saying? So uh I kind of go off of that, and I think that's important. Um I have a job as a black man that's creating you know black characters. I could I could you know create the same stereotypes and tropes that have been forced on us forever.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Please don't.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Or I can change it. There's nothing worse like when I see uh like a uh you know a non-black person write a black person and it's stereotypical, I expect that. You know what hurts me the worst is when I see a black person write a character that's stereotypical that enforces about them folks, right? Come on, man. You too. So you know that's my thing. And it goes all the way across the world, whether it's you know, you know, regardless of the race of the character that I'm creating.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

But I appreciate you letting us know that you put that level of thought into your characters, right? Um, where where can we find it? Like as we bring this to a close, like where like Instagram, Facebook, like where I'm actually outside of the zone. What's on you from?

SPEAKER_00 39:43

But um yeah, so you you have uh Tusky Airs on every platform. Not every platform, the ones that old people use. Yeah, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook. Okay, um, I have the search for Sotica on uh Instagram and Facebook. Uh I'm Greg underscore Burnham7 on Instagram. Um you can buy books at tuskegears.com. TuskegeeAirs.com. And then I got another site, uh Platform L7. It's a uh Shopify site. Okay, it's pretty cool for my children's books and my other comics. And you can find me almost at any comic convention.