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foreign as a playwright to make it to Broadway which also opened the door for me to work in TV and film like everybody I had a dream growing up now before I tell you what that dream was you have to promise not to laugh you gonna laugh promise all right when I was growing up I wanted to be a superhero see I wanted to be what

I saw so vibrantly on the pages of my Marvel and DC comic books I actually used to sit on a stoop in the projects with my god brother Johnny and we would create our own stories writing and drawing them all now I have to confess years before Miles Morales we actually made the first black Spider-Man two of them what can I say he's from Queens now

as we know there's always a moment in a superhero's life where they realize that they have superpowers now mine was revealed to me by my arch nemesis my 8th grade English teacher after he gave the class an assignment to write a poem what happened after I did that would forever change the course of my life because when I turned in that assignment the poem was so

good my teacher actually thought I plagiarized it he asked me how did I know what all these literary devices were that I didn't even know had names at the time because up until this point because of my dyslexia English and writing was always my kryptonite I didn't even realize that all those years of consuming hip-hop music and culture was actually teaching me how to use literary

techniques like when Tupac said picture perfect I paint a perfect picture I will find out that that was alliteration hmm I wanted to try that pompous politicians pressure people to push towards their God now right in that moment a new power was unlocked we still buy street signs that was slightly slanted in the slums of the city then we gradually geographically graph the graffiti on granite

walls and this was driven from The Rage of the reaction of racism that was all right y'all get the point [Applause] I will soon find out what a metaphor was a simile double entender onomatopoeia in rhyme Eternal rhyme and so on and I found myself getting stronger with every word and phrase I was putting together now a couple of years later in high school I would

discover the world of Slam poetry I had just recently got cut from my basketball team so I had a lot of extra time on my hands that I wasn't used to so what I did was I transformed my competitive energy from the court to the stage now this was years before I ended up going to college and studying check off and Meisner and William Shakespeare and

August Wilson back then I was studying underground battle rap Kings like Loaded Lux and mooc and Prophets that called themselves deaf poets see those men they looked and sounded like me they sounded like the neighborhoods I lived in they sounded like home so now like those poets lemon Anderson and black ice I started to look at people different stories started coming in and out of my

mind just from observing the everyday world around me now I can make the regular most mundane blue collar worker of the middle class sound like a superhero like I remember there was always this guy on the corner telling stories and reminiscing we all know this guy right and all his stories would start off with yo I used to be nice most people will write him off

but me I saw more than a person whose dream was deferred I saw a person who came alive in those stories I knew that he was more than those dreams whether they knew it or not I used to be nice yo Nice Like Jordan Fade Away nice when I stepped on the court stars with a line the world stopped spinning gravity with cease and I appeared

to jump higher you see the angle of my form was nothing less than Da Vinci's sketch of the ideal man I used to be nice I wasn't fast but I was quick my defense was well equipped and my siswa crisp since birth I was chosen I used to part defenses like Moses due to my vision I can Envision a player's position before they was positioned I

was conditioned my no looks were textbook and Scouts even said I was off the hook look my crossover will put my opponent on pause and cause the crowd to go oh yeah I used to be nice I used to pin shots on the backboard never bored and when I scored I transformed into something that wasn't even human but who knew I would be ruined by guys

so envious of my game his aim was me so when I heard the snap of my knee everything went silent I no longer heard the crowd on my team my years of dedication deteriorated with my dream so I laid there on the floor four minutes left for a quarter no water just a Jersey drenching sweat regrets of trying to dunk on him no need to ask

why this is the hand that was dealt no sleeves I couldn't cheat defeat didn't taste good but I used to be nice yo Nice Like Jordan Fade Away nice when I stepped on the court the Stars would align the world stopped spinning gravity with cease and I appeared to jump higher yeah I used to be nice now I found myself my I found myself becoming obsessed

with words and how they sounded I started absorbing and paying attention more to speech patterns when people would speak when I was on the train going through the city I also fell in love with jazz because I realized that the style that I was creating for myself had elements of improvisation like Jazz Greats Gil Scott Heron Miles Davis Thelonious I also want to discover a new

poets that I didn't know that's when I discovered Langston Hughes and Gene tumor now like every story everyone has a love interest and mine was Nikki Giovanni and I actually fell in love with her I found an Afrocentric descended angel sitting by herself she is beautiful certain moments are precious I was told and when you get to see into someone's Soul you see heaven so if

that's true Heaven is where I am she painted her finger across the sky like she was painting the Stars and the world fell silent as I listened to the internal instrumental that my heartbeat made I walked up behind her and touched her shoulder Like the Wind and she looked at me like that familiar image she sees in her dreams she is like the perfect use of

assonance and just the right amount of lines her pupils look lost and I wanted to teach her to love what she sees do pictures I have pieced together her figure like a mosaic and I have one on the walls of my mind like graffiti on the cathedrals of the ghetto called Apartments I sat down with her and I grabbed my moon easel and Cloud palette and

I started to add stars to her masterpiece I found an Afrocentric descended angel that reminded me of Aphrodite and I wonder what would be her aphrodisiac she was sitting by herself and now I sit with her and she is so beautiful [Applause] years would pass and unfortunately I started to lose a lot of my friends to violence and or jail and it was hard for me

not to feel a sense of survivor's remorse so it would keep me up at night on how could I honor them and I realized that I can honor them by not only telling my stories but telling their stories as well so they could live on the page forever I'm from a place with his big houses and spouses no I'm really from a place where single moms

commute two hours to work in stencil skirts pencil skirts and nice blouses I'm from a place where dudes stand in front of the bodega trying to hold their genes I'm from a place where there's Hustlers and fiends cops May intervene some unseen I'm from a place where boys raise boys men are non-existent and mothers are young so how y'all expect us to turn out looking up

the hustlers was our worth we were told that our awards were skirts seeing the hood fingers get contorted rhetoric retorted shots ring out by offense now R.I.P shirts are worn in front of coffins and this happens all too often because we're taught to do that with no regret refuel set we throwing up signs and we ain't even deaf kin to death it's like our lives as

long as that Bible verse Jesus wept see that's why I can't wait to the day with my skin isn't a novelty and our stories aren't synonymous with poverty because honestly it's hard to deal in modesty when we have to deal with this identity dichotomy like why do I have to say I'm human too when DNA proves I'm deep buried in you we made the pyramid so

you can see a beautiful view we made statues with wide noses we were just making the truth so imagine someone saying it wasn't you and whoever did those great things must have been much lighter than you but how when you discovered the tombs Mommy's hair was even woven down to the root truth so if you really want to help us young Brothers out stop making our

schools look like prisons stop determining how many jails you're going to build off our third grade reading scores scores four scores give black boy bald and watch him score give black boy good beat then put him on tour give black boy Big Chain because he loves the law the crowd just screams because he never boils but then watch black people get confused because a couple of

black boys are up in Forbes five Mike and sauce then be biased and make him law some black boy to jail feed him well because he's a mole now he's locked down now who misses them all now he gets angry he wants more he screams at the top of his lungs his voice gets hoarse because he remembers when he used to rock polo with man on

horse but of course this is not what black boys calls he just stands as look his course they made his God look nothing like him but made him say Lord black boy fights in yard as God's watching us like Ali and forming all over again with the same broken jaw now he saw Society Clips his wings then asks him to Saul Now another black boy dead

but nobody saw now another black mother crying in streets emotions raw now she prays to that same God saying why Lord why'd you have to take my little black boy he had so much in store but now he's just another Young dead black boy you see I'm from a place where boys raise boys men and non-existent and mothers are young so I pray for the black

boy [Applause] as you see that little boy that has dyslexia that spent half of his educational journey is special education and remedial classes that always struggled with English in writing eventually found his way academically and actually started to thrive and that same little boy made it to Broadway to the Mountaintop of writing see by telling stories and being authentic to who I am I became the

superhero I wanted to be as a kid thank you [Applause]