Here's 4 key quotes from Styles P talking mental health, Black men embracing therapy and losing his daughter
The LOX’s Styles P has a lot to talk about these days. The hip-hop veteran stepped forward with filmmaker Hezues R to talk with Apple Music 1’s Ebro Darden on the latest episode of ‘The Message’ celebrating World Mental Health Day.
During the chat, they discuss work with the S.I.C. Film School platform, empowering young creatives and focusing on the importance of mental health and power of therapy. Kick back and check out four quotes from both Styles and Hezues.
Styles P on Why He’s Not Afraid To Be Emotional and Why He Encourages Black Men To Embrace Therapy…
I wake up, most of the times I get, it's from my community too, I'm in a juice bar, and most of the time it's women, sometimes it's older Black women too, sometimes it's men and younger people, but I always get, "I like how you're not afraid to be emotional." And it scares me because we are not supposed to be afraid to be emotional. You're really, especially speaking of mental health, you holding in your feelings and bottling them in, being scared to cry, yell, scream, laugh, share pain, thinking you're weak for handling a problem, Black men thinking they can't go to a therapist, you're just building shit up inside of yourself and you're kind of hurting yourself. So it's not about how someone else judges how you are a man, it's about how you judge how you're a man. And being an emotional man doesn't make you a weaker man, that makes you a stronger man because you're more in sense of your weaknesses. When you try to be strong all the time, and you may not have adapted to what your weaknesses are or even be knowledgeable of them to strengthen yourself up. So it's okay to reach out to a therapist, get on the phone, call your brother, call your sister, call your homie, tell him how you're doing. I think that should be the norm now.
Styles P Reflects on Losing His Daughter to Suicide…
I've lost a daughter to suicide. And thinking about mental health, I probably look at it different from most people. She didn't have signs, didn't see it, didn't know, she never had no attempts, no anything. Most people don't know how other people feel. Really, at the end of the day, even mental health specialists, even the experts, a lot of people don't go around asking people how they feel or expressing how they feel. And with understanding that, like you said, I'm pretty sure most mental health experts have to go through some sort of specific training or class to keep their mind state intact. I think the average individual doesn't look at their own life, what they're going through and measure it on their own scale without comparing it to someone else and how they feel and what's going on and what they should do, what they should not do, and what makes them tick. A lot of us aren't in touch with ourselves to even be mentally healthy.
Filmmaker Hezues R on How His S.I.C. Film School is Helping Kids Trade Violence for Cameras…
I’ve known Styles maybe 20 years now. I had the opportunity to film him in 2001 for one of his album release parties at Club Cheetah back in the day of a show I had called Eye On It. Eye On I.T., I.T. stands for inspirational television. So the progression over the last 20 years, I've done different nonprofits and organizations like Guns for Cameras to now this year we're doing the S.I.C. Film School. And S.I.C is the Evolution of Eye On It. S-I-C, which stands for Social Impact Content. So we're opening up a campus facility in Yonkers in New York. It's at the largest sound stage development in the Northeast. 15 stages, a million square feet of production space, and we're providing a lot of opportunities for the youth in the community. Beyond an education platform, we also develop community programs and partnership with other agencies. So we have an organization called Glocks for Ocs. We have Guns 4 Cameras. An Oc is a Oculus headset. So Styles has been super supportive throughout the years, everything we've done, he's always been there for the community, for the youth, introducing me to other people, being very vocal about his passion and commitment.
Filmmaker Hezues R Tells Styles P How His Song “The Life” Influenced Him To Turn His Life Around…
I do want to say that the first song in our playlist, “The Life” by Styles P and Pharoahe Monch, I was just telling him in the green room how much that song meant to me. And we've been friends for years, but I don't think he ever knew how much that song meant to me. When I was 22 years old, I was shot at 22 times. I got hit by three different guns, a nine, a 45, a 22, still got a slug in my stomach. It was 2:22 in the morning. But when I heard “The Life,” it made me question and readjust my perspective and to try to understand, "Am I a product of my environment, everything that I'm going through and what my friends are going through, my peers are going through?" And I started to realize... And this is why I'm so passionate about The Message because at that point I started to realize nobody was going to come in and fix this for us, nobody's going to change this or the conditions that we lived through, what's going on.
