http://nerdwithswag.com/nerdwithswag-interviews-author-sakiya-sandifer-right-back-to-equilibrium/
NerdwithSwag Interviews Author “Sakiya Sandifer”: (Right Back To Equilibrium…)
09/03/2008
Enter the self proclaimed “Genius behind the Genius” on Kanye West’s latest book “Thank You and Your Welcome“, Co-Author Sakiya Sandifer. Our introspective banter veered from the key’s of life, to the latest iPhone applications, to possibilities of world peace, and among all these topics the denominator remained the same, a return right back to equilibrium. This is a glimpse into the intellect of one of our generations truly gifted thinkers. His first book Think Think Think and Think Again, a collection of personal euphemisms, catalyzed a movement and became foundation for the curriculum of the 2006-2007 Youth Development Program in
NWS: Lets start off with introductions. I know that your the man behind WeThink LLC, And I’m not sure if this is the latest production but its the most noteworthy that I’ve seen other than the youth development program in
Sakiya: Sure were talking about the book Thank You and Your Welcome, right?
NWS: Correct.
Sakiya: The book “Thank You and Your Welcome” came out of the first book that I wrote, “Think Think Think and Think Again”. Kanye was really really inspired by that book, and until then he had had received offers to write a book, but everyone who approached him wanted a tell all, crack the glory type of story. Once he saw mine, he contacted me and said, “Look I wanna do a version of that one, would you you co-write it with me”? And that’s not something I’m going to say no to, and now here you are and we’re talking about it today. But that’s how it started my me doing my book first and putting it out there, It’s karma. I really believe in putting out into the universe what you want.
So it took me writing that book, and the funny thing about that is I haven’t sold more than… Well I shouldn’t say sold. I haven’t produced, more than 4,000 of my book, but that played an opportunity to be part of half a million sold. Nothing is a small step in your journey, every step counts, and it took that for me to do that (write my first book), to draw the necessary attention to for me to do that book with Kanye. I’m really looking at that book as the stepping stone to put me out in the forefront because I’m really the “Genius behind the Genius.”
NWS: I hear that, so when Kanye stepped to you and approached to you about this book, what was his intentions? What did he want the audience, when they’re finished and they’ve closed to book and reminisce on everything, what did he want their lasting impression to be?
Sakiya: Actually what we, and this is really a joint effort… We wanted people to have a clear vision on what they want and how to get what they want out of life. One of the main things that we did not want to do is just find the type of life that somebody should want. But we wanted people to be able to have a clear picture on what they want in life, and these are some tools that you can use that you can apply in your journey to get there.
NWS: That’s really something that i feel in modern day media gets construed allot, I know that your familiar with Dr Cornell west right?
Sakiya: Yea, I need to take his spot.
NWS: [chuckle] No doubt.
NWS: But he said this statement in this interview, that I saw a few months ago, and I feel like its very relevant. In
Sakiya: Yea, yea, yea, the status quo and stuff like that. One of the things I’ve often told my clients is or my past clients in fact is sometimes you not only have to think outside the box, you have to create your own box and that is the essence of what this book is. What we also wanted to do is [and plan on doing] limited speaking engagements together, and we both did not want to tell anybody anything that we didn’t necessarily believe in or haven’t done ourselves.
It’s like the thing that I’m most proud off, of all the products that I’ve put out on the market place thus far, none of it is sugar water because that’s easy to just sell a whole bunch of nothing. I could have come up with some easy low common denominator type of messages, which I’m sure could have sold a cold 5 million copies. And believe it or not there was, well I don’t wanna say a large part, but a good percentage of the publishing industry said that nobody wanted to hear this voice from young black males. So in that right there, it convinced us and pushed us to do this more, and doing this with self publishing it was going to be said exactly the way that we wanted it.
NWS: Well I hate to draw comparisons, but Ghostface recently released a book.
Sakiya: No, there’s nothing wrong with drawing comparisons that’s the only way your going to be able to determine what something is.
NWS: Right, true, true well Ghostface recently came out with something similar and a little bit more slap stick and a little bit more uncouth.
Sakiya: Absolutely.
NWS: But he drops a lot of knowledge that I think went over allot of peoples’ heads, and I know that Kanye is a huge fan of Wu-Tang so I wondered if he looked at that project, because I believe that it came out a bit earlier, did he look at that for any kind of inspiration or guidelines?
Sakiya: No we didn’t look at that book at all.
NWS: So moving on what further projects do you have coming up?
Sakiya: Well what I have coming up is a speaking tour, and its entitled “Thinking Saved My Life”, I wanna do probably no more than 6 dates to the end of this year, and I’m really, really going to jump start it in 2009. I’m writing a follow up book with Kanye and then I’m writing my follow up book myself titled “A Book of Questions with One Answer” and that should be coming up in 2009.
NWS: So I know that your a tech fan and I check out your blog from time to time and I saw the fingernail watch concept that you had posted.
Sakiya: yes, yes, yes.
NWS: I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to check out our blog but we do a lot of technology and I always like to ask these questions especially people that have experience with design. If you where to created a gadget as far as something that you could infuse technology and have something that really represents your perspective on design, what would you create? Or do you see out there that missing, or just something cool that you would want. To ease the troubles of your life?
Sakiya: That’s a very interesting question, I need to take a moment… What gadget would I invent? There’s so much out there already… I think I would just combine something, because outside of being able to cut and paste I think the iPhone really has everything.
NWS: That is true and I can agree with you a certain extent, that’s funny though because I’m just now getting into apple products. I just got my first macbook pro, and I’ve been a dedicated PC guy, and I’ve always been a loyal blackberry user, but lately the iPhone has been producing some pretty remarkable applications wise, and its just a fun gadget.
Sakiya: Yea its just a fun gadget that’s what I’m saying. I’m able to do, well I don’t have an iPhone but I have the Ipod touch, but outside of its not doing the cut and paste which is a big part of messaging to me, and I guess that all that I would improve upon, like cut and paste features, but other that that it has the phone, camera, and the Internet. And I just wrote about that on my blog, and the break through with technology that you just could see yourself living with out and to me that’s the Internet and so it has the component which to me I look at as having the world in my hand.
NWS: That’s a is pretty smooth analogy and i can definitely agree with that, but you know there is a cut and paste application that is coming out for the iPhone…
Sakiya: No I did not.
NWS: Yea, there is.
Sakiya: There you go.
NWS: They even have this new comic book application, there’s already have a couple beta versions that are floating around, but its a comic book reader application and what’s dope about it is it allows for you go scroll through the comic books by the page, or you can scroll through the little individual division between each scene or text box, I dunno, it takes that comic book experience. I’m currently going through an infatuation with comic books at the moment, and this was just a recession into my 13 year old glee, but its got a lot of really cool stuff out there, all the NES emulators you could think off, its just alot of fun.
Sakiya: Damn.
NWS: Yea its pretty overwhelming the things that you could do.
Sakiya: And you say its for the iPhone?
NWS: Yup.
Sakiya: Pretty cool.
NWS: It seems to be one of the must have gadgets it seems to be an urban ninja these days.
Sakiya: Yea, yea, with the iPhone it seems that they really did their homework but. But the way my mind works, I see the gift and the curse with everything, and to me the iPhone is the equivalent of putting pictures on the cash register at McDonald’s. Its makes you where you don’t think and I think that why it so widely accepted, they like made it idiot proof. Which is good but also bad when that becomes the norm. So to me it seems like technology is doing is weeding out the thought process more and more, to where people have this sense of entitlement were you don’t have to come up with this type of critical approach on how to get something done. So I love it for its being a cool gadget, like a video game, for me but I like things that challenge my mind as well. If anything its just going to massage your mind, oooohhh, its going to give you that. So I have that gift and curse approach to it, but that’s everything in life, it has to have that balance, that good and bad, that’s just the universe you know. Its the way of the world.
NWS: It has to have that equilibrium.
Sakiya: Exactly.
Sakiya: I was just in a conversation today at lunch and they where talking about world peace, and I said I don’t expect the whole world to be in peace, I said I don’t expect the whole world to be in peace because then then we wouldn’t be able to recognize peace, and then you have to define what is peace. There are people who capitalize and benefit off of turmoil and chaos. So in their mind their sense of normalcy and soothing is that chaos. So we’re never going to convince them that they should have this solidarity or things of that nature.
NWS: Interesting so with that said do you feel that we’re going to have any kind of world unity world wide unity as opposed to world peace.
Sakiya: No not unity but you might find some common denominators, its never going to be. I read this great quote, and it says if God answered all of our prayers, then everyone would perish, because we would all plan against each other. It’s like everybody cant be yes. The key to life is to align yourself with other people that have the same Yes’s as you. But don’t try to necessarily convert somebodies No’s in to your Yes’s. That’s the thing that I take a great issue with but at no time, even in nature has there ever been where everybody got along, that just not the way the universe was made, its like somebody asking for daylight all the time.
NWS: Right back to the equilibrium.
Sakiya: That’s why I think that’s the most criminal thing that you can do is thought projection, to say because I believe in something you should believe in it too. That’s the essence behind the Think movement and I’m not saying not to believe in something, I’m just saying believe in it enough to keep to yourself. And that’s the difference I have no agenda to really sell. I don’t ever have want millions of Sakiya followers, or anything like that, I can inspire people. I can spark people to get what they want out of life and if that’s in line with with something I’m doing that I want out of life then great let do it. I’m not tryna be on you know, Jim Jones stuff and moving people, stuff like that , I’m too much of an individualist to do something like that, my whole thing is believe in what you wanna believe and if it’s your thing do then great , this is my thing great for me, you know and that’s the essence of it and that’s what I’m tryna put out there.
NWS: Definitely, I can agree with that.
NWS: So did you get a chance to catch the end of the Democratic National Convention yesterday?
Sakiya: Yes I did, I watched it on purpose because I knew that somebody was going to ask me that question, plus I’m interested in Barack and I say that not because of his political views, or anything like that, I’m just intrigued by when I see another thinking person, and one thing that nobody can take from Barack is his intelligence. I define intellect by how you apply what you know, and he’s doing it on a freaking genius level. You understand? So I’m like OK, we know that for hes the first, and I’m saying anytime someone is a first they are the most scrutinized. So I’m very interested to see how hes going to perform under that pressure.
And no I don’t think that he’s my savior and going to make my life better, but he can be used for a source of inspiration for what’s possible, absolutely. And the thing that I’m most impressed with Barack, is that he did it his way, not the conventional. He created his own box, he saw something like and was like y’all missing this, watch me raise this money this way. “Y’all missing this watch what we can do…” I love it, and I’m looking forward to having my agenda backed by 300 million dollars. That’s what inspires me about Barack. He got his agenda backed by 300 million dollars and I’m down with that. His stuff is kinda on some sugar water with me, because hes a politician by nature, and the nature of politics is you gotta speak as least offensive as possible and there’s no way that you can really, I feel effectively do that, because you have always to be talking against something. So its like come on take a stand, and someone said today that yo Barack is cool but he just kinda comes of weak to me, and the reason that that is is because he talks really down the middle, yo just say that s some bullsh*t Barack! But a politician can’t say that, but you know hes not talking like that behind closed doors. It’s just that Barack is whats new, like Hillary and them are like the Motorola star track phone and Barack is the iPhone. Hillary is the Motorola 2ways, you was hot then, look at this iPhone son!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment