This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.

To accept this call, press 5.

To block this call, you may begin speaking now, Yo what's going on, Chuck?

we're recording.

Okay, before we begin I need to clarify.

Lftg Radio meets the definition under Program Statement 1480.05 as News Media Press and subsection 540.2 states.

Representative of the news media means person whose principal employment is to gather or report news.

Further Program Statement 5264.0883 states inmate may submit telephone numbers for any person they choose, including numbers for courts, elected officials and members of the news media.

Let's begin.

Talk to them, tell the people what's going on with you.

First, I'd like to thank LFTG Radio for their ongoing efforts.

I believe those efforts helped to bring about a resolution to my inability to have reached out to the news media.

Again, I'm open to dialogue and making myself available to any questions that anybody may have in order to garner this very important support that I'm seeking from the public today and in the future.

So the floor is yours.

Talk to me Any questions you have.

I'm here to answer them, brother.

Well, we're going to save the questions for the interview.

You know, I just want the world to get a feel of.

You know who Chuck Taylor is and you know your time in America and you know just how we ended up here today.

Okay, well, a lot of people don't know I was originally born in Boston, mass Dorchester, specifically Born in St Margaret's Hospital.

I come from a first, I'm a first.

I'm a first generation American.

Excuse me, my mom is from Trinidad and Tobago, big up to all the Trinidadian massive.

Okay, I'm Trinidadian, shut up.

Oh yo big ups.

Big ups?

Yeah, definitely.

I was raised under the culture, played steel pan, listened to Calypso and so Go Blue Boys, super Blue, yeah.

So my dad, he went to school in Boston Bentley Business College.

That's where the two of them met.

After he got his degree in Boston Bentley Business College that's where the two of them met.

After he got his degree in economics, my mom decided to stay in the States with me and you know she got remarried, married my stepdad, my pops from Trinity, and we moved to a couple of places.

I lived in Mattapan for a while.

I got, I used to have family in Jamaica Plain and High Park and then we later moved down to Florida.

But you know it's crazy because you know, being Trinidadian, you got people from the West Indies that have moved all over the United States, especially the East Coast, and I grew up on hip-hop like everybody else.

I remember those times going to Brooklyn to go see my Aunt Hazel and them glued to the radio, you know, recording the sounds of Roxanne, chanté and the Real Roxanne and all the rest Biz, markie and Doug E Fresh and the rest you know.

So I'm a hip-hop baby.

I grew up in that era, you know, alongside the reggae, calypso and soca.

So, you know, multiculturalism was always.

It was always, uh, something that was big in my family.

Uh, from there we moved down to Florida and, you know, my passion for hip-hop grew as well.

My era is the Onyx, the Black Moon, helter, skelter, wu-tang, shout out, you know, to that era that was a big time and moment for me in my life.

Before I moved to Liberia, you know, my parents always made it their business to sort of get me in touch with my roots.

My mother used to always make sure I made it down to Trinidad every now and then for the summer, and my first trip to Liberia was when I was about seven or eight.

My second trip was in 1992, when my father reconnected with us and my mom deemed it necessary for me to get to know my father a little better.

Us and my mom deemed it necessary for me to get to know my father a little better, and at that time the war had pretty much cooled down and we had just we left just before Octopus War.

This was a major offensive that was launched by MPFL at that time.

But I grew up like everybody else, you know, real passionate about hip hop.

I studied a little martial arts growing up, just your typical.

This call is from a federal prison.

Just your typical American kid.

Yeah, okay.

So how old were you when you made the transition to move to Liberia?

Well, that was around when I was about 16 or 17.

A situation occurred and, out of loyalty for my friends, I got entangled in this situation.

My mother deemed it important for me to not, you know, face the same story that most young black males face by being incarcerated, and she decided that it was time for me to go live with my dad.

And that's exactly what happened.

That's how I made it down to Liberia.

I made it there because of that particular situation.

I was a juvenile at the time and an unfortunate circumstance took place and you know, we were raised not to betray friends.

So the unfortunate circumstance that took place, that took place here in America.

Yeah, it took place in Orlando.

Okay, you know I was arrested with other groups.

Some of my friends and unfortunately you know, a friend of mine, you know refused to step up and accept.

You know the responsibility that he should have and you know, as I said, we were raised not to betray friends.

The only viable option at that time that we saw was my mom saw was to start anew back in Africa.

So that's pretty much how I made my journey.

Okay, and that was when you made the permanent move to Liberia.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Was your father in office at that time?

No, no, the war was still ongoing.

He was.

He still had rebel headquarters, mpfl, in a place called Bowen County, jibanga, and that's exactly where I went to go to school in Ghana for some time and, you know, I moved around a little bit in West Africa until the elections took place.

Okay, so how was your relationship with your father growing up while you were in America?

Well, again, my old man left to go back to pursue his dream.

You know, interestingly enough, my mother always tells me this story and it's a true one because he confirmed this One day.

He got up before I was born and he says listen, I'm going to be president of Liberia.

My mom was like listen, charles, you know, go back to sleep.

You know you're dreaming.

That's never going to happen.

He says, listen, I am.

And he had that vision in his head the entire time.

So His sole goal was to return back to pursue that dream.

You know so I grew up around an individual and groups of people that have pursued their passions aggressively, despite the odds.

And if anybody knows Mr Taylor's story, they'll know that he overcame great odds in order to accomplish his dream.

But you know, his dream and his vision was his own.

I never really connected with my dad outside of seeing him at 15.

I remember him coming down twice for Christmas.

So, you know, for a moment in my life I faced an absence, like most young black males did, or their parents, except in this instance, my father wasn't incarcerated or on drugs, but he chose to pursue his dream and vision over raising a son.

Yeah, understood, yeah.

So when you got to Africa at 15, 16, how did your relationship begin to develop with your father?

It was a cultural shock.

You know it's complex and sometimes, you know, brief interviews can't really cover it.

A lot of people have encouraged me to sit down and write a book, to pursue a literary project that would be able to address all of these nuances and complexities.

But I will say that I had to deal with the cultural shock or moving into a different aspect of black culture, because there's diversity in our community that often isn't appreciated, you know.

So we have the black American experience, we have that Caribbean and we have that African experience.

And I can remember, you know, going back and being faced with that and acceptance, but in part resistance, you know so they used to call me the American chicken.

An acceptance but in part resistance, you know so, they used to call me the American chicken.

So you know, dealing with that, dealing with the trying to learn those cultural nuances and aspects of Liberian society under a war environment, was difficult.

And again, dealing with a self-determined individual whose focus and goal was to pursue a dream he had wanted his entire life.

Pretty much adult life was complex within itself.

You know, dealing with a person who embodied leadership and had to do so in order to survive and to meet the organization's objectives.

So parenting wasn't the first thing on his list.

Let me just say that Understood.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Yeah, it sounds like it would be a lot, you know, moving from Florida to Africa and, you know, just experiencing the different cultures out there.

Oh yeah, and just imagine, oh yeah, and just imagine they're just socially acceptable norms in various parts of the world.

But just imagine, liberia is different, ghana is different, nigeria, all of these social norms vary and so oftentimes, you know, dealing with elders, the African mentality is that the child is born to serve their parents and you know there's some cultures, that aspects of tradition that need to be embracing, others that need to be questioned or reformed, if you ask me.

In my opinion, you know a parent is to serve his child and push forward a better generation.

And so, just dealing with those cultural nuances, oftentimes, when issues were to occur, you have to get an elder who can advocate on your behalf, who you know is that of that age group or peer group of your parent, to be able to actually have a breakthrough.

This was some of the things that I faced and I had to learn the hard way.

So, yeah, it was different man, but, like I said, uh, you know a lot of these nuances.

Uh, really require you require a literary work, a memoir or otherwise, and it's something that I've been seriously considering.

It's just that no decent authors have come up with it.

This call is from a federal prison.

In order to really take on a project of that magnitude, because I really want to create the world and draw the picture for the world on what I was facing.

You know it's only after you are involved in a dangerous, complex situation that you really understand the dangers that you face.

At that moment, you had to live and survive.

You know, pulling back now, I understand the level of danger that I was surrounded by and the mindset that I had to develop in order to, you know, to deal with the stress and the anxiety and the goals, the successes and failures that came along with everything.

It was intense, it was intense.

It was intense.

Yeah, going back to something you just said you know about the cultural shocks, do you think you could come up with like what the biggest cultural shock was to you, immediately moving from America to Africa?

It was learning how to communicate with the elders.

It was learning how to communicate with the elders.

It was learning how to communicate with the elders what could be considered to be respect and disrespectful.

Um, that was pretty much it, because when you know when most of the decisions rest upon an elder's decision or a leader's decision, you have to figure out how to be able to get that message across.

And there were so many layers to having access to my father, even being the child of a rebel leader or president.

That was the biggest shock.

And you know it's crazy because after the war, I moved to Trinidad.

I moved to Trinidad, you know, because I really wanted to experience Trinidadian culture and I wasn't really interested in moving back to the States.

So, you know, I remember I got on the phone that day I'm leaving Nigeria, I'm on my way back to Trinidad and Tobago, and I didn't even know where I was going to stay.

But I knew that I wanted to be in that space.

Yeah, and I had to connect with family.

But the difference in that was the minute the phone call was received by my cousin Nats.

She was like listen, my home is open to you.

I ended up staying in San Juan in a place called San Juan, behind the Kwesi there.

Later on I ended up moving to a place called Caranage and I got family in Beatum Arima, all over Trinidad.

So it was a great experience.

I had the birth of my daughter, you know, a young baby that changed my life.

And when I came back to the States I actually came to pursue music, a book and movie deal and otherwise.

I had ideas on fashion.

I saw the waves that Game and Jay-Z and them were making and I saw a blueprint, especially Diddy as well.

Yeah, I understand completely, but we'll circle back into that and we'll give the people more of who you are the next time you call.

I appreciate your willingness to continue to participate and use LFTG as the platform to voice your opinion to the people.

Yeah, I appreciate that, man Listen.

Salute to the LFTG audience Big up our respect.

Same to you, elliot man.

You know this means a lot.

Man, men behind the wall respect you a great deal, brother.

Absolutely.

You know and let them know, I'll continue to be the voice of the feds and contribute however I can.

That's a fact.

Peace King.

Peace.