Photo courtesy of Thought Provokah
East Coast emcee Thought Provokah is back with a new album that chronicles his coming of age. The album is called “82 Seward” which is Thought’s early adolescent address in Port Jervis, NY. On Seward Thought Provokah recounts his turbulent times with rhymes over soulful soundscapes.
82 Seward is a 20-track album featuring music made by producers Talen Ted, duMB-o, Brutal Caesar, Swift Got Beats, Barker, esco, and Jay Fehrman.
Thought Provokah spoke to The Real Hip-Hop about why he’s one of the best writer’s in Hip-Hop, his mental health expedition, and his new album, 82 Seward.
TRHH: What’s the meaning behind the title of the album 82 Seward?
Thought Provokah: Well, 82 Seward is basically a home I moved to when I was twelve years old after going from place to place — living in Harlem, living in the Bronx, living in Brooklyn, Minisink, all these other places. Besides Middletown, which was 5 Little Monhagen, which I explain on the album as well, it was like the first place that felt like a semblance of home. It didn’t feel like I had to get up and leave or we were gonna move or whatever. So, it was the first iteration of what I thought home should look like or was because I felt comfortable that I didn’t have to get up and leave anytime soon.
TRHH: Why were you moving around?
Thought Provokah: My moms had drug issues and my dad had alcohol problems, even though he was a hard worker. He was really the stabilizing force, but I moved due to that, due to my parents’ divorce, just a whole bunch of things. My brother, I found out Saturday, he just passed away. So, he was in the streets as well — moving and grooving in the streets. And so, there were just so many moving parts that didn’t allow for me to have a stable home until we got to 82 Seward. My dad got custody of me, we moved to Middletown, stayed there for five years and then from there moved to Port Jervis, New York.
TRHH: Wow. That’s a lot before twelve years old. That’s chaotic, man.
Thought Provokah: Yeah, yeah, man. Definitely something that I wouldn’t want a child of mine to experience [laughs]. I’m glad mine are upstairs sleeping and waiting to have a normal somewhat suburban life. I didn’t have that until I was between the ages of like nine and twelve. I had it in spots, but it always felt like something could be snatched away from you. I talk about my grandmother in this album as well. When the home life got chaotic, I stayed with my grandmother over in Harlem River and in Harlem and Harlem River Houses. But she developed Alzheimer’s, so she didn’t really remember things and so it was kinda like at that age when everybody was just trying to figure their life out.
I have empathy for all parties involved, my mother and my father, but I just was like a kid on his own, sort of like Mister & Pete. I don’t know if you ever saw that movie with Jennifer Hudson and these two kids are running around the projects trying to figure out how to survive, trying to not have CPS run down on them, trying to not get evicted. So, that’s kinda how I was living for a year and a half of my life. I missed a whole grade. I graduated later. I should have graduated a year earlier, but I graduated later because of those circumstances and those experiences.
TRHH: You have a track on the album called “The Root of my Shadow Work” where you mention therapy. How long have you been in therapy and how has it helped you?
Thought Provokah: Wow, me telling you about my childhood, the first person to put me in therapy was my father and that was at nine. Throughout my life I’ve had mental health issues, I’ve had suicidal ideations, I’ve had suicide attempts. So, therapy was something that I latched on to literally last year again after bouts here and there with therapy. I’d go to therapy, not really follow the procedures or put it into practice into my life, just kinda going through life just trying to push through.
But I would say last year is when I really started to unwind and unpack all these traumatic experiences in my life and how they’ve affected my relationships — my romantic relationships, relationship with my children, relationship with my birth parents. And this is when I started to look at things in that realm, like I can use this to better my life and my relationships moving forward.
TRHH: You said your birth parents; were you in foster care? Adopted?
Thought Provokah: I wasn’t, but literally this is funny this album is releasing the way it is, because me and my birth mother, and I call her my ‘birth mother’ because we were estranged from the age of eight to the age of sixteen, until just recently when we just talked, I got a call 1:30 in the morning last Thursday that my brother died. I hadn’t heard from her since I was about twenty-one, twenty-two. Hadn’t heard from her, we hadn’t really talked. So, I heard that and I was raised by my stepmother, and I call her my mother because that is the woman who’s raised me from the age of eight on.
TRHH: I’m sorry to hear about your brother.
Thought Provokah: Yeah.
TRHH: It’s so fresh, man. How are you managing with that?
Thought Provokah: It really started to hit me, I wanna say the other day, ’cause we didn’t really have a great relationship either. Me and him, we really were at odds. He was sixteen, I was eight, we went through bouts where there was abuse on his end of me physically. That was kinda due to feeling like you’re not the child that everybody holds and covets. There’s that sibling jealousy there, right? So, we didn’t really talk because of that happening to me and me being only eight and him being sixteen and me really not having a way to defend myself. It’s overpowering and everything else. So, we didn’t really talk and in part I had to go to therapy because I’m thinking now that I’m grown and if I see this guy, like, what am I gonna do? I did see him and that did transpire, and all that rage came out.
But he died due to succumbing to injuries from being shot. He was shot in Monticello, New York being in the street, still moving around. He didn’t really have anybody to take care of him ’till my birth mom stepped in and put him in a home, but at that point he was already kinda succumbing to the infections of his wounds. And the biggest lesson there that I’ve had to grapple with is forgiveness, right? And what my wife is telling me through a Buddhist practice that I’m now getting into thanks to her, that no one is irredeemable. I struggle with that concept, but during his passing I’m faced with that reality and I’m learning how to practice forgiveness in a way I probably wouldn’t have years ago.
TRHH: I’m glad to hear that, man. ‘Cause that would be a heavy burden to carry. But I can’t say I can agree with no one is irredeemable [laughs].
Thought Provokah: Yeah, it’s such a radical concept because radical forgiveness is such a revolutionary concept. Eternal hope is a revolutionary concept and I think we both struggle with it being applicable to everybody, right? But it helped me with a semblance of forgiveness in my life, so I hold dear to it. I hold dear to empathy. I hold dear to it and it helps me get through.
TRHH: You touch a lot on your past and your family on this project; was doing 82 Seward therapeutic for you?
Thought Provokah: Absolutely. It was cathartic. It was very cathartic. It was healing to do so and to be able to exercise those demons, and talk about a place that I left kind of unceremoniously. I felt like I felt pigeonholed, restrained, constrained by that very small town. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And what I wanted to do with my life really didn’t fit within the confines of that area. So, I left without a goodbye, without a send-off. It was just, “All right.” I was in Queens and I had to restart my life. That’s when I started getting into, “All right, who is Thought Provokah as an artist? What am I gonna create? From what space am I gonna create?” And I don’t think we’re speaking today had I not left that area.
TRHH: Okay. speaking of you as an artist, on the song “No One in the World” you say, “one of the best writers of this era.” What makes Thought Provokah one of the best writers of this era?
Thought Provokah: Well first and foremost, I think technically that I’m one of the best writers. I use alliteration, I use punchlines, double entendres, quadruple entendres. Secondly, I write from a place of vulnerability. There is no facade within me. I don’t have to lean on imaginary experiences to create this world. Everything that we’re discussing today, everything that was on that album, it really happened to me. So, those traumas made for richer experiences, and I feel as though I’m giving people the courage who have similar stories, who feel like they have to lean on this facade of fake machismo, and misogyny and violence, things that they’ve never participated in. But they feel like they have to lean on that in order to be a viable artist within this space. I feel like I’m giving them the courage to say, “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to live a lie. You don’t have to put on airs for anybody. You can be exactly who you are in this space and you can be respected just for that.”
So, technically I feel like I am that. Not within this space, I don’t feel as though there are enough people with stories that are leaning on vulnerability, that are leaning on being open, and honest, and forthright, and forthcoming about what is troubling them, what is plaguing them. I always leaned into mental health. I’ve never been one to hide my experiences with mental health issues and suicidal ideations. Suicide, I’ve been an advocate for that as well. And I feel like it’s all encompassing. And I also feel like in this space there’s nobody that’s me. Uniqueness and individuality as well, because everybody is looking to be the next somebody else. I’m not looking to be that. I’m just here to be me.
TRHH: On the song “InnERVISZion” you do some next-level rhyming. Were you trying to remind people of who you are on that song?
Thought Provokah: Absolutely, absolutely. The song in and of itself is about absolutes, right? When you look into math, there is no absolute in math. There’s always another way to find an answer — same with philosophy. So, instead of leaning into absolutes and looking to be a facsimile of something else, why not just be yourself? And that is what InnERVISZion is all about. Looking into self, and being comfortable with self, and not looking into somebody else’s philosophy or somebody else’s equation to get to you.
You don’t need it. You have all that you need within you to be you. To get to that point I decided to be ridiculously technical in getting to that point. And to say that though it’s technically sound and though it may be a roundabout way to getting to the point, I can still get to my point and write in this way in order to get the message out. I can do that. So, it was intentionally extremely finite and technical.
TRHH: “Don’t Be Gone” is a very touching song about your father. What did you do to cope after losing your dad?
Thought Provokah: Oh my God, that was the last time I was in a hospital just figuring out how to get through life without him. My best friend, the person that picked me up off the streets. I feel as though even though he was older than me, I feel like we grew up together. My dad was a Silent Generation man born in 1939, but I was his first child at 54 years old. So, when you have a child, no matter how old you are, you have to grow up. Wisdom and maturity is not indicative of age, ever. So, I feel as though you can be a hard worker, but to do that shadow work, those deep dives within yourself, I feel as though while he was doing it, I was growing up. And I feel as though that was the only person at times that heard me, that understood me, that saw me.
I didn’t cope well. I didn’t cope well at all. I had issues with alcohol. I had issues with just being self-destructive. So, I’ll be completely honest, I did not cope well at all. And I don’t have a problem saying I didn’t cope well at all, because it brought me to the place I am today. I was a mess. I was a mess and I make no qualms about that. And it wasn’t I wanna say until after the pandemic that I started to find healthier ways to cope with it instead of drowning my sorrows, and stonewalling people, and just drowning myself in alcohol. It wasn’t conducive to healing whatsoever.
TRHH: So, what did it take for you to break out of that?
Thought Provokah: What it took was I was asleep in my home and sometimes I have these vivid dreams, these lucid dreams. My dad comes to me and he’s fixing lights on a porch and he says, and I quote, “You gotta stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Verbatim, “You gotta get your shit together.” And in an instant, I woke up. That’s the moment I left. That’s the moment I left Port Jervis. That’s the moment I started a new career. That’s the moment I started to have courage with being myself in my art. And like I said, that’s what created the moment where we’ve had these discussions. So, that was the first step in me being like, “Okay, you have the power to change your life, so go do it.”
TRHH: What do you want people to take away from 82 Seward?
Thought Provokah: I want people who thought they knew me to listen to this album to find out more. And I want those that don’t to listen to this album and be like, “Wow, I didn’t know his backstory was so rich.” Two, I want people to have the courage to be completely, a hundred percent themselves. Three, I want people to realize that their mental health issues does not marginalize them and not make them less of a human being, and you can persevere, you can talk to a therapist, you can find a space to be vulnerable with somebody. And four, I want to make it abundantly clear that thematic albums and albums with a story do have a space in the underground. We do not have to lean on those cookie cutter 10-11-minute albums in order to stay relevant in an algorithm that doesn’t care for us anyway.
Purchase: Thought Provokah – 82 Seward