My new podcast trailer is HERE!

After a couple years out of your ears, I'm BACK! Please listen, subscribe and share the new trailer for "Rebel Spirit" from me, Ninth Planet Audio, and iHeartRadio Podcasts.

I have become acutely aware that there are 2 ways to pursue a creative career in this economy: 1) to burnout quickly by making daily content at a lower quality or 2) to skirt relevance for a while to work on larger, higher quality projects that take time and care to create. Obviously I’m doing the latter. I am THRILLED to share with you finally, after more than a year, the trailer for my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, in which I go back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to compel my high school to change its racist team name, “The Rebels” (a nickname for the Confederacy—a failed military experiment against the United States that Kentucky wasn’t even part of) to something more inclusive. My idea is “The Biscuits”—a bit of southern heritage worth celebrating, but as you’ll learn as you listen (episodes releasing weekly starting 9/3!!!), a lot of names are controversial for a variety of reasons.

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The art for the new podcast is such a delight and is a collaboration from BLDG in Covington, KY and OMS Photo in Cincinnati, OH.

The art is fantastic, the theme song is also fantastic. It’s the instrumental version of Busty and the Bass’s triumphant song, “All The Things I Couldn’t Say to You.” I first heard the song on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist a few months ago and really vibed with the marching band instrumentation mixed with more digital sounds. It felt like a good marriage between high school aesthetic and podcast vibes. Def check the song out (I even got it to the right timestamp):

My good taste in music was confirmed when a month after we locked the song, I was playing Fortnite the in-game radio was playing this song. Clearly it’s a bop. The kids are digging it.

You have no idea how excited I am for this podcast trailer to be released. And the timing feels right. Tomorrow is Juneteenth, the national holiday commemorating when enslaved people in Galveston, TX were finally freed after the end of the Civil War. Lovingly called Freedom Day, the holiday gives additional independence day reality to the Black descendants of enslaved people who live here in the US. Like they say—nobody is free until we are all free.

We have a few tricks up our sleeve for this trailer launch—as well as once school is back in this fall. We are going to get this name changed for GOOD.

Here’s some exclusive early info for the substack subscribers: In addition to releasing this trailer, me and my production team (Dan Sinker, Elizabeth Baquet) are returning to Kentucky to attend the Juneteenth Celebration in Florence, KY and to get into what John Lewis called “good trouble.” We’ll be handing out fliers inviting attendees to join us just down the road at the final School Based Decision Making Council meeting of the school year at Boone County High School to implore the principal and the committee to finally, in the 70th year of the school, do away with the team name. Perhaps some media will also be in attendance. I’m so overjoyed to get justice and to finally move my school into the 21st century.

A little history

Back in 2015, you may recall a shooting in Charleston, NC at a Black church. Dylann Roof shot and killed 9 churchgoers that day. The afternoon his manifesto was released on the internet (complete with Confederate flags and racial slurs), I was on a flight back to Kentucky for my 10-year high school reunion. I wrote about the experience in going back, and the juxtaposition of having good memories from high school and the reality that there was plenty of racism there, and how the imagery did not help. Suddenly Facebook (the local place to hang out online) had erupted. It was a fiasco. I even wrote about the backlash to the article shortly after that. Here’s a taste of that backlash:

I got tired of blurring the names. Oh well.

But with all the typical ignorance came some surprising introspection and support:

Well now it’s 9 years later, and it’s time to kick the hornets nest again. In 2017, BCHS did away with the physical mascot “Mr. Rebel.” They were going to do so anyway, but because of (and not In spite of) the white supremacist Charlottesville rally where Boone County local, James Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer with his car, suddenly support for the confederate imagery was back with a vengeance. That’s right: Some in the community were emboldened by the racist violence. I’m not backing down. The team name sucks and it’s time to change.

I want to say thanks to Elizabeth Baquet at Ninth Planet Audio, Dan Sinker (whose production on this project is unbelievably sharp and poignant), editor Josie Azzam, BLDG and OMS and all of the wonderful people in Kentucky and elsewhere who were willing to go on the record to make this show and movement a reality. Justice means so much to me. It’s the driving force behind almost everything I do, and to fight for a diversity of students to see a mascot and a team name they can be proud of day in and day out is an honor.

We’ve already locked several episodes, and have at least 14 coming throughout the fall. If anyone reading this has a connection to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, NFL (and BCHS) legend Shaun Alexander, or rapper/producer (and former “rebels” high school attendee in Louisville, KY) Jack Harlow, I’d appreciate you getting this in front of them however you can.

We’ve spoken with other NFL players who attended “rebels” high schools that have made the change, we’ve spoken with mascot experts ranging from the designer of Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot, to the team behind Florence’s own “Florence Y’alls” team rebrand. We’ve spoken with librarians, historians, students, the school board, principals, teachers—so many people interested and committed to making this positive change stick in a town desperate for a new story. When I tell you that I’ve been bursting at the seams waiting to be able to reveal this to you all, I promise that’s an understatement. It’s a privilege to have any work at all, and specifically to have work you’re proud of and excited for. I really couldn’t be any happier today.

Please please please listen, subscribe, share, and enjoy Rebel Spirit.

-Akilah