In Black America; B.E.T.'s Teen Summit with Prince DaJour

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From the longhorn radio network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. When you have self control, you go to the right places at the right time and try as best as positive to be careful. But it's rough. Even now, I've been into this game for 10 and a half years, married eight years for children,

and it's still rough. When I'm not going front, you know, still. I mean, if you see a good looking woman, she's a good looking woman. Married ain't going to make your eyes change and only make your heart change. But the thing is, you have to match your heart with your eyes and your brain. And that's the hardest part of keeping the balance between your spiritual walking connection and your flesh. The flesh man is weak, but the spirit is strong. And until you find total balance in your life, it's going to be extremely hard. That's why I need my wife with me. That's the baby look. I'm not as strong as the people who try to pretend to be because I'm married. I need you with me. That's the safest thing I can have right now to keep me clear and clean. And if President Clinton had his wife with him at work, then, you know, hopefully he wouldn't have went through what he went through. I prayed for him. I don't down him because I fell for him because I, you know, I could have been in that predicament. And, you know, still, it could happen. I pray that it won't happen. But, you know, every day, we have to pray for strength daily, man. I'll daily pray because you only are strong as yesterday. You may have been sure you may not have cheated on your wife for 20 years, but on 21st year, it may happen. So, I pray to God for grace and strength, man. And people, everybody who's listening, they always pray for me because it's not easy being a role model.

Prince Dejure, host of BET's Teen Summit. In September 1989, Black Entertainment Television began producing Teen Summit. The award-winning talk performance program focuses solely on teenage issues. Each week, the program includes celebrity guests and a teen panel known as the Teen Summit Posse. The majority of the hour and a half program is an open form in which issues including peer pressure, substance abuse, school, family, homelessness, go-sending, and careers are discussed. In 1997 and 1998, Teen Summit won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Youth or Children's Series special. I'm John L. Hanson Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, BET's Teen Summit, with host Prince Dejure, in Black America. Everything I do is magnified. If you see me in the club doing something wrong, if you see me smoking drugs or drinking alcohol or running a red light, I'm not just a regular person. It's going to hit the news. And it's unfortunate.

My life is exposed. But, like Jesus Christ, I've nailed myself to the cross and I'm dying. And since I'm dying daily, I don't have no privacy. I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'm dying daily so that I can inform you about life issues. So I had a choice to either work at McDonald's and be a mediocre kind of guy or make a good living being a talk show host and entertain it. And I chose to be exposed nationally to save lives, but I'm paying a price for it. I'm dying daily. It's many nights I cry and I feel out of place and I can't do the things that I used to do. I can't be a normal human guy because people expect me to be icons and that would be so. I'm dying daily for you. So if you see me being imperfect, don't put me down. Just pray for me. That's what I would say. Joshua joined BET in 1987 as an intern. Later he moved on to cover hip hop news for BET's rap city and then became the program's host. A former student at the Duke Ellerton School of the Performing Arts in the nation's capital, he continues to develop artistically through his own production company, Jury Day Entertainment. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Dejure has come full circle by overcoming the many challenges inner city living had to offer during his childhood.

He frequently speak with young people all over the nation regarding the entertainment industry, the importance of developing life skills and other issues affecting today's teenagers. Recently teen summit came to Austin, Texas for a national televised special held in conjunction with the national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy. In Black America, called up with Prince Dejure. I was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and my life was sort of like a movie but I'll try to get dancing for you. I've done so much in a short period of time. I was raised with the Strong Spiriture Foundation. My mother was a single parent. My father was in my life though. I grew up in the inner cities with some people called the ghetto of Washington, D.C. But I always called the University of the Hood because that's why I learned all my life lessons. But I was there and I got caught up in the church until basically fit in. I always knew that I was different. I always felt out of place. I wasn't into sports like most guys. Even to this day, I know nothing about football basketball and people think I'm crazy. I love boxing though. In order to fit in, I figured, well, I have to do whatever the ladies like.

The ladies like all the guys who are drug dealers. I figured I'd just sell a few drugs just to make some tennis shoe money, take a little lady to the movies. But eventually I got caught up in so deeply and too, I became an actionist. I wouldn't call myself a kingpin but I was a major drug dealer. I ran my whole neighborhood with some other guys. That's when my life started taking a whole different term from the spiritual foundation that I had of course. The rest is like an adventure action movie. Just put it like that. Effective that have on your mother. Well, my mother, I used to always sneak. She never knew exactly what I was doing. I used to sneak drugs through my bedroom window. We lived in a garden apartment. You can always climb to the window and whenever she would see me with new clothes or material things, I would always say, hey, this is somebody else that I'm using that I'm barring it or whatever. I would always lie. Eventually, one day she walked in my room. I had brought a lot and I had a money machine. I was counting my money. I had all the guys who worked for me coming in my apartment, my bedroom. I didn't like to do what I thought I did and she opened my door and saw me counting a couple hundred thousand dollars man and that's when she found out. She was hurt.

She cried and couldn't believe my son. I'm trying to raise you well in the hood and be raised in church and all and with a spiritual foundation, you let me down. Again, you know how young people are. We're going to go for what we know even if sometimes it means us being at risk, killing ourselves or whatever. So I was sort of out there, man. I was just living for the hood, living for the city. And from that point, you know, eventually that came in full circle, but you know, it's a lot of things in between that time that happened. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages from your vantage point of growing up in a majority, basically 98% African American city? Wow. Well, I mean, the advantage of growing up in Washington, DC is really I missed the same advantage that anybody else had. I mean, be honest with you, let me kind of refrain that because it's the nation's capital. A lot of people think the White House and the government, but really we live there, man, we don't have to stuff this going on. We don't see anything, you know, you know, I guess they sort of push, push this under the rug in a sense. And it's like a facade, a political facade, they make you think that we spend more money with the government here, but we have it ghettos and hoods like everybody else, drug

problems, alcohol problems, teen pregnancy problems, the same problems that all America faced. But it's nothing really that much more unique to me other than just going to see the White House and actually see it or the the Monty Man or the nation's cap, I mean, the capital or whatever. But other than that, it's not really much more of an opportunity to do anything else. I mean, go through the same hood problems like the whole country, basically. Who are some of your role models? Role models. Um, that's kind of interesting. I never really had role models in my life, be honest with you. Um, you know, my father's a man who I respected and loved because he was a very good friend of mine as a father, but I wouldn't really say he was a role model because I had to learn to do a lot of things that he didn't get a chance to do, like become a father or husband and be successful and attainment and things like that. But um, I would just say, God, God was my greatest inspiration coming from the hood, just like in the slavery days, all we had was spirituality because there was no hope around us. So in a sense, there was no hope in my neighborhoods. So my only thing that kept my sanity and give me, gave me hope to kind of get out of the hood and fulfill my dreams and fulfill my purpose in life was my spirituality, my walk with God.

You're now the host of teen summit, right, uh, nationally, uh, broadcast program over black entertainment television. How did you first arrive at teen summit? That's interesting. Well, I actually, again, I was a drug dealer when I stopped selling drugs for like maybe three and a half years, I realized I want to get out of this game. I don't want to die. I don't want to go to prison, um, you know, did you see some of your friends? Oh, yeah, I've seen a lot of, I've seen people die in my lap, you know, I've, I've experienced a lot of different things. People, I actually had people try to shoot at me and kill me, but you know, God, it was the grace of God that kept me alive. Bigger plan. Yeah, it was a bigger plan for me. Well, you know, you know, he forgave me and loved me more than I can forgive a love myself. And I have to see all these things. No, this is not the life of me because I really just wanted to make some tennis shoot money. I didn't, I'm sneaking money. I didn't want it to become, you know, no big, you know, Scarface mafia kind of guy. However, though, I'm, when I finally, and because I had a spiritual foundation, you can always try to leave God, but he'll never leave you. So even in that walk, you know, I can always hear the God speaking to me, say, hey, man, you know, this is not right, man. Hey, you know, you selling crack to somebody's mother, man, you know, that type of thing. So my conscience is not eating that.

I mean, I saw how to get out of the game and fulfill my purpose of being an entertainer. I always wanted to be a star. I always knew that I was going to be some type of celebrity, but people used to laugh at me. And when I got out of the game and I just went to BET for free and I said, look, you know, I'm a kid from the hood. I lost all my money trying to impress my friends. So I didn't have all the drugs to the money. So I was back to scratch again. I said, I'm wanting to go, you know, do errands. I'll zerox papers, go to McDonald's, whatever I can do to learn off your college education. So if you ask me, I would tell people I always have the most expensive college education in the world because if you kind of calculate all the employees at BET, you know, I probably have like a million dollar scholarship because I learned off their information. I asked questions. I took notes. I used to work hard, you know, three or four o'clock in the morning for free. It's been loyal and volunteering my services, interning basically. It does pay. So after people see how loyal I was for free, you know, they say, this kid's from the hood. Let's give him a chance. You know, somebody got sick one day, they got sick days and they said, well, don't let us down. We have a live show. And are we creating a show called Teen Summer for Young People when I was in high school. And that's how my whole career started. I was one of the many kids speaking about different issues and nationally, I received mail. A lot of kids related to me out of all the kids.

So that's pretty much how my career started. Okay. You attended Duke Ellington performing arts school. Tell us about that. What type of school is it? Well, Duke Ellington performing arts school is a school that's in like a road, prestigious neighborhood in DC, you know, upper class, rich people and all. And it's a performing arts school. You study jazz and classical music. And of course, I've always had ambition to be more R&B and you know, hip hop or core, like emotion on people. But I study classical music, I sing in five languages, you know, I did the whole opera classical thing. So it was, you know, school of the arts basically. Okay. And it's a four year high school. Yes. It's a basic four year high school. You have the arts and academics. Okay. And most of the graduates that go on the Juilliard or just venturing to the entertainment industry. Exactly. They're going to the entertainment industry. Go to Juilliard. Go to Europe and get some type of scholarship or whatever. But, you know, I didn't graduate from Duke Ellington though. Okay. I was one of those radical kids in school because I wanted to be an R&B musician. The school. I sort of rebelled against, you know, the ills of the school and they didn't really like me because I was the kind of kid who always expressed myself, you know, I was always

to keep it real kind of guy. So one day we had a talent show and I had an R&B band. We was the highest band and they told us we couldn't perform because we will never make it if we didn't do classical and jazz. So, you know, we, you know, we protested and then they told me they were going to put me out to school. So I left. And that's when my life actually started taking a turn for the worst when I started selling drugs. I went back to my neighborhood high school. That's how that whole thing happened. So that's how, you know, it all began with that situation. When they came to you with the concept of teen summit, did you understand that maybe this is, this is my niche, this is my shot for the big time. You know, I didn't really because again, I wasn't really, most of the time we also shaped the big time of getting paid big money. Okay. So again, I was doing this for free and when I got there, you know, I was just happy to get out of the hood. To me, you know, in order to discover your purpose, you have to really love what you do even if you really couldn't get paid for it. Even if you're underpaid, sometimes it's a spiritual fulfillment you get because it's what God created you for. And when I went to be a team, just such a love that, you know, I asked to forget, you know, actually to get paid years later, even to this day, I love it so much, man, my lawyers had to say, hey, man, what about the check?

I was like, okay, I forgot about that. I love what I do. But, you know, I just really enjoyed doing what I did, you know, and I went to be a a tea. And people were very kind and gave me an opportunity to learn and expose me internationally and nationally. So that's what changed my life, a care from the hood, you know, that's what it just took me to a whole other level, basically. For those of us who aren't familiar that's listening to this program, tell us the concept of BET's teen something. Well teen something is an award-winning talk show, a performance show. We have a different celebrity zone, we've had the first lady on, we interview everybody active singers, anybody who somebody who can kind of give us a real perspective of their life as a teen, not just the celebrity part of it, but things they went through, for as, you know, drugs, sex, the peer pressure, whatever. We have those guests on the show and we talk about real life issues. And it comes on every Saturday at 11 o'clock here in Texas. And you know, it's an hour and a half show and we just keep it real. That's the only way I can describe it. You have to see it for yourself. We're not like a hurrah though, Jerry's bringing anything, but we keep it very real, you know, that's my background. Because everything we talk about on the show, I've lived it already. So again, I'm having flashbacks constantly, you know, my life grown up and how blessed

I am to get out of that. And I'm trying to really pull some other hands alone to help young people to save their life, basically. You know, the times are different, but are the situations that teens face today drastically different from the situations in which you faced? Well, not really. I mean, you know, slightly different. Slightly correct. But you know, I mean, it's the same, you know, same ingredient, but maybe a different label on it, same flavor, different ingredient. I mean, different label. I mean, the bottom line is we are from beginning of time from the 50s all to the 98. You have, you know, teen pregnancies, sex, drugs, violence, it's the same thing. Just that you have to find a different approach to address it because the approach always changes, but the situation never changes. So that's why I think we're failing in that area as adults with young people. We're going through the same issues, but they are facing the sense where a lot more mature things than maybe people did when I was growing up because now the sex pressures are real heavy. And of course, drugs is more of a fad now as opposed to just being something you do behind the scene. Most teenagers kind of, you know, experiment with drugs. Now, the thing we're so wide open is not taboo anymore.

It's acceptable. So it's more pressure on young people to be associated with what's really, you know, cool and hip and down. It's just drugs and sex basically. Are we and we being adults playing our young people short, not listening or not understanding or basically forgetting that we once were teenagers on, wow, see, he opened up all of those cameras. We can do a workshop on this. I have to come back to Austin again, but I'll tell you, man, the bottom line is that adults have what I call adults defense mechanisms, okay, now you're getting into me now. You're getting into my thing now. And I always say that because of the accolades of adults, they have degrees and they forgot what it felt like to be up and coming. They forgot that, you know, as an adult woman that you one time had an abortion when you were 15. Let's keep it real now. We forgot, as adult men, that before we had the alligator breath cases and a nice, you know, Georgia, I'm honest, we forgot that we, you know, snuck in the basement with the ladies and kind of experimenting with sex and smoking marijuana, things that are real. Not good things, but things that are real. And the reason why young people can't relate to older people, we need to bridge the gap in communication is because adults are not given the reality of a realness.

They're given us who they became, but not who they was. So now we're trying to figure out, hold up, something's wrong with this picture. This is who you are now, but how was it then? But adults won't tell the story. They won't tell the truth. They sort of put band-aids on cancer. And you know, and basically whenever they see a young person, you know, killing each other with violence and teen pregnancy, they always kind of, you know, argue about them fuss that I'm always sort of priest to them because it reminds them of the scars they've never been healed from. You know, basically, it's like, it's just a whole other workshop, but you know, kind of conditioned it for you. That's basically what the situation is. And I'll just say, you know, with the, you know, they have the degrees, the PhDs, I always say the alphabets, the ABCDEFG, they so call them to alphabets that they forget about the mathematics of life, that we have to learn how to multiply what we know, and the greatest way to multiply is to share with someone else, and when they keep sharing with somebody else, you multiply yourself through other people. But what happened is we became successful when we hold on to it, so then we're dividing each other. And also the occasion this map is not, you know, basically the alphabets, so I'll feel about that.

The preparation for the program, obviously you all have a concept or have a directional of each broadcast. Give us an idea of what it takes to put teen someone on weekend and weekend. I will basically Monday through Friday, you know, we have a team of like five or six producers and they, you know, do research and they get information and book guides and extensive research on every topic of the show. And for me, you know, I'm an associate producer and host, but pretty much I come in on a tell end of it. Once they find out, do all the grass work, you know, and the groundwork, I'll sort of come in and kind of put my little icing on the cake, you know, if you will. But you know, a lot of research, a lot of background information, but for me, I really don't do a lot of actually preparing other than praying and before I walk through the dough on the show, because again, every topic that you can possibly think about, I've lived it already. So, you know, I'm sort of very spontaneous person, you're bringing me, I talk for a living, I did it on the street, going to feel free. So now I'm just simply getting paid for feeling my purpose, you know, helping save another lives instead of talking about alcohol, women, and drugs now. So for me, I just walk through the dough and when the light is on it, give me a microphone. I just do what I have to do and I save lives, you know, that's what I do.

Who have been some of the most open individuals of renowned and celebrity, who did you have interviewed that had a interesting or unique type of teenage lifehood? Well, basically, you know, it's all the same. I can't really say anybody in particular who really gave it up the truth, you know, maybe the total truth or nothing but the truth. I mean, everybody has a celebrity sometimes they're more concerned with their image, so they're always very careful. But I'm kind of got to live on the edge, you know, I'm careful, but I'm not careful. I'm thinking, if I expose my insecurities and my weaknesses, then you can hang me to the cross. If only Bill Clinton would have done what I'm telling you now, that I had, I sold drugs before, you know, I was a sex addict, you know, I drink, so I give it all up. That way, you literally won't try to say, well, we didn't know, I told you already. You know, God forbid if it ever happened again, then you know what I dealt with. But the thing is that most of the guests that we've had pretty much everybody said the same things. You know, we dealt with peer pressure, you know, sex, school, and they'll say generic stuff. But, you know, not too many guests, I would say who, well Kirk Franklin, Kirk Franklin was a very real guest.

I would say Kirk Franklin, believe it or not, Hillary Clinton, kind of went to the back a little bit on our show and gave us some real stuff, you know, from a perspective of her first lady, she gave us a lot. Who else I would say, who is extremely real on our show? Again, most of the other people was pretty much the same. Everybody would say the same generic stuff, just to help kids, they know the drug type thing. But, you know, everybody pretty much experienced the same thing, you know, and, you know, a peer pressure drug sex, we all would do the same thing. But they would just pretty much try to give you a perspective of how they overcame the situation that they were in, and that's what really helps the teens a lot. You are down here in Austin, Texas for a broadcast of teen something, right? Do you all take the program around the country regularly, or is this a unique situation that we're experiencing? Well, this is very unique. This is very unique. This is a part of a four part series in conjunction with the national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy. We've done a few shows. Actually, we wanted a 1998 NAWACP Image Award for the same show that we did in Washington, DC called The Ugly Side of Sex. This particular show that we're here in Austin for is called Promiscuity, Landed on the

Line. Talking about the bias, the pain about if girls have sex, they consider it to be, you know, have a bad reputation. If guys do it, he's cool. He's a player. He's like a daddy type thing. We're bringing in here. We're talking about, basically, by 12, you have 70% of teens who are having sex, you know what I mean? Statistics are high. You have over a million young girls a year who are pregnant within high school. We're trying to basically make everybody aware of STDs and AIDS and HIV and things that I need to, how serious it is, how serious it is, what a problem it is for teenagers who think it is really cool to have sex before marriage and things of that nature. We're bringing in here to Austin, and we're going to fire it up. Are teenagers willing to open up, let it go on subjects and actually giving their perspective of how they view this world today? Well, basically, I guess it depends on the host. You know what I mean? You know, you're a host yourself. So, you know, as a good host, you've got to answer questions, you get the right answers. And then most importantly, even if you don't really have the right questions, when you're a real host, like you walk, and I've been vibing since I met you, I think you're very kind

weather. So, if you're very down to earth and humble person, you bring that part of another person out. But if you're a very defensive person, a very bourgeois, I'll stuck up kind of person, you make them feel uncomfortable. And I feel very comfortable now. So, the thing is with me, I try to let kids know, hey, I'm not just a talk to your host, I've lived all these things so you can talk to me. So, don't look at me as a host. I'm just like a brother who you're rapping to in the street. Let's talk about it. And when we talk about it, you know, all type of emotions come out. Sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we cry, sometimes we confuse, sometimes we just don't know what we're going to do, sometimes we're just, you know, looking for answers to our questions every day. So, it's like a journey. A talk show is a journey. We start one place. And at the end of the talk show, we're hoping to achieve a certain level of understanding of reaching like a climax or apex of knowledge, man, close enough to be in the presence of God that we can feel his peace and let him lead us into where he will have us to go, man. Because peace ultimately is what it's really all about. Right. And having a talk show and finding solutions to problem, I mean, it's not just about success and money and stuff, but it's about finding peace in your life to overcome these problems of promiscuity and sex and alcohol abuse and generational curses and things of that

nature. So that's what I'm looking for as a talk show. I'm looking to get them to peace. And then peace, everything else will come as a package to deal. Once you have peace, you can find success in everything else. But the thing that stops you from getting, you know, to having a husband who is a virgin or a wife who is a virgin or without having children or having diseases or a whole bunch of garbage in that background, a lot of pain and hurting that background is to find a person who is at peace. If they're at peace, man, it opens the doors to any level that you want to go to. So I'm all about peace. I've been curious about teenagers' attitude towards hip-hop. I believe that every generation has this music, you know, back and maybe in the early times you had Cab, Calaway, Duke, Ellington, you know, then you went through the whole thing with Motown sound, you know. And nowadays you have rap music and hip-hop. We went through the R&B era with Motown. To me, I think that adults need to allow every generation to grow into their purpose. Okay. And for me, rap music, I look at it like there's a message in the music and see adults need to look at it not from a perspective of how bad it is, how much they can't stand it,

how noisy it sounds, how bad the lyrics are. They need to look at it and say that these young people are speaking out for their generation according to their way and this is their music. So what happened is we get so caught up into the production musical side of it. We can't really get down with the beaks and the grooves that we missed the message. And if you really want to know how to say what young person is like, the bottom line is we crying out in our music every day, even if you hear a brother call a woman the B word or use it, you know, say I'm smoking a 40 and I'm drinking a 40 and I'm smoking a shorty. You know, he's telling you, he may use slang and talk about street terminology, but he's telling you, help me, I need help. I mean, I don't know any other word other than calling a woman the B word. So he's not really just trying to be bogus, but he's only talking about what he's been exposed to. So instead of adults always trying to put them down, they need to kind of go into that area of town, go into Compton, go into Washington, DC, go into Atlanta, Chicago and develop youth programs to save their lives. And again, you know, they are some rap music, some rap songs that are very negative. Let's be real about this. I do believe that as celebrities, we all have an obligation to, you know, to speak life to people because, you know, there's power in the tongue, you speak life or death.

So we have an obligation to help raise them up or tear them down and there's no in between. So I do believe that rap music, you know, some brothers haven't realized their obligation yet because they got the success before they got the peace that I told you about. See, that's why you see people like MC Hammer once he got the success first, now he's trying to find peace after he's broke. You see what I'm saying, but he could have imagined if he only would have had peace first, he could still be 50 million dollars rich. You follow what I'm saying? Dennis Rodman wouldn't have to paint his hair so many colors if he had peace first. But now he got success. He's trying to find his way through with a blindfold on and hopefully he won't be broke or dead from HIV and AIDS or alcoholism or low self-esteem. And that's what's really happening in the entertainment industry and also on the street level. So again, there's a message in the music and adults need to, even if you don't like hip pop, I would just say take the time to listen to it, you know. And just, you know, just deal with it and find out what your kids are going through with they're talking about. Then you'll know how to approach, you know, your child and the ways of talking to them and talking their language on their language. See, so many of those can't really do that because again, they've been wounded in scard.

They've never healed from their generation. So again, for you to talk to me about the B word or I'm rapping about a bush and I'm taking a woman to a hotel because you still feel the scars when you went. You feel the scars of all the trash and garbage you did. So now you get mad at your child to turn that mess off, turn that garbage off. You throw stereos all across the room and break all kinds of lamps because you have an aflashback of your un-unhealed wounds. So the first thing adults should do is go back and heal themselves by talking with the truth heals you. That's why I tell everybody all the addictions that I had and I was a sex addict, you know, I never did drugs but I've always smoked, I mean, you know, drinking alcohol and stuff. So I say, yeah, you know, that was the thing that I've been healed from. So when you talk about it heals other people. The truth heal. It sets you free. But those can't really reach their children and young people because they're not giving the truth. It's simple. It's not all about spending $50 million in the budget with the government, all these big to-dos about your program and all that mess is not doing anything but it's a tax right off. The way to cure the bridge between the adult world and the youth are simply telling them the truth. Let them know what you want to do. By you doing that, you free your child and say, wow, dad, now I feel free and I feel normal that I'm going through this peer pressure because you did it.

But if you think you always been a CEO and executive, you know, of what you do, he said, well, maybe I'm strange. Maybe I'll commit suicide because I can't deal with it. I'm not as perfect as my dad was. You know, I'm having an abortion now. My mom never did that kind of stuff. I lived with it. You know, she had two before. She gave birth to you. So if you be real, and they may hurt you to tell the truth, but when you cry and free yourself from all that pain, you free other people. Life is about giving. When you give the truth, the truth is giving back to you. Man, that's the only way I can really say this because you have to give. When you hold on to something that you have, it's a blessing that God has blessed you with and allows you to live through it. If you hold on to it, you're going to die with it. God bless you to get through and you still let you must tell it because when you tell it, you also bless yourself and bless others. A minister's greatest sermon is the one that he preached to himself. Prince, is it difficult in handling a celebrity? It was. Tell us about it. Man, that's a book. See, I told you in my life, it's like a movie. Watch out for the movie and the book is coming to a theater near your book store. But my life, you know, it was very rough.

I may have to be honest with you, man, to have so many women coming to you, any town you go to, the luxury of having a hotel room, I'm going to be very honest with you. I got the success before I got the peace. That's why I know about it. Do you know what I'm saying? So again, you know, then I got married at the age of 19. But man, I took my wife through so much stuff, you know, and I actually, I'm telling my testimony on the 700 clothes soon, you know, but the thing is that my wife was a virtuous woman. She helped heal me. I mean, it was God who healed me. But my wife was the kind of woman who stuck through me with stuff I could never forgive myself for. And sometimes even when I mention and talk about it makes me want to cry because she was a kind of woman who saw something and me that I didn't see in myself. And I really just wanted to die. I was like, I'm out here, baby. I'm too deep into this thing. I want to die from over those of sex and alcohol, you know, it was a generational curse that basically killed my grandfather and father. Believe it or not. It was trying to kill me. That same generational curse was hoovering over my head, but I had to break this cycle man and make a difference from, I have four children, two sons and two daughters. So I want to teach them differently. But it's rough, man, when you can have anything you want. You know, you can buy anything you want, have any woman you want. There's no bound, that word, the word that you use for that kind of person is the last

serious person. A last serious person is a person who has no boundaries. And the Bible says a man without self-control is like a city without walls. He has no defense. So if you have no defense, the enemy can come in at any time and wipe you on a jet. And the enemy is alcohol, sex, and people who don't really like you, you're enemy. You can get killed at any moment like a president, a sniper can wipe you out. But when you have self-control, you go to the right places at the right time and try as best as possible to be careful. But it's rough, man. Even now, I've been into this game of 10 and a half years, married eight years, four children. It is still rough. Prince Dezure, host BET's teen summit. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Here we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr.

Thank you for joining us today. And please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. I'm going to the grocery store. I'm dying daily today. I can inform you about life issues. So I had a choice to either work at McDonald's and be a mediocre kind of guy or make a good living being a talk show.

BET's teen summit host Prince Dezure this week on in Black America.