Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed

Selected quotes and notes from Count Time Podcast with LD Azobra Interview with Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed

Good evening. Good evening. Good evening it’s 4:00 PM. Stand up it’s count time, time for every man and woman to stand up and be counted. Welcome to another edition of Count Time podcast. I am brother LD Azobra. Thank you for joining us today.

Well, today we have a we say true Louisiana legend all the way from the dirty south. The bottom. We have what we call the ghetto messiah. We got the one And only a friend, a brother confidant, someone I got to know quite some time ago. We have the legendary, I don’t like to say gangster turn activist, that’s what they call him. But I just think he’s a brother that was lost for a while, who found his way. He was in the wilderness for quite some time, but now he’s here to make a difference. And making a difference I have my dear friend here. I have the one and only Arthur Silky Slim Reed. welcome to Count Time, man.

AR
I’m glad you cleared that up. I hate when people say former gangster because one of the things that I experienced in life is that for us as black folks, there are no true gangsters. There are many fools, but there are no true gangsters. And I learned that from walking into the penal institution and seeing the way that they handle us inside of these institutions. So gangsters go out feet first. Gangsters go out with the sheets.

And we take just about anything, any type of treatment in America, period. So we’re not true gangsters, but we act a role and we act like fools is what we really act like when we try to act like gangsters. But we act the role very well. We just act. We just actors.

We just act. We ain’t fool nobody. But I’ll see no the folks who run it back know who the real yeah, of course, if they thought you were gangsters, they wouldn’t be putting you through the pain and tyranny that they’re putting you through. So I always like to clear that up, because once I realize I found myself in a situation one day where I was actually fighting and I observed the situation and I heard something that keys and handcuffs coming down the hall. And I found myself sitting on the bed and the man opened up the door, said, who’s fighting? And nobody said nothing.

He said, Reed you fighting. And when he went out that door and he locked it, I say, D***. I say, that was the man. Who the h*** am I? I was the slave, the keys, conditioned to know that those handcuffs and keys meant what and master might come whip my a**. So once I realized that, I was like, hey, man, something is wrong with us. Something is wrong with us mentally. And something is wrong with us anytime we could see each other and hate each other the way that we do, and the real enemy walks by and smiles and you scratch when you ain’t even itching.

So something is wrong with us, mentally. We have to deal with that before we could deal with anything else.