Season 8 Ep. #3 - Speech (Arrested Developmnent)

Sharing the same timeline as ATL-based singer-songwriter, poet activist, and lyrical legend Speech, born Todd Thomas, of the acclaimed American hip hop group Arrested Development, is something that should bring us all a little comfort and peace in these crazy times. Having first established the groundbreaking group nearly four decades ago, Arrested Development pried open our culture's sore soul with perhaps one of the most influential albums, not just in hip hop and conscious rap, but in American music, 1992's "3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life Of...." Over the next three decades, the artist would go on to record several albums with the group, as well as eagerly establishing a solo career that covers just as much groovy ground as time continues moving forward, and history horrifically repeats itself. On this episode of The Self Portrait Gosple Podcast, we speak to Speech about his more formative years growing up in Tennessee before planting poetic roots Georgia in the mid to late 1980s, the influence of Southern hip hop on the world at large, the polarizing politics of the Trump administration, music's melodic meditation on the mind, the group's new album "Adult Contemporary Hip Hop," which was intentionally released on the Fourth of July, and much more.