Rightnowish

For the next month, Rightnowish will be featuring artists with local roots who are taking the sounds of the Bay to a national stage.

YMTK is an R&B and hip-hop artist who grew up in Oakland and currently resides in Los Angeles.

In his music catalog, you'll find his collaborations with P-Lo, IamSu!, Rexx Life Raj, and many more. YMTK has also written lyrics for emerging artists like the East Bay's Marteen and Compton's Gemaine. 

But while sheltering-in-place over this past year, YMTK says he's been exploring his creative process as an individual.

"... when you are creating by yourself, it’s like really on you," YMTK says. And as a creative person, second guessing himself is common, but this time in solitude has proven to be a "swift kick in the ass to really focus on YMTK," he says. 

But, focusing on self and going through the process of doing soul work isn't a foreign concept to YMTK. He spent his childhood in the church and says it has given his music a foundation, no matter if it's a dance track or a prayer song.

In addition to discussing the role spirituality plays in his life and art, we talk hoops, hanging with Mr. Cooper, and shooting your shot as a musical artist in the middle of a pandemic.

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Nappy Nina is a lyricist with a smooth-sultry delivery that's almost jazz-like, especially when coupled with some signature Boom-Bap production. In her songs, she raps about breakups, missing Oakland, the disappointing produce in Brooklyn, and navigating rough financial waters.

She's gotten mentions from the Grammys and Bandcamp. And she's been working on a streak of exciting projects. For an organization called Flocabulary, Nina was commissioned to pen a rhyme that tells the story of Toni Morrison. And this year, she's built on that momentum by dropping a new single,"Pandemy Stimmy," which features Stas Thee Boss. Soon, she'll release a new EP, Double Down, in collaboration with New Jersey-based producer, J Words.

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Dale Johnson grew up in East Oakland with stories of his grandfather riding horses on a Texas ranch. For years horses were just part of a family story. But one day, a pair of polo boots caught Dale's eye and he was brought back into the world of equestrians.

Now Dale and his horse, Sunny, are deep in the horseback community. Last fall, they joined other riders, like Brianna Noble, to ride through San Francisco's Sunnydale Projects on Halloween dressed up like Wakandans . They were also part of the Ride Out to Vote campaign last November.

This week on Rightnowish, Dale and I talk about what it means to be a polo player and an equestrian in the face of race and class stereotypes that come with being an African American man from East Oakland.

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Breena Nuñez is an Afro Guatemalan-Salvadoran cartoonist who grew up on the Bay Area's peninsula. Now she lives in the East Bay.

Nuñez's illustrations cover everything from commentaries about electoral politics to autobiographical comics about gender, sexuality and race.

African ancestry in Central America is a through-line in Nuñez's work. Sometimes she explicitly brings it up in the captions, other times she subtly alludes to it through hairstyles or a character's skin tone.

Earlier this year, Nuñez and her partner Lawrence Lindell co-founded Laneha House, a small press where they publish their work and the work of The BAYlies collective. And just this month, the two got married.

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Alex Trapps-Chabala is a young genealogist whose main focus is tracing the lineage of African American people.

He grew up between Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood and the Bay Area. But as preteen, his family sent him to live with with relatives in Alabama to get some discipline for an attitude problem. It was that time spent in the south that pushed Alex toward becoming a genealogist.

Alex says that while in Alabama, his grandmother taught him about his family and showed him how to dig through archives and records in order to uncover more information.

As he got more invested in genealogy, he saw gaps in how African American history is told, as well as opportunities to illuminate more Black family histories.

Alex began pulling up vital records, census records and even digitizing records of home births. With the help of others in genealogists, Alex is compiling a database he hopes will be a resource for African American families.

Now through his startup, The KinConnector, Alex is aiming to have an easy to use database that fills voids in African American histories.

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Vincent-Ray Williams III is the Operations Coordinator at Oakland's LGBTQ Community Center. Through this position Vincent has a hand in developing the Center's Glenn Burke Wellness Clinic.

The clinic, which is named after the Oakland A's player who was discriminated against for being the first openly gay major league player, is set to open early next year. Vincent says the clinic will focus on HIV/ AIDS testing and prevention.

Vincent, who was born HIV positive, says dispelling negative notions of people living with the virus is the work he finds most purposeful.

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Abdulalim A’Omer grew up in a tight-knit Muslim Eritrean community in South Berkeley.

He says that experience exposed him to a little bit of everything-- fashion, basketball, family, politics, religion, technology and more. It all proved to be a foundational part of Abdulalim's multifaceted Everything brand, which wants to ask its users, what's your everything?

Abdulalim, or Abdul for short, is the oldest of four boys. His parents immigrated from Eritrea, allowing him to become a college educated entrepreneur. Their sacrifices aren't lost on him and he maintains a connection to their homeland. But recently, he's watched Eritrea become enmeshed in a brewing civil conflict in the neighboring country of Ethiopia.

In this week's episode of Rightnowish we talk to Abdulalim about how he is using technology and art to bring people into his world of culture, community and ... everything.

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Deanna Van Buren is an architect, but she goes far beyond just designing buildings. She uses her craft to demonstrate new structures for justice in our society.

Van Buren is the co-founder and Executive Director of Designing Justice, an organization that she says focuses on "ending mass incarceration through innovations in the built environment, using both finance and design together." 

Designing Justice has launched projects across the country: They're behind a Peace Making project in Syracuse, a restorative justice project in Detroit, and they're looking to convert an Atlanta jail into a community center.

Locally, they've refurbished a MUNI bus to create a mobile school in San Francisco and in East Oakland, they've built a community center based in restorative justice practices.

This week on Rightnowish, Deanna Van Buren discusses what it means to design for a more equitable society.

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Comic Luna Malbroux loves to stay informed, and she also loves to laugh.

By prioritizing joy in her life, she has the energy to confront racism, sexism and the stress of this election season.

Just this week, Malbroux-- who is also a musician and sex coach in training-- spent election night co-hosting a live event for the San Francisco AIDS foundation. She brought the laughs and she brought some deep political knowledge.

In this week's episode of Rightnowish, Luna's got jokes and wisdom on how to find pleasure in these tense times. Hit the play button to catch some serotonin.

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Denis Ivan Perez Bravo is an East Bay-based photographer and organizer who isn't shy about jumping right into the action.

The images he captures on the front lines of protests in Northern California show the intense struggle of today's social movements.

The risk of bodily harm can come from both sides of a scrimmage. While covering the news, Dennis has been hit by projectiles fired from police weapons and risks being trampled by crowds of protestors.

On top of that, Denis is undocumented, so he's literally risking his freedom. But he says that his photos are worth it.

Beyond capturing images from the front lines in the battle for justice and liberation, Denis also fills his camera rolls with shots of community sporting events and cultural affairs from his neighborhood in Richmond, CA.

This week on Rightnowish, we talk to Denis about what it means to be on the front line, and why he sometimes crosses that line.

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