Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Calls in to WXBK-FM 94.7's "The Block"

November 10, 2022

Shelley Wade: We are 94.7’s The Block. New York's number one for throwbacks. I'm Shelley Wade, welcoming the 110th mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams. Welcome to The Block.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. I know everything happens on the block and people tend to forget that we may be a city, but cities are broken down into neighborhoods and neighborhoods are broken down into blocks. If we get the block right, we'll get the entire city and state and country right. So it's good to be here — 94.7 with you on The Block.

Wade: Yeah. I thank you so much. So The Block just celebrated — I was telling you this a few minutes ago — we just celebrated our first birthday and we're still celebrating and you were sworn in on the first of this year, and so you're about to celebrate your first birthday. So it's like we're coming up together. We're growing up.

Mayor Adams: It's so true. So true.

Wade: How are you feeling about your first year so far?

Mayor Adams: Oh, good. Really exciting things have happened, and you just sort of focus on the positive. And my journey really prepared me for this moment. We needed a mayor that had gone through a lot so he could help people who are going through a lot. And that's where I am and I'm excited about every day I wake up every day of the possibilities and excitement that's in front of me.

Wade: Yeah, I mean I have a feature on my show called The Mindful Moment and it really is resonating with listeners because what I try to do is just put positive words out there, words of inspiration and encouragement. And I thought it would be great for you to give our listeners some words of encouragement because, listen, when you read your bio, it says that — growing up in New York City with a single mom and sometimes you didn't know whether you were going to have lunch and you would take a bag of your belongings to school because you didn't know whether you guys would be evicted and you wouldn't have anywhere to go after school. And coming from there, how is it possible for you to have imagined that you'd be mayor of the great City of New York? So it's got to be some sort of positivity that you focus on, something that inspired you. Can you share words of encouragement for our listeners?

Mayor Adams: Well, you just dropped some pearls. And I don't even think that you realize that you said how could you imagine. It starts with that. With so much negativity around us, we don't imagine ourselves being out of that. We imagine ourselves, in the word of Paul Laurence Dunbar, "A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble. And never to laugh because the moans come double." That's how we see our life. But mom told me as a child, she said, "Baby, you going to find yourself in dark places. You decide if that dark place is a burial or a planting." And I always embraced that. After I got arrested, she sat down and talked to me in our little modest kitchen. She never had much, but she had a lot of love and a lot of patience.

And she says, "You know what? This is a moment for you. You know, turn this pain into purpose." And I just leaned into that feeling. And so people are going through a lot, but I believe God made me the mayor for a reason. Because he wants, or she wants us to look at my life and know that because you had a bend in the road, it's not the end of the road. Arrested at 15, grew up dyslexic, still dyslexic and didn't know it until I got into college. When you think about being arrested, living on the verge of homelessness. And so I think the creator is saying, "Okay, wait a minute. Let's take this imperfect person." So if you are sitting in Rikers Island right now, you should be saying to yourself, "Wait a minute, this is not the end of the road. The mayor was in jail."

If you are in school struggling because you have a learning disability, you could say, "Wait a minute, the mayor has a learning disability." If you are in a homeless shelter, you could see that, "Hey, the mayor lived on the verge of homelessness." So I'm hoping people look at my life and say, where you are is not who you are. It's time now to define who you are and reach your rightful heights. And when I listen to your station, that's what I get. I get this energy. You come on and you have this optimistic view and you inspiring people by the energy that you are giving. And it's really commendable when you think about it because there's a lot of poison out there. And we need to displace that poison with some real positive energy.

Wade: I always say that, and that's not to say that we have to ignore the negativity, but it all starts with the energy you put out there. You want that energy back, you want positive energy back. And so…

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt, without a doubt.

Wade: Life is hard enough. We already are inundated with negativity. So we try to put that positive energy out there.

Mayor Adams: And you have to find ways to do it. I'll never forget one day I was leaving my house and accidentally knocked over a bottle, a glass of water, and I took a sponge and I soaked it up until it was saturated. And then if I wanted to soak up more, I had to wring the sponge out. And that became the heart of the speech when I spoke at the graduation. We have absorbed so much negative energy, you got to wring that stuff out. If you don't wring it out, even if the positive comes to you, your soul absorbed with negative. And so how do you wring it out? Some of the things I want to do in school, our babies, their day should start with breathing exercises, meditation, mindfulness, and positive affirmation. They should close their eyes and imagine who they want to be and what they want.

That's wringing out that shooting that happened the night before. That's wringing out being home and watching a domestic violence situation or wringing out being in a community where only junk food is being served. So we have to find ways of wringing out the sponge of our existence that's saturated with so much negativity and there's no outlet. It's unbelievable. We tell a little Black kid, "Why can't you read or do math?" And he's saying, "Man, I'm hurting. What are you doing to help me get over what I just saw last night?" So we are not only educating our children, we are teaching them how to be emotionally intelligent and we giving them self-care so that they can be empowered to wring out those negative parts of life.

Wade: I love that. So mayor, let's get the politics out of the way first. This is actually a key week that you're visiting The Block because it was… election day was just this past Tuesday. First of all, I'd love for you to address how you feel about the outcome of the elections. Also, you just made a sanitation announcement this morning if you want to address that.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Firstly, the election. I'm happy that Kathy Hochul is continuing to be governor. First governor in the state of New York, just sort of continuing…

Wade: First female.

Mayor Adams: First female, right, first governor... Thank you. First female. Just continuing, you know what we have been doing. It's been unprecedented in my office. First time in history, five women deputy mayors. First time in history, woman police commissioner. First time in history, a woman firefighter. First time we have women that are running the uniform services: Department of Sanitation, Fire, Police, Probation. And this is a women-run administration and they're doing some amazing things and having Governor Hochul to continue that succession. And we've been a partner throughout this entire campaign. We sit together on January 6th to deal with the transit crimes. We sit together about two weeks ago to do the next wave of that.

And so I believe she's going to be a real partner. There's things we have to do across the country and across the state. We lost some congressional seats because Democrat leaders must start talking directly to people. You can't talk at people. If you believe you can run politics through tweets and not on the streets, you're setting yourself up for failure and you got to state it. That's why I'm on the trains talking to people one-on-one. And that's what we have to do as a party. We have to get back to the bread-and-butter issues that are impacting everyday New Yorkers and everyday Americans.

Wade: And by the way, the rhyme wasn't lost on me. Now, what you say, the tweets instead of the street?

Mayor Adams: Right. Right. Because we get caught up on social media. Voters are not on social media. There's a pocket of people that talk to each other. And that's what the announcement was today. We are refocusing on a clean city, $13 million we're spending to empty trash bins, clean up our highways, look at people who are legally dumping. This should be the cleanest city in America. And that's our focus. Commissioner Tisch brought the proposal to me. We're focusing on that. We're doing rat mitigation. Everyone who knows me knows I hate rats.

Wade: Me too.

Mayor Adams: I'm scared of them. And the only good rat is a dead rat. And so we're going to zero in on those rodents. And we have a couple of new initiatives that we're trying to do instead of those little black boxes that are just bogus and those little pellets — those are rat candies. They laugh at us every time they eat them. We got to get rid of them.

Wade: I always say the rats in New York have a sense of entitlement. They're not scared of you at all.

Mayor Adams: You know what I'm saying? You used to be able to stamp your feet and say, "Ah." And they run. Now they look at you and say, "What?"

(Laughter.)

Wade: I know. Yeah. So thank you for the rat mitigation. Appreciate that. Alright, so let's get to the music of it all. 94.7 The Block is New York's number one for throwbacks. Did they tell you that I wanted you to choose the throwback of the day today?

Mayor Adams: Well, there's a couple that I like. What's interesting, I remember we used to listen back in the day to the oldies. Non-rap, but just oldies and rap has now been around so long that now we can say the oldies, the throwback.

Wade: I know. We are actually a throwback hip hop station.

Mayor Adams: Think about that.

Wade: I mean, all these years you've had the old school rock stations, the old school R&B station. Now hip hop is all grown up. We can have a throwback station.

Mayor Adams: And that's powerful. That's powerful, first of all. And rap must claim their victories. It was through rap that gave me this feeling that, "Hey, I could do any..." I felt invincible. I'm mayor because of rap. And so if the great rap legend KRS-One, and Kurtis Blow and all of those cats and a Lil Kim, all of them, MC Lyte, they need to be saying, "We made the mayor." Obama listened to rap. "We made the president." Hakeem Jeffries, who's the top Democrat caucus leader in the Congress, he grew up on rap. So you have all of these folks who grew up on rap that are now in place of empowerment and rap needs to take the victory. They need to be doing victory laps.

Wade: I agree with you. And this coming year is the 50th anniversary of hip hop. And also, to your point, there was a time not too long ago where people didn't think rap would last. And all these years later, the impact it has on society all over the world is incredible.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. And if rap likes it or not, they're the Johnny Mathis of music. They cross over. I was driving down the block the other day on the belt and I heard... I forgot the song I was listening to, blasting. I turned over, there was this white cat in the business attire bopping his head to the beat. Like it or not, everyone loves rap. When I crisscross the globe, if I'm in China, if I'm in Korea, if I'm in Vietnam, if I'm in Greece, no matter where I go, I see how people have embraced the music. And that's why it's imperative that hip hop is 50 should come a moment of reflection because you can't allow it to get away from you. As people celebrate rap, As we open a museum that we're going to open in the Bronx, as we do all these things, we need to make sure the industry and particularly the leaders of the industry, that they benefit from it. That's what's important. We can't lead them behind. Because many of them, they were not making the paper that people are making right now.

Wade: Not properly compensated

Mayor Adams: And lost their originals. They were exploited. Their masters.

Wade: They don't own their masters.

Mayor Adams: Right.

Wade: So real quick, before you choose the throwback of the day, let me ask your Mount Rushmore of music of artists, what four artists would be on your personal Mount Rushmore?

Mayor Adams: Oh man. Well, first of all, Ja Rule is one of them.

Wade: Really?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Ja Rule. If I talk like Ja Rule, man, I'll be the man.

Wade: Alright. So Ja Rule's up there.

Mayor Adams: Yeah. Ja Rule is definitely one of them. Some of the… MC Lyte was another favorite. Her sound was really smooth. Kurtis Blow was another favorite as I reach back. Don't give me all that jive about Christmas. 

Wade: Yeah.

Mayor Adams: There's a few. I loved the whole crew that did the whole ‘Fight the Power,’ ‘Fight the Power.’ The name’s escaping me.

Wade: Public Enemy?

Mayor Adams: Public Enemy. Loved Public Enemy. They were so ahead of their time and their music had a message in it. And KRS-One. I was a police officer when KRS-One wrote the piece ‘Black Cop.’ And we met and we talked and we struck up a friendship ever since then. But they were some real pioneers, and they connected the music to what people were experiencing.

Wade: All right. So, Mayor Eric Adams, can you give us your throwback of the day?

Mayor Adams: I would definitely go with ‘Fight the Power.’ We need to fight the power every day, all day. We need to fight the power and that would be my throwback of the day.

Wade: Let's get it on for you. Mayor Eric Adams, thank you so much for blessing us with your presence. Tell everybody the station you love. Your favorite new station in New York City, mayor.

Mayor Adams: Oh, listen, it has to be 94.7 The Block.

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