Dear beloved readers, I would like to say that I had a recent encounter with a respected comedian/actor by the name of Mike Epps concerning another side of him. It shows that Hollywood don’t know when it comes to him being approached to do other films and how he managed to get where he is now.

Besides wanting to know for myself, it was also a question that many people have written in to me about him. So I thought that I would ask the man himself. This brother was so real and down-to-earth about his struggle as a young man growing up in the Midwest with a huge family, being one of the main bread-winners and having to deal with the pre-written script of being a Black man here in the United States.

Dealing with wanting to be a positive person and yet still having to be faced with the so-called rite of passage that every brother from the ‘hood and beyond has to cope with—these are the same old challenges Mike Epps and I discussed.

This brother truly expressed his love for his mother who was so challenged by the burden of poverty when he and his family were growing up in the Midwest that it drove the sister to a point of not being able to identify with his success. In his words, this cold world drove her crazy, literally!

When he told me that, I broke down in tears because I know the pain of having someone so close and supportive of you not able to draw from your success. It was sad to see his face when he was telling me that story.

This young lad always reflected back on what his momma taught him about how to treat people and what to watch out for along his journey through time. He also draws upon his life experiences, like the one in which he was incarcerated and allowed the chance to reflect about his value to his community “like most African American males in this world.” This brother thinks at the speed of light. His philosophy is that there are no simple solutions, but only intelligent choices in this life and his career.

The core of his mental fuel is the many great actors that he watched as a child that helped to ease the hunger pain, literally. Another component was his desire to make it out of the State of the Hood conditions that he and his family were in!

Personally, I think part of this brother’s philosophy is to ease the pain through laughter and kind words, especially to the people that made him capable of feeding his family: “His many fans.” Trying to get this brother to not talk about his gratitude to his fans was almost impossible to do. He wanted them to know that although he cannot reach them all, his dedication to them is well served in the way of being the best man he can to his family.

Hopefully one day, we will see you with your own show called the “Mike Epps Show” or perhaps you can get the great thinkers in Hollywood to put you in a movie like Ice Cube is doing with the kids and the family. We would love to see that. Whom do we need to talk to?

I want all of my readers to support this brother because he is definitely one of Hollywood’s funniest and our Holly-Hood’s Greatest Mental therapists for us who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. And being a product of our own environment here in the hood who has dealt with the very elements that people deal with daily, Mike, keep yourself rolling in the pursuit of happiness because when we see you on the screen with great actors like Ice Cube in the movie “Next Friday,” you inspire many of our people who support your career and give them a chance to live and overcome some of the pain that we see in our wonderful world called the “HOOD.”

Brother Jihad, thank you for your reading and the mental dissemination of my articles.

Published in : Op-Ed, Op-Ed