King Crush Thursday - The Interviews Val Gay

Robert Vincent Fuller, Sr_ 1971 graduate of Benjamin Franklin High School. Member of National Honor Society. Attended Shippensburg State College from 1971-1973. Answered call to ministry at 16 years of age while attending Zoar United Methodist Church under the Pastorate of Rev Joshua E. Licorish. Studied Basic Biblical at Phila College of Bible & Evangelistic Teacher Training at Deliverance Bible Institute. Ordained to Ministry in 1983 serving in Pastoral capacity in various churches in Philadelphia. Worked in Banking/Financial services at Corestates/PNB, Mellon Bank; & America Heritage FCU. Hobbies include fitness-weight training, playing drums, listening to music, and traveling.
 
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AKEIFF STAPLES  is married to Anika Thompson-Staples, with whom they have 3 children (Jalen, Brice, Daley). Born and raised in South Media, Pennsylvania, Akeiff is an entrepreneur by trade. Akeiff received a bachelor's degree from Temple University in Geography & Urban Studies and brings to the table nearly two decades of social work experience engaging a wide variety of at-risk youth throughout Pennsylvania, and the state of Connecticut. Akeiff is the author of two children’s books, and has helped build over 25,000 home personal libraries in poverty-stricken areas, providing over 200,000 literacy resources to date. Growing up in a single parent household most of his life, Akeiff vowed to do whatever it took to keep his own family together - and as a result, wants the same for others in the World. Through the years, he has volunteered his time in the community speaking at nonprofits, churches, working events for Special Olympics, coaching youth athletics, and creating programs that foster personal and professional development. Akeiff is very passionate about providing individuals and families with tools in their lives to operate effectively as a unit. Akeiff has received the National Black MBA Association: Small Business of the Year Award (2012), Greater Philadelphia Innovation Award for Parent Engagement from Social Innovations Journal (2019), has been inducted into the Media Area NAACP Spirit Hall Of Fame (2023), received the Gerald Wright Fatherhood Award presented by Father's Day Rally Committee, and also selected as a KYW Newsradio GameChanger (2023).
 
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Dr. Reynaldo Anderson currently serves as the Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Reynaldo is currently the Executive Director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), an international network of artists, intellectuals, creatives, and activists.  He is also a founding member of A.R.T. 2063, (Africans Rising Together).  He is the co-editor of the following anthologies and journals, Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness and The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design (Lexington Books, 2015, 2019), Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (Cedar Grove Publishing, 2018), Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, a special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), and When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity (The Journal of Futures Studies, 2019). He is also the author of numerous articles on Africana Studies and Communication studies and helped conceive the joint BSAM and NY LIVE Arts Curating the End of the World online exhibitions (2020-2021). Reynaldo is currently a member of the curatorial council for Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism festival in 2022.He has presented papers in areas of communications, Africana studies, Afrofuturism, and critical theory in the US and abroad.
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Eric K. Grimes -  Brother Shomari - Peaceful by nature, unwavering in the face of adversity, a stern and forceful catalyst seeking to stand as a measuring rod for those aspiring to model lives of meaning and significance! A trusted and informed community voice who develops boundary stretching, strategic and transformative community knowledge, preparation, advocacy and actions, designed to facilitate Black Ecosystems of Excellence! Shomari is courageously committed, decidedly dedicated and future focused on an unapologetic crusade called, FOR THE L.I.F.E. & LOVE OF BLACK CHILDREN AND THE BEAUTIFUL ONES NOT YET BORN! To this end, “I am guided by the oft-quoted African proverb that states, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and the resultant obligation to build the village required to raise purposeful and powerful Black children”. Educator and Organizer, catch Brother Shomari’s radio shows on WURD radio https://wurdradio.com/ “Groundings Evolutions and Elevations with Brother Shomari”, covering Pan African Diasporic news Sundays 6 - 8pm and Fridays 1 - 4pm.
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A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is a music historian, pianist, composer, Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Pennsylvania and 2022 Guggenheim Fellow.

A widely-published writer, he’s the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (2003), and The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop (2013). Dr. Ramsey is co-author beside Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., with Melanie Zeck of The Transformation of Black Music: The Rhythms, the Songs and the Ships of the African Diaspora (2017) and editor of Rae Linda Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price (2020). His books in progress include Who Hears Here?, a collection of essays, and the monograph Sound Proof: Black Music, Magic and Racial Intimacies, a history of African American music from the slave-era to the present. He was editor for the series Music of the African Diaspora at the University of California Press for ten years and founding editor of the blog Musiqology.com.
 
As a producer, label head, and leader of the band Dr. Guy’s Musiqology, Dr. Ramsey has released five recording projects and has performed at venues such as The Blue Note and Harlem Stage in New York, and the Annenberg Theater of the Performing Arts and Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia, and other venues worldwide.  His musical commissions include “Someone Is Listening,” written with poet Elizabeth Alexander, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP; he recently scored the prize-winning documentary Making Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South. His documentary Amazing: The Tests and Triumph of Bud Powell was a selection of the BlackStar Film Festival in 2015 and his multimedia performance piece Hide/Melt/Ghost made its New York debut at Harlem Stage in 2019. Ramsey hosts the Musiqology Podcast and Musiqology Rx is his community arts initiative that provides quality arts programming to under-served communities. He has written for and consulted with museums and galleries such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and was co-curator of the acclaimed exhibition Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2010. Dr. Ramsey has lectured on music nationally and internationally.
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Brian Marshall, Jr - Full-Time Radiologic Technologist, Associate Pastor of the Bible Way Baptist Church in Philadelphia currently oversees Christian Education under Dr. Damone Jones Sr., volunteer for “BROTHERHOOD”,  Graduate of Sayre High School (2008), Graduate of Bloomsburg University of PA (2014), Graduate of Penn Medicine’s school of Radiologic Technology (2014), currently enrolled at United Lutheran Seminary pursuing a M.A. in Biblical Studies.
“My vocation is healing, my calling is serving and my passion is teaching. I consider myself to be nothing more than a product of Grace (Ephesians 2:8), a child of West Philly, and a by-product of perseverance (Romans 5:3-5).”
 
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