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Who's with Me? with W. Kamau Bell
Rafael Casal on Building Something Real
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The podcast opens with Kamau giving Rafael his flowers. Rafael, who has lived in LA for seven years, insists he still identifies Berkeley and Oakland as home, describing his time in LA as an extended work trip. The conversation moves into Rafael's background in the Bay Area youth poetry scene, where he competed in the National Poetry Slam and earned a reputation. Around season three of Def Poetry Jam, producers sought out younger voices and brought Rafael on at age 18. He describes being a nervous, skinny kid staring at the ground on stage, having never memorized a poem before. He was one of the first people to convert his clip from VHS and upload it to YouTube, where it reached a million…