Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud · Bella Freud

Abiodun Oyewole

February 4, 2026·1 hr 39 min·5 clips

Abiodun Oyewole shares how a South African poet's bold words inspired the name The Last Poets, symbolizing a final call for revolution.

A voice is being built here. Abiodun Oyewole talks about a childhood lesson in projection that starts at home, with his mother correcting his breath and his words. She wanted him to speak cleanly and clearly. That set him apart from the slang and slurred coolness of friends in the projects, and he felt the difference. The lesson was physical too. Air went into the stomach, words had to land properly, and the Lord's Prayer started again whenever a phrase slipped. Then church became the test. Reverend Wilson lowered the pulpit microphone toward the floor, ready for a child to recite the prayer. His mother would not have it. She jumped up, grabbed him, and said her son did not need a microphone. The congregation erupted around him. At ten years old, he stood before what he remembers as maybe a thousand people and projected without help. The memory still has a charge. The host hears more than a performance anecdote. It feels like a piece of oral history that kept traveling because it had muscle in it. Oyewole understands the setup later. His mother had trained him, exposed him, and set him up to run his mouth. The story moves beyond church when he recalls a Boston College appearance with the Last Poets, where a sound man brings racist hostility into the room. Before the poem even starts, the childhood lesson has already shown how a voice can meet intimidation. Tender first, then electric.

As heard by us

A warm conversation where clothing opens into memory, discipline, and the making of a public voice.

Abudin Ayawole moves Fashion Neurosis from clothing into memory, starting with a dashiki and widening into the ways speech gets shaped, corrected, and performed.

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Why you'd press play

Stay for the dashiki, and for the story of a voice trained to carry.

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