FOR THE CULTURE BY THE CULTURE | P. Frank Williams

INTERVIEW @KBTindal PHOTOGRAPH @thereal_tyronerichardson

P. Frank Williams is a brother with over two decades in the industry as an executive producer and showrunner on some of the most popular documentaries and movies that encompass the black experience. He's the man behind the latest documentary on Hulu, Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told. The documentary hit the number one spot on Hulu the day of its release. He has produced several acclaimed projects centered around the black culture and music, which include TV-1’s renowned documentary series Unsung and Unsung Hollywood. BET's award-winning series American Gangster as well the BET Awards and the BET Hip-Hop Awards. He was an executive producer on the crime show Hip-Hop Homicides along with 50 Cent and Mona Scott Young. He has done Hip-Hop films and documentaries such as Wu: The Story Of The Wu-Tang Clan, Who Shot Biggie and Tupac and Jeezy’s A Hustler's Ambition. He is the former executive editor of The Source magazine and he's also the executive producer and showrunner for the Tina Knowles, Discovery Plus and Oprah Winfrey Network four-part series Profiled: The Black Man. He is now the founder and president of the multimedia company For the Culture by the Culture which is an urban content creation company based in Los Angeles with satellite offices in Atlanta and the Bay Area that creates opportunities for people of color behind the camera, and projects focused on Black Culture. In 2024 and beyond he will be unveiling projects with Tubi, TV1 and BET and more. He is an Emmy Award winner and an eight-time NAACP Image Award winner as well. Validated Magazine welcomes Mr. P. Frank Williams.

Validated: Absolutely. Let's get right into it man. You're Oakland born and raised right?

P. Frank Williams: Yes. And then the other half of my life, New York City and then Los Angeles. So I spent my formative years in Oakland and moved to New York as a 21 year old kid in the 90s and that's when I started.

Validated: Where are you from?

P. Frank Williams: Downtown Brooklyn Atlantic and Evans. And Harlem. I went to Columbia University.  I know a bit… Uptown-Uptown. (Laughs)

Validated: When did you first fall in love with being behind the camera? And was there a first movie or documentary that you saw that made you say, “I want to do that, but I want to do it from the Black experience perspective?”

P. Frank Williams: Well I've always been a Storyteller since I was a kid. I initially started out wanting to be a broadcast journalist which ironically I got a little bit of experience and realized that I was into the written word. Even as a little kid I think if you see my bio I used to write love letters for the homies in the hood. So if you couldn't write a letter to Keisha, little Tasha and you’re the street dude you can go get the dude with the glasses and the big afro pay him a little $15-20 bucks and I spiced that up. So even like 10 years old I was doing it. I always knew that  telling stories was my thing. So I started out as a writer, a journalist at the LA Times and at The Source where I did the big cover stories on Tupac and Biggie and Suge Knight all the iconic ones Eazy-E in the 90s and that shifted over to making television with the Source Awards, BET Awards, Grammys and different things. I always tell people, unfortunately Puff’s in the headlines, but if Puff and Mase and Dre and Snoop were at an event I was sitting at the table next to them. So I've always been sort of Hip-Hop Annex. I'm the guy that brought you those stories and a lot of times you're not gonna get to meet Suge Knight or Dr. Dre or meet Tupac. And so somebody has to go interview them and tell their story so that's always been me since a little kid. I've been telling these stories. Once Hip-Hop came into my life I sort of dedicated myself to that in the mid 90s.

Validated: Okay. I think for all of us it all started with Hip-Hop and we branched off into other areas and stuff like that. So that's why I always say I want to make Hip-Hop proud because if it wasn't for Hip-Hop a lot of us wouldn't be doing a lot of the things that we are doing.

P. Frank Williams: Yeah I would have been in your living room taking your TV in ‘87, ‘88 if it wasn't for Hip-Hop. So Hip-Hop is taking me all around the world and giving me great opportunities to always be loyal and dedicated to the culture. It's good and bad. There's times when it's good in the Freaknik documentary. There were a lot of great things. There were some bad things so I'm here just to sort of turn a lens on the culture and make sure some people from inside the culture are telling our stories and not outsiders.

Validated: So like we said you produced and directed the number one show on Hulu right now the documentary Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told. How did the partnership with Swirl films and Mass Appeal come about to actually make this happen?

P. Frank Williams: Well as I mentioned obviously I've been in the game for a minute over almost three decades now. Some of the people at Swirl I've worked with before, Eric, Jay, those folks and they sort of had the Genesis of the Freaknik idea. And I came in with Mass Appeal who brought me on as a director, put together the sizzle reel, the deck, and helped write that. Go out and pitch it. So I was sort of in it from the beginning of taking it out and then being able to get it sold to Hulu. So that's what happened, we all partnered up. Hulu with Swirl and Mass Appeal and then I was brought on as a director to kind of oversee the visual part of it and the storytelling.

Validated: Jermaine Dupri, Luther Campbell, 21 Savage all played an integral part in making a documentary with you. Tell us why you chose to tackle a documentary about Freaknik like 40 years after its inception and about 30 years after the height of the popularity of Freaknik? And tell me about the process of making the documentary?

P. Frank Williams: Well Freaknik is an iconic cultural thing. I think there's a lot of misnomers until this doc came out. It was sort of this iconic Black Woodstock. It was a situation where there was a lot of controversy about Freaknik and it was sort of like this Hush-Hush thing because nobody really wanted to talk about the crazy things that happened. And I think the 40th anniversary was a good way to do it. Originally we were trying to show somebody who was bringing Freaknik back in today's world which is the gentleman Carlos. We still included him but shifted it to more of a retrospective about the history of Freaknik.

There's a nostalgia about Freaknik among the Young Generation, the Drakes, The Latto’s, 21 Savage who by the way had multiple birthday parties with a Freaknik theme. And so that was part of the thing. How do we bring this cultural thing which blew up in the late 80s mid 90s or so to a new generation? That was sort of our marching orders to see how we could bring this iconic festival back visually and tell the story of it and unravel the layers. Because there was a humongous fascination with Freaknik for multiple generations which I thought was amazing.

Validated: I didn't know that either when I watched the documentary. I had no idea that it had started way before. I was abreast of it in the 90s like everybody else was because it was the most popular thing to do. What was it like going back and interviewing some of the founders of it and what were some of the gems that they gave you about why they started the Freaknik and what their outcome for it was actually supposed to be?

P. Frank Williams: Well as I show in the film it was sort of an innocent thing. These kids couldn't afford to go back home, had their own little picnic, they ended up calling it Freaknik because The Freak was the dance at the time from Chic or whatever and then they came with a picnic and started it. It was hot dogs and hamburgers, kids from the DC Metro Club, DC Area put together this picnic and what started out as 20-30 people, then it became 500 then it became a 1000, 75,000, 25,000 and then ended up with almost 300,000 people by the late 90s. It was really just an organic thing that morphed into something much bigger. It's ironic in today's world where everything's a DM or a post or something like that, imagine something that spread via flyers and Word of Mouth. There's no social media. There's no texting. There's no branding. There's none of that. There's no big corporate sponsor, just young Black people trying to find a way for themselves in a world that didn't really make room for them.

Validated: Like I said it's safe to say that it was all about Hip-Hop in the beginning which saved a lot of our lives. What's your earliest memory of Hip-Hop?

P. Frank Williams: Well that's a really good question. I guess a lot of people would say Sugar Hill Gang but I would probably say yeah I think that's about right. I mean I think of the ‘79, ‘78 when I was about eight or nine years old and I remember just hearing these dudes rapping on the radio. I want to say it's around “The Message” right before that. In terms of the actual oral or audio version of Hip-Hop. But one of my earliest memories is like 82’ with Beat Street when I used to take my cardboard to lunchtime and we would break dance against each other. I didn't mean to date myself but like around ‘82, ‘81 when we were break dancing I know that feeling of having your jacket, having your Adidas. Getting your laces right. Making sure you got an Up rock or a head spin. I'm with the foundation of this. I know when it was only on college radio two hours or three hours a week and you had to record that. I remember when I had to have the double cassette and I would record back and forth with the Double-D batteries. I'm from the second wave of Hip-Hop obviously the foundation like Herc and Bam and all those kinds of people was the 70s. I came right at the late '70s.

Validated: I like to say I’m generation 1.5 because I went through the same thing. In New York it was Mr. Magic and that was on the air two, three o'clock in the morning. And you had to wait to make that recording for that one hour.

P. Frank Williams: Yeah that was it. Now it's the dominant culture in the world and it's all Hip-Hop radio, right?

Validated: On the business side of things outside of the creative side, tell me what it takes to bring a documentary like this to fruition and to get a company like Hulu on board with it?

P. Frank Williams: I mean obviously shout out to Mass Appeal and Swirl. We all collectively got together. Swirl who started the idea for the Freaknik and kind of put some of the creatives together and then they approached Mass Appeal and then myself to help flesh it out. It's good to see these Black stories being embraced on these sort of white mainstream platforms like Hulu. Shout out to Hulu. I think they saw pretty much immediately how great it was and how rich it was. They pretty much accepted and made an offer pretty quickly within like a couple of pitches, which by the way never happens in television. You might pitch 50 people and still not get an offer. So shout out to the power of the Hulu creatives executives Beth and Kate and Hannah, all those people who really saw the future. I doubt if they thought it would be this big because even I did not think that it would get the amount of attention that it got. When we first announced it it went viral and without a sizzle without anything, without whatever. So that just shows the power of Black culture. And so from a business perspective I think Hulu was smart to know that some of these Black stories have great crossover appeal. For it to be number one on Hulu and still in the top five means that more than Black people are watching it that means that it's crossed over into other homes.

Validated: What's been the biggest feedback that you've gotten about the documentary so far?

P. Frank Williams: I think a lot of people are surprised at how layered it is and how it's much more entertainment instead of ratchet. I think most people thought I was just gonna show some booty shots and people turning up and people having sex and doing crazy stuff. There is some pretty wild stuff in the documentary but I come from the school of KRS as I mentioned.  I'm a B-boy first. So I do Edutainment, meaning education and entertainment. And so for me it's been surprising that people didn't realize it was going to be deeper. I think it's also surprising people thought I was going to be more ratchet. You know I'm on Disney right? Disney, Hulu so I know it's Hulu but make sure you understand that it is still Disney and you can't go way out to left and right field. So that's what it is.

I think the last part that's been surprising is just sort of the multigenerational appeal of the film. Meaning I had a friend who said she's like 50 early 50s and then she watched with her mother in her 70s and her niece in her 20s. So three black women from three generations watched Freaknik. People tell me they watch with their kids. My 19-year-old twins watched it and my 60 year old aunt. It's one of those weird things which never ever happens with that many generations tuned into it. And I think there's a fascination from the young people and there's a nostalgia from the people who went through it which has really been amazing and sort of fascinating.

Validated: At one point you were the former executive editor of The Source Magazine. Like you said you covered the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, interviewed Dre and Suge and so on and so forth. What was your favorite story that you did back then and how do you feel the climate in Hip-Hop has changed from the 90s to now with social media and everything else?

P. Frank Williams: Well that's a really hard one to answer. I wrote the cover when Tupac died in '96.  I co-wrote the cover when Big died in ‘97.  When Eric died I know this is taking people back but even in '95 when Eazy-E died so I did all of those Scarface, Geto Boys different situations. I don’t know if I’d say the word “favorite” but I would imagine the most iconic couple of ones I did was the Tupac Shakur, the gray cover when he died in ‘96 and it just was such an iconic cover.

One of my favorites I think is still the Suge Knight  when he got out of jail and when Dre had left Death Row. I interviewed Sugar Bear, Big Shug in the Mule Creek State Prison. And then when he got out I also interviewed him in the Death Row offices in LA. And obviously people know Suge is a little controversial sort of a wild boy. I remember going to him when he got out of jail and he had a briefcase and he opened it up and he had these diamond handcuffs. He’s  like “I'm the only Street nigga with diamond handcuffs”. Quote unquote. But then I'm like, “Suge you're a gangster but you're drinking diet coke because you got your sugar. So it was fascinating to hang out with him at that particular time and have those conversations with Dre when he left. I’ve just been fortunate to have some of the more  iconic conversations for the culture.

One famous one that I did was with Wyclef Jean when he had two machetes, it says love and hate. This is the first time he talked about his relationship with Lauren Hill when the Fugees broke up. I really did come from that time when there was no coverage of Hip-Hop really on TV and The Source really was kind of like the CNN of Hip-Hop at that particular time. The stories we wrote and the things we did in the '90s early 2000s slay the blueprint for what's happening now.

Validated: I actually still have all of those issues. I have crates on top of crates of old Source issues XXL issues. What was the hardest piece that you ever had to write as a journalist?

P. Frank Williams: That's a really great question I think there was as I mentioned the Suge Knight situation. And as you can see from today's situation Suge says a lot of volatile things. He said stuff about Minister Louis Farakhan, Magic Johnson and unfortunately about Puff and Big. And I thought some of them were a little bit too much prints. I challenged him about saying some of these things which I thought were sort of without merit and a little bit offensive. But I had to try to let him speak his peace. Just because I don't agree with his thing doesn't mean that it should not be printed. Those are some of the tough decisions that I made. I do think that and I said this publicly. I'm not saying anything new is that, we fed into the East Coast West Coast beef. Both articles that I wrote about Big and Suge and all of that, Dre and all of that in the 90s. I don’t want to say we kept the feud going, but we gave publicity and rise to these people to let them speak sometimes venomous things. And I do regret that. I was a kid at the time and obviously we were trying to sell magazines. But I do think some of the stories that I wrote and things that we did at The Source contributed to the East West Coast beef.

Validated: You also did The True Crime show Hip-Hop Homicides, which showcased the death of artists like Pop Smoke, XXX Tentacion, Chinx, King Von and others.  I just want to know your perspective on it. Why do you feel that we are the only genre that deals with this toxic masculinity that leads to death? And what are some of the possible solutions in your mind to the Black-on-Black hatred or other issues that causes this type of behavior?

P. Frank Williams: Well that's a tough one. It was a little bit sad for me after covering Pac and Big, the deaths of them and all of that Lost Boys in the 90s and the murders that happened. And then for me unfortunately 20 plus years later to be telling the same stories with King Von and XXX Tentacion and Pop Smoke in terms of nobody had really learned from it. I think too often in Black Culture especially in Hip-Hop, the streets and the music are connected, they're not separate. Rock and Roll and Country music, Pop music people can tell a story, do whatever diss somebody and nothing else will happen. In our culture the music in the streets are linked one on one. I think the rise of social media with people taunting saying “I'm smoking on my ops,” all of this kind of shit has contributed to that negativity and the violence. I think there are people trying to flex with guns and do a lot of wild shit on the internet and then talking about “pull up on me.” I think that it's become an unfortunate badge of honor to be a gangster. Gangsters don't usually live. They end up getting jail time or getting murdered. So, I've seen it. I just think it's unfortunate.

I think we need better conflict resolution skills. We need better gun laws. We need to be able to value black life a lot more between us as black people. I've obviously been in this game and some of these stories that you talked about, I was there to see Pop Smoke's mother cry and because she had to watch her son get murdered. I know the feeling of talking to even like MO3 whose murder was on camera and his mother having to watch that and his father just being totally broken down, he started just sobbing like a baby and talking about it. So you're not just murdering a rapper in your ego, you're killing somebody's father, killing somebody's son. I think too often we don't think about that. And as a person who has met and interviewed a lot of these people I wish we would think about that and not just be in the moment. I think our toxic masculinity sometimes is a horrible thing for Black people.

I will say though this is an issue that's beyond Hip-Hop it's a systemic issue in the Black community Brown Community or whatever that has nothing to do with the music. I think it's a cultural situation that affects us on a bigger level other than just the music.

Validated: You've won eight NAACP image awards. Is there one that's the most special to you or are they all just like your babies?

P. Frank Williams: Well no I think six of those are for Unsung, one for Sunday Best. I can't remember what the other ones were for. But two of them are really important to me. I won an Emmy for the Olympics. But I did Gil Scott-Heron which I think was a very powerful piece of television. We won that year for Unsung which I thought was an important story as well as the Sugar Hill Gang, those two stories that I did which ended up for those seasons winning NAACP Image Awards. And obviously Gil Scott-Heron is the sort of The Godfather of Hip-Hop and his story is the foundation. And Sugar Hill Gang is the most popular rap record in history and the record that set the tone for all of us to be able to have a career; You doing these journalist situations, me as a producer. So those in terms of image awards are the ones that I cherish them most because they're really important Hip-Hop stories.

Validated: You won an Emmy with NBC for the Olympics in Athens Greece. What part did you play on that team when you won that Emmy?

P. Frank Williams: I was on the writing staff in the 2004 Olympics in Athens Greece where I wrote some of the copy, the relays or track or different things. So, I wrote copy, the words that they say on the screen during the broadcast. So, I was very fortunate to have that life-changing experience and it was great.

Validated: You're the founder and president of a multimedia company For The Culture By the Culture. Tell us why you chose to launch the company and what's the driving force behind the company outside of just the creative aspect?

P. Frank Williams: I think for me as you can see from the press release, I've had a lot of experiences to work in like Black urban culture whether it be The Source or whatever but also white mainstream and I guess you can call it culture A&E, Hulu, LA Times. And I think that too often stories about people of color are not being told about people of color. So it's important for me that's why I call it “For the Culture by the Culture”. Not just for the culture but people from the culture actually are telling the stories and we're doing it from an inside out perspective, meaning from inside the culture to the world. So I just want to empower young people of color whether it be Black, Latino, Asian, women and make sure they get an opportunity as a producer as a writer as a cameraman as an editor. There's no better feeling than me walking on an all Black set and a story and I'm doing a show with TV1 with Doug E. Fresh and  a bunch of other people. Big Daddy Kane was there, Yo Yo, Anthony Hamilton who I was just shooting. And it was great a couple of them said, “Wow I can't believe you come showing up with an all black crew”. There were a few white people but mostly brothers and sisters. I can tell you how much and how important that is. It's important for us to give ourselves opportunities and being a place where we can call those shots and give those opportunities because often we don't get them because other races unfortunately help themselves a lot more than they would help us. And so it's important for us to do the same.

Validated: What are some of the projects that are in the works that we can expect From For the Culture by the Culture that we can be on the lookout for?

P. Frank Williams: As I mentioned I do have a show on TV One  hosted by Doug E. Fresh that's coming out later this year, a music collaboration show. I also have a Busta Rhymes documentary series which is going to be on Viacom and so that's good for my brother Bust and a bunch of different situations. A Tubi true crime series that I'm doing with Angela Yee and so just out here man slanging these TV shows trying to pay these bills at private school and keep it going.

Validated: I ask everybody this question because we all started with Hip-Hop. What does Hip-Hop mean to you?

P. Frank Williams: It's a good question. Hip-Hop is freedom. Hip-Hop is Black Joy. Hip-Hop is making something out of nothing. We created this whole global culture because nobody wanted us in the clubs. The punk rockers and us share that. The Disco era didn't make way for us. There were no programs for after school music. We started scratching, B-boying, taking power from a streetlamp to make it. So Hip-Hop is really making something out of nothing for young people of color and it's an expression of that whether it be B-boying, MCing, graffiti, or the DJ whatever it is. To me those pillars of Hip-Hop is why I keep doing it. I found liberation and a home in freedom in Hip-Hop and I think that is the global language of every culture. It's not a black thing anymore, it's a global thing. And so as long as Hip-Hop has been feeding me and helping me tell these stories I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing it as I mentioned for the culture by the culture.

Validated: Where can everyone follow you on social media and for those creatives that want to reach out to you for an opportunity where can they reach you for that as well?

P. Frank Williams: Well I'm not medium Frank or small, a little baby or extra large. I'm just @PFrankWilliams on every platform. I don't have any aliases and nothing like that. I'm a street dude. I go straight from a real situation. So you can find me @PFrankWilliams on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook all of that. And that's if you want to reach out if you got any ideas for shows or different situations. Obviously I got legal representation. I don't take just unsolicited but of course I'm always reachable.

Validated: Alright sounds good. 

P. Frank Williams: Man keep up the good work. A pleasure to speak with you. I'm honored and I appreciate you keeping the culture alive my brother.

Validated: Absolutely. Thank you and you keep keeping the culture alive as well.

P. Frank Williams: Peace and blessings.