What's up everybody? It's Rachel and I have a special treat for you guys. Now you might have heard me talk about the fact that I was down in essence festival, but I didn't really need to talk about what I got to do and lucky for you guys you can actually hear what I was doing. So I was at the Spotify house of R&B where I had a beautiful beautiful conversation with the most incredible black women. I had Daniel Smith. I had doctors TT and Zakia of the dope labs podcast.

And I had lovely tea who has the podcast tea time unfiltered and we just had a beautiful conversation about black women podcasting being creative the ups and downs, celebrating joy and blackness and telling our stories. And I'm so excited that you guys are going to get to hear this wonderful conversation. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Hello, hi everyone. Hi, how's everyone doing? Good. Well, I just want to welcome everyone to the house of R&B here at Essence Best. This is a home and destination to elevate our minds, bodies and souls with the voices and sounds of black creators on Spotify.

So my name is Karin. I'm a senior executive at Spotify Studios and I'm excited to excited to hear to celebrate Spotify slate of amazing black women podcast hosts to discuss the power of audio storytelling.

And we're here to empower and elevate black women and audio debunk, stereotypes and audio storytelling and contribute to self care and wellness and drop some gems.

So to kick it off, we're going to hear from a lot of exciting voices today. We have Danielle Smith, the author of Shine Bright, a very personal history of black women in the hip hop and host of black girl songbook.

We have T.T. and Zakia of dope labs and lovely tea host of tea time unfiltered, but before they join us, we're going to kick off our panel with our host, our panelists today, the co host of higher learning.

Her name is Rachel Lindsay. I'm sure you all know she is. She's known for making history as the first African American lead and the franchise's history on the 13th season of ABC's The Bachelor at.

And as a contestant on the 21st season of ABC's The Bachelor, but she's obviously so much more than that. Rachel Lindsay is a multi-hyphenate talent and attorney, a media personality author speaker, podcaster and she's here with us today.

She's also an on air correspondent for extra and please just everyone give her a very warm welcome Rachel Lindsay.

Oh, come on out Rachel right here. Hello, I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for that beautiful welcome, but what I love is this isn't about me. You are about to hear from some incredible women, some beautiful voices who I'm so excited to bring to the stage right now.

So you already gave such a beautiful welcome and said who we're going to see now we're going to get to meet them. So I'm going to start with Danielle Smith. Yeah, come on up here. Come grab a seat. That's right. Give big cheers to Danielle.

Big cheers to Danielle. Yes, the host of Black Girl Songbook. If you aren't listening, do yourself a favor and listen. It's pure genius what she's bringing to the podcast world and so informative as well.

So informative. Okay, also we have co host. We have some doctors in the house. Doctors, Zakia and Titi. Come on up here. Co host of dope labs.

Bringing science and entertainment into our world. And then last but not least, we have lovely tea.

Oh, you got some fans in the audience tea time unfiltered podcast. Come into the stage right now. Okay, ladies, we have so, so much to get into and thank you so much for being here. We're so excited to talk to you about what we do, but also about black women and using our voices in this space.

I'm not sure about you guys, but I always knew that I wanted to do TV. I always knew that I wanted to do something where I was talking and communicating with people, but I had no idea what podcasting would do for me.

It is the most fulfilling experience that I have ever had. And I'm sure that you feel the same way when it comes to being in this entertainment space because it's very freeing.

I don't feel beholden to a network. I don't there. No, there are no commercials or anything. We get to produce our own content and say what's on our mind where we can connect with our audience. And it's just such a beautiful thing.

So let's get into what it is that we do. So I want people know who you are, obviously, from the cheers that we received from the audience. But I want to know how we got here because we're seeing that podcast are more and more popular.

It's a running joke that everybody has one, but not everybody does it great. Like these women do up here. Okay. Yeah, you can clap on that. You can get the hand clap on that because they do it well.

But I want to know how did we get here? How did you decide a podcast is what I want to do? And how did you figure out what you wanted your podcast to be about into represent. And Danielle, I'll start with you on that.

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