Tonya Mosley

These are people who had performed for thousands and had been performing for a long time at that point.

What was it about your stage or you?

You know, the thing about the nerves, I mean, maybe that's just something that happens and we just don't see it, but there's something about that that I think...

Maybe there was an environment that you were providing that allowed these guests to show a more truer or fuller version of themselves.

And I want to play another clip from an interview you did with Tupac in 1993.

At the time, he was promoting his new album and the film Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson.

And you ask him about promoting violence.

Let's listen.

That's Tupac Shakur on the Arsenio Hall show in 1993.

And, you know, this is kind of a serious moment.

You're asking him a real question, Arsenio.

But throughout the interview...

Here's – Tupac is smiling.

The two of you are giggling through so much of it.

And watching it, I kept coming back to something that I can only describe as black boy joy.

It's something that we've been talking about lately, like over the last few years.

And so then I started watching all of the YouTube videos, Will Smith, Prince, Sammy Davis Jr., Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy.

It goes on and on.

There was a giddiness, this looseness, a side of these men that we didn't see anywhere else.

And what do you think it was about your stage that made black men in particular feel free?