Ria and Kevol Graham join Chrystal Genesis for cocktails and conversation at Kokomo, their family-run, acclaimed Caribbean restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Partners in life and work, the couple talk about opening Kokomo just before the Covid pandemic and building a hospitality business while raising three children in New York City.

They discuss Caribbean food as layered and plural rather than singular, their approach to hospitality as an extension of family, and how community, multicultural identity, care, and creativity shape the Kokomo experience.

Ria and Kevol reflect on blending Caribbean heritage with New York life, developing a menu connected to memory and experimentation, creating a space that brings people together, and how hospitality can function as a form of cultural storytelling.

They also speak about the Kokomo Foundation and their fundraising efforts in support of Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa.

This is a lively conversation about food, family, partnership, heritage, creativity and what comes next for Kokomo.

If you like what you heard, please leave a review, subscribe, and explore more at stancepodcast.com and on socials @stancepodcast.

Stance is Hosted by Chrystal Genesis and Produced by Etay Zwick.

Referenced In This Podcast & Show Notes:

Kokomo website

Kokomo Foundation

Kokomo IG

Artist Brittney Leanne Williams joins Chrystal Genesis to talk about her evocative figurative work, where architecture, landscape, and color blur together, and the body opens into a space of transcendence, memory, revelation, suffering and the mystical. Based in Los Angeles and born in Pasadena, Brittney has steadily built a reputation as one of today's most exciting, thoughtful figurative painters. In this wide-ranging conversation, they discuss how Brittney explores spirituality and how she uses the color red as a signal for the Black experience. They trace the evolution of her practice, from portals and prayer to layered storytelling that engages with presence, absence and witnessing. Along the way, they reflect on her early years in Pasadena, her formative time in Chicago, and how nature, along with her personal and cultural history, informs her work. Together, they dig into the creative process, the role of mystery in painting and the questions Brittney is currently asking herself in the studio. This episode is an engaging and intimate look into the mind of an artist shaping contemporary figurative painting with spiritual depth, color and narrative complexity.

If you like what you heard, please leave a review, subscribe, and explore more at stancepodcast.com and on socials @stancepodcast.

Stance is Hosted by Chrystal Genesis and Produced by Etay Zwick.

Referenced In This Podcast & Show Notes:

Brittney Leeanne Williams website

Brittney Leeanne Williams IG

Alexander Berggruen gallery

Writer, DJ, lecturer and creative provocateur Elijah joins Chrystal Genesis to talk about his new book Close The App, Make The Ting: Transformative Prompts For The Modern Artist. In this wide-ranging conversation, they chat about how his Yellow Squares project has grown from Instagram prompts into a global project of installations, lectures, billboards, and collaborations.

They dig into his early story in London's independent music and art scenes, co-founding influential grime label Butterz, his thoughts on his Jamaican heritage, and the complex beauty of Black British identity.

Together, they chat about creative sustainability, echo chambers, and how embracing friction and feedback can power visionary work. This episode is a fabulous dive into ideas built to push culture forward.

If you like what you heard, please leave a review, subscribe, and explore more at stancepodcast.com and on socials @stancepodcast.

Stance is Hosted by Chrystal Genesis and Produced by Etay Zwick.

Referenced In This Podcast & Show Notes:

Butterz Linktree

Elijah IG

Make The Ting by Elijah & Jammz