[Lyrics] no no no no no can you dig it
[Music]
[Lyrics] can you dig it
[Music]
Hip-hop appreciation weekend this is volume eight,
Hip-hop and Liberation. Digging in the Crate's mission
statement: Digging in the Crates, hip-hop studies at Virginia Tech
exists to foster a sense of community among hip-hop artists and fans on campus.
We hope to model that students personal interests are worthy of academic
study and further institutionalize hip-hop studies'
presence on Virginia Tech's campus. Our monthly events
seek to celebrate hip-hop scholarship via communication.
Now I would like to ask the co-sponsors to come up and speak about
their organizations.
yo what's up guys how's everyone doing good all right make some more noise
it's thursday it's pre friday come on let's have some fun
yeah yeah all right so what's up everyone my name is Eric Liu, I'm the
president of the Flowmigos which is the Virginia Tech breakdancing club.
As a part of this second annual hip-hop appreciation weekend
we have a break dancing competition on Saturday.
It is my favorite price it's free 99. That's right it's going to be at the
Graduate Life Center multi-purpose room it's a 3v3 breakdancing competition so
there's going to be teams of three the grand prize money is six hundred
dollars so we got a lot on the line we have djs mcs and judges from all
across the U.S. we have some heavy hitters so the event
is definitely super official we hope you guys come out it's going to
be from four to nine there's also free pizza so if you don't want to see
dancing you just always get some free food
yeah what's up make some more noise
uh what's up everyone my name is jason my name is jose
and uh we are the students of hip-hop legacy
uh please come out to our event tomorrow thank you for coming out today by the
way thanks so much
uh as part of the hip hop weekend we're having a cipher at
harvey's barbershop uh followed by a discussion
on the role of a barber shop in hip-hop and in the black community
uh please come out to that starts at seven
seven o'clock so please come on to that 7 30.
sorry about that and in addition to that we'll be
giving away free haircuts so if you come in enter your name in you'll get a free
cut and actually some of the people in the
cypher are in this room so you may see them here later again
cyphering so just to let you know yeah scene cyfrin
what's up everyone my name is Ethan Haley and I'm currently the
the secretary of VT Expressions, we focus on
students self-expressing themselves we host open mics talent shows poetry slams
you name it uh we have a talent show coming up uh a
week from today in haymarket seven to nine and uh our
edition period just closed and we got a lot of really good mcs and r b singers
it's gonna be nice but yeah awesome yeah all right
Hi guys I'm Laurel, I'm the music director for WUVT.
It's a radio station on campus located in Squires student center
if you guys didn't know we actually have a radio station yes
uh so tune in to 90.7 FM if you want to listen to
a variety of whatever's weird now
so our tagline is kind of radio for everyone we have
mixtures of jazz hip-hop we have new music from 12 to 5 p.m monday
through friday so if you want to get involved we
actually just had our organizational meeting but
next actually the week before um
april 1st whatever week that is i think the last week of march
is our radiothon which is um where every single dj has a different
theme for their radio show and we're accepting donations for cool swag
so yay
thank you co-sponsors um now we'll uh get to
the main event um as i uh read off their bios um the panelists
and the moderators please come up to us answers thank you
So Dr. Brandy Faulkner's area of specialization includes
constitutional and administrative law, race and public policy,
and critical organization theory. She teaches courses in public administration
constitutional law administrative law research methods
and the politics of race ethnicity and gender
excuse me her research interests include critical race theory and public law.
In 2014 she she received the college of liberal
arts and human human sciences teaching excellence award
thank you Dr. Faulkner.
Omar Offendum is a rapper poet based in Los Angeles
known for his unique blend of hip-hop and
Arabic poetry. He has been featured on prominent world news outlets
lectured a number of prestigious academic institutions collaborated with
major museums and cultural organizations on several high-profile projects
and help raise millions of dollars for various humanitarian relief groups
thank you Omar
next we have Dumi Right was introduced to audiences
in hip-hop golden age as a member of Zimbabwe's legit
the pioneering crew widely regarded as the first African hip-hop
group to gain international recognition he has a solid discography of
album releases including a claimed Zimbabwe legit house of stone
ouoo of own unknown origin alternate reality and a slew of guest
appearances compilations and mistakes released
worldwide Dumi is a proud Hokie and a member of the class of 95.
Saba Taj does that get it right yeah okay is a southern
Muslim artist and activist based in Durham, North Carolina
heavily influenced by Islamic stories and speculative fiction
Saba uses mixed-media practice too to illustrate the
oh sorry the elimination liminality is i'm sorry excuse me uh but dysphoric
um ideally through the creation of hybridized
band monsters Saba remixes cultural references
from her south Asian, American Muslim, and queer identities
explores things of this diaspora excuse me
inherited trauma and upsets thank you
there we go okay everybody can hear me all right
this is good all right good good so tonight's topic is hip-hop and
liberation which is a great topic and um we're
going to engage in some discussion about it
and hope that all of you will feel free to ask questions
specifically to our artists and chime in when you feel it's appropriate um
so let's start just by getting a sense of how you identify are
you artists are you mcs are you djs are you
musicians how do you feel you fit into hip-hop as
a culture
all right well first of all thank you Dr. Faulkner it's an honor to be here with you
and much love to VTDITC and to all of the sponsors
can we give them another round of applause please
so my name is Omar Offendum and i'm definitely uh i've definitely identified
as an emcee and a rapper and a poet for many many years
i've also made beats for quite some time uh though that
hasn't taken center stage as much these days it's really been more about this
lyricism and the performance and with that i would like to stress
also that i mean i've always considered there to be like five elements to hip
hop and the la you know the final one that people
tend to overlook is the knowledge piece and making sure that
um component to it so so that's uh that's where i'm
operating from excellent
um yeah so myself um i consider myself an emcee i like the term
mc because you know the master ceremony element of
it i feel like you're in a a very honored position to
be able to preside over the happenings you know be it
a jam or be it you know a party or something and so
it comes with a lot of weight and importance because you've got to convey
thoughts and ideas and you got to keep the party live and get people rocking
and do something and say something um so i also like to call myself a
verbal illustrator because i try to paint pictures and describe things
because i know what attracted me to hip-hop when i started was hearing
you know um different groups in america talk about things they were going
through and i think the first um first song i
tried to memorize it was it was hard i was
maybe 60 successful was the message but it had so many layers and it was so deep
and so you know multifaceted where he was
talking about all these things he was going through
and even though i've been born in the u.s i hadn't seen any of that you know
before i moved to africa so definitely um consider myself you know a
conveyor a purveyor of words and a communicator and a great one at
that um i am not an emcee or anything i'm a
visual artist so i'm a little bit over here on this
other couch bringing in a different perspective but
yeah we'll see how it all connects yeah but you like hip-hop i do
so when i think about um hip-hop and liberation and and connecting those two
things one of the first songs that did it for
me was the bridge is over right i'm old school yes don't add me
um but do you have a piece of art or lyrics or an artist or
song that sort of made you think about those
connections at all
good um definitely for me um one of the early people that kind of got
me excited about ryman was rock him right he was just so
complex and i think early a lot of early hip-hop was fresh and it was dope but it
was like straight forward right you know hip hop but if
you do hit me do it hip hop you don't stop
you know what i mean and it was cool um but then he came along and he was like
making the third word rhyme with the last word and then he wouldn't rhyme for
like two bars and it was like man and so that got me interested in the
intricacies of word play and i think was a big influence in me
actually writing as an artist
i've got lots of mcs who've been influences over the years
i'll just throw some names out because i think they might fit into like the
the idea of liberation uh definitely pock being up there
and i would say also you know nas on many of his tracks
black thought uh talent quality and most deaf
lupe sorry i should say yeah lupe kendrick today and others so um it's
something that's been that's been a part of it you know for a
long time and that's the part of it that i definitely gravitated towards
not exclusively that just has been a big influence
um so there's a movement that many of y'all are probably familiar with called
after futurism um and it spans music as well as
scholarly thought and visual arts as well
and so um i think that's been really influential
as well as octavia butler um yeah so it's like sci-fi
and artists like guangichi mutu um and kende wiley as well have been really
deeply influential to my work and thinking about how to bring
mythologies specifically islamic stories into a future thinking context
yeah so at what point in your lives did you
start to do work that you felt was liberating and and
what did that mean to you what does it mean to be
engaged in liberation work
um i think art has always been something that felt
liberating it was a space for self-expression
and then i think when i started out it was much more of a concrete
platform for pushing back against islamophobia
um and i will say that in some ways that wasn't
a personally liberating feeling um to be doing work in that way although
more broadly i think that is like kind of a collective effort towards
liberation but i think over time in my journey as a
as a maker it's like finding ways to be really authentic to my voice
uh which is a struggle truly i think like when you know people
are looking at you and you want to make sense to them
um and they're coming with their preconceived notions that you feel like
you have to like deal with them in some way
um i think that takes practice and a lot of effort
to do so it's an ongoing journey
uh yeah i could definitely definitely relate to that and i think um
in my case it's also like dealing with it like in the moment getting on stage
getting on a microphone and trying to speak you know my truth and
also knowing that there's all that sort of judgment and the filters that are you
know being passed through but i'll say this because i'm at a
university and i attended the university of virginia shout out to
any cavaliers crickets but that's why i first started
getting into hip-hop making beats writing rhymes participating in like
local ciphers and things and um you know when i first started i
was kind of like this ethnically ambiguous dude named omar
that you know kind of could wrap well and stuff but then
halfway through my career 911 happened and my college career 9 11 happened and
so all of a sudden there was this different
lens that people were viewing what we're viewing my work through
um the arab rapper the muslim rapper what's he talking about
i was vocal about you know the wars in afghanistan and iraq and islamophobia
the rise of it so i've always kind of been dealing with
that you know on some level and the very act of it even more so than anything
specific that i've said but just consistently doing that for the last 15
years or so is is the liberation for me you know and
being given the space to do that and heads nodding back in agreement is is
the liberation as well so
yeah and um i think for me what kind of brought hip-hop to the forefront and
where i kind of used it and felt like i had ownership
of what i was doing was when i kind of came to that realization like as you're
growing up you got to do what your folks do and
your parents do you listen to what they listen to
you know we listen to like you know ours was a musical household so we listened
to hugh massiquella and miriam keva um lady smith black mambazo
steve kikana like different you know southern african musicians
and even you know phelan you know west african musicians manufacture
and it was kind of cool you know me dance and everything
but it was you know my parents music you know it was theirs and i liked it
you know and i enjoyed it but it wasn't like my own
and um when i started hearing hip-hop oh this is cool
and you know it's kind of that rebellious thing where it's like oh yeah
they don't even know what's going on um this is our little thing but then i
started realizing like hey wait i've i can tell stories about my experiences
through the music and then i remember in the height of the
afrocentric era we're listening to you know the jungle
brothers and public enemy and and folks like says sonic talk about
africa and we're like yo they should you know i mean you had um
even on the beat street soundtrack it was like zimbabwe and i'm like yeah you
know what i mean so it was like liberating we're like yes
they're talking about us we're a part of it
a part of this new thing that's you know blowing up and having people
tell their stories and so then it occurred to us like
wait we don't necessarily have to come out rapping about what everybody else is
rapping about or rapping about going back to africa
we're in africa we can talk about what we're doing is i mean i was in high
school at the time right we can talk about what we're doing
and what we're going through and you know you wonder are people gonna
gonna be attracted to it they're gonna enjoy it they're gonna
relate to it and when folks in the u.s that we've you know connected with were
like yo that's fresh like i never even knew
you know people in this country called zimbabwe in south africa
had even heard us that's a sonic so it was like oh man it was really
eye-opening so i want to pick up on something that
you said and you mentioned it as well part of this is being able to find and
then express your authentic voice how do you
feel like you came to a place where you felt comfortable doing that and and
you knew who you were as as an artist oh man
i still don't know i mean i'm just working it out you know and i think i've
been blessed and fortunate to have you know been able to do it for as long
as i have and in that you know constantly be
dealing and wrestling with this question you know uh and and so the answers may
change over the years but i think just the
constantly kind of pushing and asking yourself like what what is worth
saying when i have this responsibility i'm giving this microphone this platform
there's young people listening to me now as i get older and
what does that feel like at the same time not losing the sense of what got
you into it to begin with and why you love it and you know
what makes it fun and exciting so uh there's a constant kind of
i guess you know um just finding the balance within that
especially when you know in my case for example my music being connected to this
political dimension that people start to expect you know
every time you grab the mic or you know uh and and while that's also
empowering in some ways liberating somebody's it can also be limiting
artistically creatively so wrestling with that as well is part of
it but i'm i mean i'm just re i feel really blessed to be able to do
it you know and i know a lot of people that i started with
friends of mine rappers who didn't stick with it for whatever reason
you know and it could have just been purely personal but uh
in that alone i find you know something to be grateful for
can you repeat the question i'm sorry yeah just talk a little bit about how
you were able to find your own authentic voice and what did it feel
like to express that yeah um
i think kind of going off what was saying is like
i feel like it's really necessary to be prepared
to kind of destroy everything that i have thought um and that's constantly
happening i think especially as like you've got young people coming up that
will challenge things that you never thought were challengeable
and being able to be responsive to that and accountable
in all the new ways that kind of show up over time feels like
it's incredibly important so to me it's all about transformation
and i think like allowing change to happen instead of
coming up with some fixed idea of ourselves which i think can be really
limiting um and the more i think i let myself go
every single direction that i want to i see consistency happen
there it just happens by default but trying to
force it or create some sort of brand that you're then like beholden to i
think is it's not the way to go yeah
you know you both touched on interesting things and i think as artists
we go through that it's like you are a certain person and you bring that
to your heart but you also don't want to be boxed and to only do the things that
maybe you're best known for or maybe that you're really good at and
you want to try other things not necessarily stepping
outside of who you are but you want to continue to grow like i
don't want to be the same emcee that i was
15 years ago talking about the same things or even using the same
styles and taking you know i mean lyrical techniques
or what have you and so um coming out of you know the afrocentric era a lot of it
is like oh yeah so you guys rapping about africa
and you know what do you have to say about this and what do you feel about
this and and you know feeling like well i i don't
always want to be the spokesperson for every country on the continent
africa is mad diverse right there's places i haven't been and people
have thoughts that are totally different from
my experiences growing up and so being a position where it's like hey you know
what i mean i want to kind of be the director of my own
journey and not be boxed in and i think being an independent musician is a
blessing and a curse but the blessing in it is
that you can kind of dictate where you go because i know you know having dealt
with label situations and even producers and production companies
oh you need to make a song like this that's what's hot right now you need to
come up with like a bone thugs type song and i was like nah that's not who i know
but that's what's hidden right now that's what people are checking for
and i think when you get into that thing of chasing trans or
trying to you know fit into a certain mold
as an artist i mean it it takes away from what you're really trying to do in
the essence of who you are
so i'm going to ask one more question and then i'll see if others have
questions and then we can come back because i got to hold
this but the autonomy piece of being an
artist is something that i think is really
important but at the same time hip hop and hip hop culture is so
community focused how do you find the balance in that
what do you consider to be your community and
who are you talking to when you are showing us who you are through art
uh that's a really good question um i mean i think i
it's also something that's constantly evolving uh and i'm working to kind of
make bigger and more inclusive as the years go by like when i first started i
was definitely speaking to people who kind of might
have understood my experience more directly whether it was
you know people from the middle east and north africa or muslims or
immigrants in america what have you uh but as
as you know as time goes on and i you know i develop like a larger network of
people who appreciate what i do for different reasons it becomes you
know part of the conversation as well but
for me it's important to just stay connected and grounded at home like i
work with a youth group in los angeles that i've
been kind of working with for a long time and it just kind of keeps me
plugged into how kids are thinking and failing on the streets in this
city that i live in and and to be tapped into that and at the same time also have
connections globally through social media with
family and friends all over the world and these parts of
the world that i care about uh is also helpful in that but
i think you know i also don't want to ever
feel like i'm supposed to be a spokesman for people who are living you know
thousands of miles away going through very different things than i am
at the same time there's the feeling of like need to speak to something as
as tragic as syria and as awful you know to literally to this day seven years
in people dying as often as they are for things that they have nothing to do with
it's hard not to speak about you know so just trying to find that balance and be
honest about it is is what it is you know
and feel blessed to have any community at all man i mean it's like
these days you know it's necessary
um i think making visual art can be very isolating um i think it's the the most
typical practice is like one artist alone that makes work alone and
shows it by themselves but i think that there's a lot of ways to to
subvert that um and i have an amazing community
in durham that like has saved my life and that goes beyond um
i mean it's like family truly i mean these are
folks that are i mean they live out their politics in how they treat one
another and how they show up in the streets
and at you know the city hall as well um and i think that like that's a really
beautiful kind of supportive thing just as a human being it's really necessary
um and as an artist i found folks kind of across artistic mediums
have been really the folks that i turn to for feedback so
that's musicians and poets and documentarians
they're all different kinds of people that i'm i'm looking to but what's most
important to me is how do they think about the world so
it's nice to get feedback from other artists but in particular it's like
who i'm making the work for is who i want to hear from
and you know people that can give me that critical feedback that's not
you know just based on painting style or some sort of formal
uh canon that exists that i'm supposed to fit into but people that get the
references or have it just a general feeling of connection to the work
yeah yeah in my case i think um it varies a lot of times
um you know we do as mcs you know preaching to the choir right we're
rocking to like-minded folks into hip-hop and
underground you know kind of maybe into lyricism and
complexity but um i also try to reach out to folks
that aren't necessarily traditionally hip-hop
listeners you know i mean even you know you know know much about the art form
but all but can appreciate you know words
and thought because being you know kind of a thinking man's type
of emcee you know and saying things that you know have
social and political relevance i think this
audience is you know beyond the folks that would come out to the club
you know and watch a dope hip hop show and rocks you know rock to whatever
tracks are coming on you know there's people
that you know are like-minded they just not either
they haven't been exposed to it or they just have different tastes of
preferences and so i've been trying to you know make
sure i'm you know um conscious about
opening myself to do things in non-traditional hip-hop spaces
i have a friend that plays in the blues band and he's like yo come out and rock
with me i'm like i don't know man like he's like
i'm telling you man and we'll do it and people will be like
yo that was fresh i never would have thought you know like i'd have never
heard this otherwise you know in the places they go
to are doing shows at art galleries um you know smithsonian or you know just
non-traditional venues that you have broad audiences i mean it's
good as an artist to expand your base as well but i think it's also good
to reach people who might not have heard that message they're like oh yeah i mean
i had an old lady come up to me and she was like
great testifying and it took me a second to think about what she meant and then i
was like oh wow like you know because a lot of times you're
rapping and you're like oh i don't know if everybody heard the words or whatever
through the sound system and she's like oh no i heard you
and she's like they heard you she's like keep doing that and so stuff like that
is uh reinforcing kind of piggyback on that
real quick just two things you if you don't have an
album called think i thinking man's mc's
and then also just in terms of like uh broadening the audience and doing things
outside of the box uh it's an opportunity to let everybody know that
on saturday at the moss arts center at fife we're
doing something along those lines it's really unique
hip hop arabic poetry english poetry spoken word style with arabic music
ensemble backing it up that includes percussion and all sorts of beautiful
stringed instruments and taking it into like a middle eastern
north african sort of poetry telling spaces and hip hop with you know
craig on the decks and then also traditional arabic music that we're kind
of repurposing for the night so and that's
all in an effort to to both be a reflection of the community
that we've been working with here which has included
um the moss arts center it's included lots of folks within you know bt
expressions than the hip-hop crews here and craig but also the
community that's going to be coming out people from
uh recently resettled families in afghanistan and syria
you know to help them sort of appreciate what's happening professors who might
not necessarily be listening to hip-hop every day but
you know do appreciate the things that we're saying um and so
so yeah that's that's definitely a part of it and i think that
just to kind of um put a little capstone on the community piece it's like that's
why i love hip-hop it's like no matter what i can't
really do this alone i have to go somewhere and see other people
to have you know the community and interaction and i think that's
a feeling i'm quite frankly i'm being addicted to it's like
like in a time and place where people are becoming more insular and connected
to devices and things it forces me constantly to be connected you know to
people and to look in each other's eyes and have
you know interaction it's important as the cameras stare at me
great responses i want to see if anybody in the audience has any questions or
any um thing that they would like to put out there
everybody quiet what no question i saw some people dozing out they're
like yo this thing's that helpful all i hear is people talking
okay but one thing i'm interested in you know if
i started i guess about 45 years ago give or take um and
basically you know black and brown communities that were systematically
oppressed and neglected right and now as it's been subsumed as part of popular
culture kind of like the subversive origins of
hip-hop um you think about like djs they're
taking other artists work they're recontextualizing and
recontextualizing to create something new
and a lot of times in a way that violates copyright law
or you think about graffiti artists like guys i grew up with
have more than a couple of trespassing sure you know other charges
so as you know this these creative practices become part of popular culture
and this subversive origin story um i guess even like ownership
of hip-hop from the communities in which you came as that is kind of whitewashed
what do you think the art form loses i guess like what
what are the consequences of that as it
becomes popular culture
counter culture i mean from my perspective
just um i mean the thing that's mad you know as a hip-hop purist hip-hop
aficionado is like people on the outside looking in
tend to classify it by what's hot you know like we were talking about before
and so they exclude you know from the conversation
things that they think are old or fads and it's like at one point
the media and outside sources thought that the whole of hip-hop as an art form
was a fad but you hear people say oh we don't
listen to those golden age beats you know that's all that's played out
and it's like music evolves and it spreads and gets broad but that doesn't
mean parts of it die you know what i mean if it's a plant or
a tree just because there's new branches it doesn't mean the whole branches
we can do away with them or whatever you know what i mean and so
you know people be like oh yeah that you know those dj premier beats
those boom bat beats you know it's all about trap it's all about this
and i feel like the mass media does a disservice because
they hone in and focus on one part usually the commercial
most commercially viable part of the culture and promote that and dig it up
you know what i mean and most of the time when they talk about
hip-hop they're just talking about rap you know they're not really talking
about djing they're not talking about knowledge they're not talking about the
graffiti art or anything else with the b-boying they're just
talking about rap rap music itself you know what i mean
and they'll be like oh hip-hop is doing this so hip-hop is doing that or hip-hop
he's really talking about you know materialism these days and so that's not
what that's what the rappers on the radio are talking about
and there's all these other artists that are conscious
or you know doing different things that don't get celebrated and so i think
it's it's a shame when you know the commercial forces drive
what hip hop is you know and i always think like if somebody went up to like
the grand old opry and was doing something weird that was
not country music and they would be like oh it's not country music you know
people would think that they're well within their rights you know they're
defining with hip-hop it's like when people offer
critiques oh he's a hater you know what i mean he's like oh he's
hating and it's like no you got to protect the art this is
our thing you know what i mean we should be the ones who define it
you know what i mean we're not always going to agree we're not always going to
be right but we should have that discourse and i
think the discourse gets shut down with that awesome you know they're hating no
those are those old rappers hating again you know what i mean
so that's just my thoughts yeah so just following up on on craig's point
a little bit and yours as well a lot of people
do consume this type of art commercially right um they know what's hot in hip-hop
they think because it's what's on the radio it's what they
hear it's what they see on the television not necessarily what
they experience culturally so how do we do a better job
with exposing independent artists those who are actually connected to the
culture when so much of media is focused
away from that and i get frustrated too because i'm like oh you know this person
madrid never heard this one and what's going on but if you don't have
the exposure you can't expect people to know so how
do we get beyond that how do we try to overcome that problem
um i mean i think it goes both ways you know a lot of times there are haters
who hate people because they grind and they're like really good at social media
and their marketing you know it's like yeah and and they're
not you know yeah i wish the world would listen to me is like but you're not
doing anything to make people you know i could be able to access it
there's a lot of incredible tools out there for free
that you can use now to let you know and that's easier said than done if
someone might be looking at me in my position having a certain amount of
followers and say that and i i i just say it's a grind i've been
doing this for a very long time and i only have this certain amount but i
never looked at it as a reflection of how hard i should work or you know what
i mean i'm also from a particular generation that kind of remembers life a
little bit before all this stuff and doesn't blur it you
know with how i value myself as an artist but uh it
takes work you know so it's it's kind of both
um but when you have like the support of you know community organizations and
love from people around you and you can kind of work to to get
institutional support from local universities if you see professors are
interested in the things that you're doing our students are interested in the
thing that you're doing you know just try to build on that and
understand that it doesn't happen overnight and more importantly if you're
not doing it for yourself because you love it
you know no amount of eyeballs is going to change how you feel about it you know
so that's an important part of it too yeah
um i think it can contribute something a little like generally as far as like
um there's just there's so many artists making art that are struggling out there
and there's so many folks who would love to be making art but don't feel like
they can um and that starts so young
that those stratifications happen and in visual art there's just such a class
dynamic in particular uh in terms of like it feels like it's
for folks who are cultured that we can't interpret the work as
someone who didn't grow up going to museums
um all that is its lies you know to to put it bluntly but i think as far
as like political work as well as like artists go it's like if we shifted our
focus to who's actually around us to our local
communities i think our impact is so much greater
and it's really easy to you know like go
online and buy you know a reproduction of a gustav
klimt the kiss that everyone has in their in their home but there's artists
around you and um they need that support and as
much as we need artists we need folks to appreciate artists and
like small amounts of money of support of showing up for them
has such a greater impact for the artists who are actually in your
communities and i think even these institutions oftentimes
will i mean i guess we're also examples of this we'll bring in folks from out of
town um much more readily than they'll look
at their own communities for who's doing some really radical shit
you know and it's happening kind of everywhere yeah
you have any thoughts in here no just in terms of
um access to community as well i think it builds up the base of
artists that'll take it you know to the next phase and
people that you connect with because um i mean i met
omar through mcgee and met mcgee through nomadic wax because somebody sent an
email saying oh you guys do african hip-hop you should connect with nomadic
wax because they do shows with artists from different parts of africa
and i started collaborating with folks from senegal and tanzania
that i'd have never met if i was just in my little space doing my little thing
um and so interacting with folks and realizing like oh these guys are doing
this and they know these things and they do these you know and you kind of share
info um share spaces you know and collaborate
and learn from each other and grow and i think just as an artist it's good
for growth and it's also good for the art
form because you expose different facets of what you
know and what they know when you put it together and it's dynamic
and it makes for really good music too
any questions comments okay sure i love hearing about all of
this i'm talking about with kind of like the the messaging and
the platform the community the discourse and i think i feel like that's
in the best case scenario that's really what
art should be used for is to kind of shepherd that discourse forward
but kind of the face of um the kind of commercial media and current
consumption of like bite size stories and
quick retweets and how do you kind of like
keep the conversation focused and kind of what's your responsibility to
your community to say like guys focus get back let's talk
about what we're here to talk not get about with all this extraneous
bs excellent questions yeah yeah definitely i mean it's it's
hard man i'll just say like uh it's a it's a struggle like
everything else that we're talking about you constantly have to kind of reorient
and re-center your intention you know and
remind folks around you the things that are happening here and
it's you know what are important show up you know uh show up for
community might not always be the most convenient or the
most glamorous thing but like only through being consistent does this
anything ever really change and uh i mean just to kind of bring it
back to what craig was saying i mean there's in terms of just this
conversation between like mainstream you know hip-hop quote-unquote or music
in general and what you can get you know if you're
digging a little deeper it's uh it is really
challenging to live in an era of just like complete disposable art and music
to a certain degree like somebody will just consume something and just you know
forget about it how much do you invest you know in
something if you know it's just going to be watching this tiny little screen and
that all comes back to that conversation about who you're doing it for it's uh
you know for the people who really love and support your work and
and hopefully for yourself and you know getting getting something meaningful out
of that process but uh it's also kind of cool to try to
experiment with different media and have an opportunity to think about something
in in like a you know one minute instagram form you know like how can i
get their attention in this like different medium and
challenge yourself in a kind of way that even as you go as an artist you
think you know you've settled and you've come to like a conclusion about what
your art can be here's an opportunity to think about it
differently you know and i don't know it's uh it's hard but it's
you know there's something there's something to it you know to that process
and to constantly kind of pushing and questioning
i have a few thoughts and i hope that this will be coherent
but it might not be which is fine um i think that sometimes there's this
assumption that things used to be pure and good
and now they're not and technology is the culprit in some way um and there's
always been technological developments and i think
like by and large i mean and my mindset is always more
focused on visual art so i'll just preface it with that but um
there's always been bullshit out there like the people that were making art or
getting art made and why it was a way to show off their
wealth and i think like now the internet in so many ways becomes
this much more democratic public platform for
people to be able to be creators on every level when it comes down to
like constructing their own image in a public way
um coming up with a caption underneath it
sharing their poetry sharing um just the way that they see the world
um one of the the issues is that like how often does that become something
superficial does that become something like
mimetic and just like we're repeating and trying to
imitate one another and then also there's something about something like a
meme that i think is astounding you know everyone gets
to participate and modify an image with agency and
like there's i think it's not really technology that becomes the issue
i don't think there's even necessarily something wrong with bite-sized
pieces of information when we're trying to consume so much we need bite sizes
because we're not just interacting with our neighbors anymore
um but it's other systems that are really the things that fault
um here as opposed to yeah the bite-sized pieces of things because
like instagram is hugely influential to me um and the artists that i follow
and like having this access to be able to see
people's work in this way and then at the same time you've got
artists out there who are getting thousands of likes and can't pay their
rent you know it's both yeah
other questions
i have a question specifically from what you said earlier it was about
like as an artist but also just as a person
and how you know like you're talking all you guys were talking
about earlier about constantly evolving your art
and but not allowing change to be something that's like limiting
but something that's like pushes you further as an artist how
what other ways you guys practice that both as a person as an artist
um i think that the most important thing
i it's just self-reflection you know i think like
um one thing that's really difficult especially
in the with the way things are i think there's like
everyone feels the gaze on them you know people are watching
what are you posting um on your social media how does that define
who you are um and then if you fuck up you get torn down in such an
intense kind of way and i think it makes it really difficult for
people to be able to make mistakes and then learn from them
which is really all we can do um and so to me it's like i love saying i'm sorry
i love messing up and then learning something from it
um and i think it's a really vulnerable kind of
position to be in as is art making like all of it to me it's like
we've got to be able to be vulnerable with one another and with ourselves and
to admit that we can you know make mistakes or
that things change and what we thought before
doesn't work anymore that we suddenly realized that these things that seemed
okay are now harmful um and that's through being able to
listen and like kind of shut down your ego in
some way and be able to be um like readily readily like
publicly vulnerable um i think that's a really important thing that
is is hard for folks to do these days um with how much like we're
being watched and there's such a you know you've got to be perfect all of
the time or you might get thrown away um and so part of that is you know how
do we see ourselves how how do we show up accountably how can we
admit our own mistakes and then also how do we interact with other people
who are learning and growing um in an effort to actually make things better
um and grow together and not just be like tossing people off the ship as we
go you know yeah did that answer your
questions yeah a question for everybody um i think for
me it's just um you know trying different stuff trying
stuff in different places um you know working with bands that i
haven't worked with that might not necessarily you know just
rock you know with hip hop and stuff or you
know trying out and seeing how things work and you know
kind of you know being willing to you know dive overboard a little bit and
see what happens um it's good to do it in spaces that are
you know people are appreciative of
experimentation you know what i mean um and at all places are you know people
sometimes tend to go see what they want to see and they want to hear it in that
form but um being open to you know i mean when
people suggest things a lot of times i'm like i don't know you know and then
trying it out and seeing how it goes and invariably you know whether the outcome
is like you know something brilliant or it's
just all right um i think it helps with growth and
development and stuff so i've worked with um i've
been trying to work with a lot of different international
musicians i worked with uh this lady i worked with is a traditional
indian music singer and then
so she was like hey let's work on a song you know and
you know she was teaching me about you know her different runs and
you know the rock style and everything and she was like i want you to
you know come along and you know fit in right here
and i was you know you're evaluating it and looking at it but after we did it
you know her friends were like oh my goodness i would have never thought and
they don't listen to hip-hop and you know people listen to hip-hop like
oh man that's beautiful that's a great combination
just doing stuff that's kind of uncomfortable
i think as an artist helps you grow and just
just realizing that it's not going to work every time but that's okay
that's part of the process
uh i mean i'll just add that having a kid also makes you
re-evaluate everything i'm not saying go out there and have a kid
trying to re-evaluate stuff but it does that and
it just kind of makes you understand what to prioritize in life you know
and and so for me also it's been an opportunity to kind of just like
you know re appreciate things from a different perspective from this little
two-year-old person's you know viewpoint and of how the
smallest most insignificant thing that i pass by every day all of a sudden it's
the most fascinating thing you know it makes me think about it
and put the phone away and go sit outside for a while and just
breathe and think and ponder and be with myself and be alone so as important as
it is to kind of have community peace it's also important to
really sit with yourself and self-reflect and
uh and not with this thing the phone that i'm tapping in my pocket but just
like really be alone you know maybe take a pencil and a paper
and sketch or write but it's important you know
and nature too is key i think you know reconnecting being
outside wherever you are like is one of the
quickest ways to get centered you know i think so it has been for me
at least
other questions okay um you guys kind of mentioned it earlier how you guys try to
diverse how would you guys all do but do you ever think about getting into
like that niche role thinking that order order make more successful or
you'll be able to have more opportunities
doing that one thing putting something about like your ethnicity religion or
that's i mean that's a good question i i recognize the fact that like
people are interested because of where i'm from and because of the things
happening there you know and rather than feel guilt about that or
whatever it's just take it and own it and
and be if it's not i mean as long as it's an honest reflection of me you know
what i'm saying um but but at the same time it's like
okay if that's what you're interested in let me give you my take on it you know
i might not be exactly what you expect but you know it could be a conversation
starter or a foot in the door and i think sometimes it's helpful to
meet people where they're at sometimes you know not to dumb it down
or to like you know play yourself but like
i i recognize that part of the conversation about broadening the
audience and everything it's like it's a beautiful thing like i love when a
grandmother comes up to me afterwards and says that i really enjoyed your show
i love when somebody says that you know i've never really listened to hip-hop
but this shit is dope or whatever i mean they might they might
not say this shit is dope they found a way to appreciate it and i
think that's great uh but i still have to make sure that my
homies you know and that like the people whose opinions when it comes to the sort
of lyricism that i'm striving for gotta make sure that they're
appreciating it and that their heads are not in and that it's real
so um so that's a big part of it too you know
um this is something that i have a lot of feelings about
um so yeah i i i get a lot of um
opportunities to speak about my identity very specifically and um my work
includes that but there's a lot more nuance obviously in the works like
that's where i'm talking about it most completely is in my art who i am
and what i'm thinking and all of that um but a lot of times folks want
me to be a spokesperson for muslims for queer muslims this is kind of like
unicorn identity um and and it's been a challenging thing to
navigate because sometimes that identity as a headline overshadows
the fact that i make work um and still it's like
that being being out and being public and
speaking about who i am and about actives and all those things
it's it's really important and i can see and i've experienced how it's had impact
i you know i get messages from from folks
of all ages all over the world who
you know it just it means so much to have somebody
who's out there who's claiming that um and then at the same time it's so much
pressure and you know being a self-reflective person as i mentioned
it's really difficult in those environments to try to
pin down in words um who i am and what that means and uh do
it in a way that doesn't then alienate other folks you know what
i mean it's like i can only talk from my personal experience and then i'm on this
platform where i've got to talk about everything and then i'm thinking about
my parents and i'm thinking about the muslim community and i'm
thinking about the queer community and everything in between
um and sometimes i don't want to do it and so like at the beginning of this
year i think i kind of recognize like that labor in particular is
incredibly important and i'm never going to like
put it down in any sort of way but it's not something i can choose to do all the
time and so now i'm like only things that are
art related my identity is embedded within that um
and i have so much love and respect for the folks who are putting themselves out
there in this way and like really putting
their identity out there um because even though it's another box
um it's one that does push edges as well so it is important okay yeah it's
complicated
i've got time maybe two more questions you have your one yeah
my question to you all uh in your respect as
artists how do you um what keeps you all motivated um each day from day to day
because i can understand the rules of being an artist
you have a lot of people looking up to you and things like that so
how do you guys stay motivated and wanted to
enrich and keep continuing to preserve your crap good question
so i think i think it turns out
so i think um from my perspective uh what keeps me energized is just
getting energy from the environments in which i'm doing my
thing or whatever and not necessarily just in a show like
some of the most enriching experiences when i'm just working with young kids or
whatever and they'll be like oh can you spit
something you spit then you rap and they're like oh
bars and you're like yeah people tell me that little kids
you know don't like lyrics or whatever you know but
just seeing them get excited too about their voices
you know and and and them wanting to express themselves and
you know listen to this listen to this you know and it's like oh man
you know you just you know forget about all the troubles and you know the
industry and this that and the other and just think about this is what hip-hop is
you know just individuals connecting and sharing
thoughts and getting excited about what they have to say to the world so
whenever i have experiences like that it's kind of enriching and it kind of
it's like fuel you know that's the vibranium that gets
me the one spot to the next i have to throw that in there
but um yeah it's just situations like that
um did you want to say something you want to go first
go ahead um i have to say actually for me it's like
very irrational um there's like i
i like cannot exist without making art it's an obsession
um i think i make so many choices that are just oriented towards making space
for that to happen so it's like not even so much about like
a career that's visible and affirmed in some sort of way but it's like what
can i do so that all i do is make art and that's and it's a burden
honestly i just like i feel like an addict
is the way it like comes out it's like this makes no sense i don't know why i
want to do this i'll be in my studio like this
like what is this as a thing to be doing with my time but i
can't not do it so i think that's that's my vantage point
yeah um i mean i i would agree 100 with both of them it's kind of the same with
me um and i said it earlier as well having
a two-year-old also kind of motivates you
in important ways um and a wife and a family and just you know people in
general who have supported my work for so long who want to see me
succeed and do well and right to that effect and you know just uh
you want to show up for people you know they invest in you in all these years
and it's like it's the least you could do is like
give it your best and you know even if it's not um
you know necessarily as as fantastic or whatever glamorous or awesome as
as you might have expected you know it's it's beautiful
people man you know like literally show up and oftentimes pay hard-earned
good money to come and watch you make this art and that's a responsibility man
like you know you got to really don't take that lightly you know uh and
at the same time there's something so beautiful about that you know
and i think you know in these times as well just you know
like with things the way they are in this country right now it's like art is
what it keeps us sane you know and so in terms of motivation
like you know it's it's absolutely necessary
to see and support art and you know make it
and and strive to be the best that we can with it you know because
that's what the kids are going to want to look at later on and be like okay you
were doing something you were saying something like when all this crazy shit
was going down there was some sanity in there you know
reflecting on it and so it's also that it's like the for
posterity's sake you know putting it down um and after
you do it for a while that's what it starts to feel like you know and now i
look back at the work of artists who i'm inspired by
50 years later 100 years later after they wrote it and i find myself inspired
by it and i want to be able to give that to somebody you know
that's that's that's incredible to me you know
so i asked one final question and then some people look hungry so
but when i think about liberation right i think okay somebody's
trapped somebody's stuck um somebody's caged and
we need some way of getting them out
who is it that you're trying to liberate through your own art
is it you is it the world is it communities
all of the above
permission to shatter the myth of a man who always has his together
requests to accept me for all that i am on this loneliest of get-togethers the
famine and the feasts whether the beauty and the beasts tethered the good the bad
each and every part of a personality compartmentalizing reality speaking both
softly and loud of me encouraging and doubting me slowly finding the means to
live together a bench on which we sit together a cup
from which we sip together discussing a long list of shortcomings that we hid
together never failing to recognize there are
some awesome things we did together but there are some things that cause some
grief we'd ought to make decisions better please believe as
leaves fall sands and seas brawl refugees on hands and knees crawl it
might seem small to simply stand on these sides 13 flat feet tall not way
down by the fate of it all the cold love and high hate of it all but by god it
isn't that's what i do
that's going to say the same thing
um i think that for me it is very personal
it's about like i think there's just like so much internalized oppression
that i find reveals itself in the work that i make and the
boundaries that are difficult to cross um and all of the questions
that come up in in the process and so i think
navigating that uh personally and trying to break down
those barriers has been something that's opened things
up so much for me and that's not without conversation that's not without study
that's with other people um but it's something that then is shared with
others and i think when we can see it on a page or hear it in a song um
you can help spark that process or be part of that process for somebody else
um and that's a really beautiful part of creativity and coming up with some kind
of product from this personal journey of trying to
extract all of those ideas that you've held
about yourself and who you are because of what the world tells you yeah
living life fast won't be no more because it's not just me
no more i got daughters plus orders from headquarters
to be home by dark i stop and think about the state of the art
reminisce about the days and times i started rolling that was an age and a
stage that was golden holding the mic controlling the dice like mantronics
back when jamie summers and steve austin were
bionic from freaks come out at night to jam on it
heard hip hop i knew exactly what i wanted to be a part of the scene it was
like a dream and then i ended up in all kinds of
magazines energized to exercise the vibes that's unseen done by the
forces of nature that's unseen so before i rest
i survey the progress thanks for coming out good night and god bless
i thank you all so much for being here and for sharing with us
and being willing to consider our questions of course
and thank you for everything that you do for the art you
produce and create for us thank you thank you