[00:57.040 --> 00:58.920]  How's everybody doing so far?
[01:00.760 --> 01:01.160]  Nice.
[01:01.760 --> 01:07.160]  This is the hip-hop talk, so not a big hip-hop crowd at HOPE, but hoping we can increase that.
[01:07.340 --> 01:09.100]  That's some of the things that I want to see, right?
[01:09.600 --> 01:18.280]  So give a shout out for hip-hop real quick, because there's been a lot of shout out for electro music, which I like too, but let's give hip-hop a nice shout out.
[01:19.100 --> 01:22.540]  A couple of... yes, give it another one, and we'll give it another one later.
[01:23.120 --> 01:24.700]  A couple of dry announcements.
[01:24.940 --> 01:26.500]  You know, make sure everybody's hydrated, please.
[01:26.700 --> 01:29.820]  I know everybody is drinking lots of coffee, but stay hydrated.
[01:30.000 --> 01:30.740]  It's really hot.
[01:31.220 --> 01:32.820]  Mute your phones, please.
[01:33.340 --> 01:34.380]  Enjoy yourselves.
[01:34.920 --> 01:37.340]  Use the matrix chat to ask questions.
[01:37.660 --> 01:42.160]  If you feel, you know, a little shy to come up to the microphone and ask them.
[01:42.360 --> 01:46.160]  But we definitely encourage participation towards the end if we have time.
[01:47.120 --> 01:49.320]  Hackers Got Talent is tonight.
[01:49.700 --> 01:51.460]  So maybe some of you are talented.
[01:51.720 --> 01:53.080]  All of you are talented.
[01:53.300 --> 01:55.880]  So why don't you showcase some of that tonight?
[01:56.200 --> 01:58.460]  Definitely encourage everybody to participate in that.
[01:59.720 --> 02:01.760]  And that is about it.
[02:01.900 --> 02:04.440]  You know, you've heard the workshops need some volunteers.
[02:04.440 --> 02:07.160]  If you want to volunteer at a workshop, please do.
[02:07.240 --> 02:10.360]  If you want to volunteer in general, please sign up volunteer.hope.net.
[02:10.360 --> 02:11.700]  I'm a volunteer.
[02:12.140 --> 02:13.180]  That's what I do.
[02:14.040 --> 02:17.660]  So without further ado, let's give it up for Manny Faces.
[02:18.000 --> 02:23.200]  And let's hear this talk on... I should have... What is it?
[02:23.360 --> 02:26.740]  How hip-hop can inspire the next generation of tech innovation.
[02:27.060 --> 02:28.040]  Let's give it up.
[02:32.790 --> 02:33.630]  Hello, everybody.
[02:33.990 --> 02:34.790]  Good afternoon.
[02:35.070 --> 02:37.270]  Thank you for coming here and spending some time with me.
[02:37.830 --> 02:39.210]  My name is Manny Faces.
[02:39.370 --> 02:41.710]  Yes, as some of you might guess, it's not my real name.
[02:42.170 --> 02:43.690]  My real name is Bobby Elbows.
[02:46.010 --> 02:46.750]  Just playing.
[02:47.690 --> 02:50.370]  What I am is... At my core, I'm a journalist.
[02:50.490 --> 03:03.630]  I'm an advocate for the idea that hip-hop, music, and culture have some really unique things that can be applied to other areas of life, including science and technology, which is why we're kind of here, but also education, health and wellness, science and technology.
[03:04.170 --> 03:08.910]  I said that politics and activism, essentially everything.
[03:09.230 --> 03:10.850]  Hence, hip-hop can hack everything.
[03:11.370 --> 03:15.750]  I paid someone to take some cool pictures of me, so I'm just obligated to show them every time.
[03:15.870 --> 03:16.330]  It means nothing.
[03:17.010 --> 03:19.370]  And occasionally I'll go and I'll speak at places like this.
[03:19.490 --> 03:23.310]  So I'm very, very honored and privileged that you're here putting ears to my words.
[03:23.310 --> 03:32.110]  This was at Harvard doing some stuff, talking to a bunch of smart people or with a bunch of smart people doing a bunch of innovative things with hip-hop and music culture centered.
[03:32.550 --> 03:44.090]  And it's those words here, innovation, communication, inspiration, and collaboration that I think again, unique, very unique characteristics that hip-hop culture and people who come from within hip-hop culture have.
[03:44.510 --> 03:45.810]  Now hip-hop doesn't own these things.
[03:45.990 --> 03:47.270]  It's not the only place that does it.
[03:47.270 --> 03:59.610]  But again, some unique characteristics that need to be applied, and as Rita said, not enough maybe people in this community do that already or are aware of it, so I'm trying to spread that gospel.
[03:59.870 --> 04:05.750]  And I love this particular intersection of hip-hop and technology because I'm old enough to remember phone phreaking, right?
[04:05.950 --> 04:17.490]  I'm old enough to remember learning about the Cap'n Crunch whistle, which sort of sits at the DNA of this entire conference, and the ability to use it to make free phone calls from these magical devices called payphones.
[04:17.770 --> 04:18.530]  I don't know if you've ever heard of them.
[04:18.630 --> 04:18.970]  They're cool.
[04:20.950 --> 04:29.790]  Of course, the blue box, which was sort of like the next iteration of that, this mechanical thing that was used to create the ability to make free phone calls, kind of hacked the system, right?
[04:30.430 --> 04:35.050]  This launched an entire industry of hacker to the regular public, right?
[04:35.110 --> 04:43.570]  The 2600 Magazine, of which you see here, but the original incarnation of it led to a bunch of BBSs, bulletin board systems, where people were sharing this knowledge.
[04:43.990 --> 04:46.650]  A little bonafides to my hip-hop and tech hacking things.
[04:46.730 --> 04:48.190]  I did have a BBS for a little while.
[04:48.350 --> 04:49.430]  It was called Das Effects.
[04:50.070 --> 04:51.130]  So if you know, you know.
[04:51.410 --> 04:52.170]  It's kind of fly.
[04:52.570 --> 04:56.790]  But all this stuff was phreaking and hacking, reprogramming stuff, right?
[04:57.550 --> 05:01.790]  Circumventing systems, challenging authority, and exchanging that information.
[05:02.390 --> 05:05.770]  Kind of on a down low, surreptitiously, like behind someone's back.
[05:05.910 --> 05:08.850]  It's what... we were young, we were teenagers, we were into that stuff by nature.
[05:09.270 --> 05:10.530]  I thought it was ingenious.
[05:10.950 --> 05:11.950]  Of course, we all do.
[05:12.050 --> 05:13.010]  That's why we're all here.
[05:13.970 --> 05:15.750]  Some other folks, I don't know if you've ever heard of these folks.
[05:15.890 --> 05:18.050]  Steve Jobs, Bosniak, these folks.
[05:18.310 --> 05:20.590]  They actually fell into this whole thing.
[05:20.690 --> 05:21.450]  They were into it.
[05:21.510 --> 05:22.670]  They had a blue box.
[05:22.770 --> 05:24.590]  They got arrested with a blue box.
[05:26.330 --> 05:28.470]  Because sometimes it's illegal to do these things, right?
[05:28.910 --> 05:29.270]  Shh.
[05:29.650 --> 05:30.150]  Don't tell anybody.
[05:30.510 --> 05:31.550]  But it's still ingenious.
[05:31.650 --> 05:34.710]  Sometimes you have to go around the systems to do some ingenious stuff.
[05:34.790 --> 05:37.750]  And they were exalted for it.
[05:37.750 --> 05:38.670]  There's a little article here.
[05:38.770 --> 05:41.470]  It says the teenagers and the outlaws who hacked Ma Bell.
[05:41.950 --> 05:42.390]  Right?
[05:42.570 --> 05:45.310]  And then they went on, of course, to create the personal computer industry among others.
[05:45.590 --> 05:52.030]  And it all stems from this idea of hacking and, you know, doing things differently than they're supposed to be done.
[05:53.890 --> 05:57.750]  That innovation, ingenuity, creativity, and invention is pretty badass.
[05:58.330 --> 06:01.330]  Like I said, as a teenager, young folk, we thought it was badass.
[06:01.630 --> 06:04.390]  And we're still here today because these things are pretty badass.
[06:05.210 --> 06:07.750]  Again, you're able to infiltrate these systems.
[06:08.070 --> 06:09.190]  Go against the grain.
[06:09.550 --> 06:12.210]  Create legacies in science and technology.
[06:12.830 --> 06:16.130]  It's difficult, if not impossible, during the time that you had to do it.
[06:16.130 --> 06:17.050]  You didn't have all the resources.
[06:17.250 --> 06:20.330]  You found a way to do it even though things were stacked against you.
[06:21.110 --> 06:22.930]  And it was unexpected for that time.
[06:23.030 --> 06:24.510]  That's the badass stuff I'm talking about.
[06:26.030 --> 06:27.130]  So we know about them.
[06:27.410 --> 06:34.570]  Let me real quick introduce you to some other badass innovators from throughout American history that you might not know as much about.
[06:35.810 --> 06:41.590]  A guy named Benjamin Banneker wrote a series of almanacs back in the 1700s that would revolutionize the genre.
[06:41.590 --> 06:48.370]  It had the tides and the astronomical, all the almanac-y things that you needed to plant things or whatever they did in the 1700s.
[06:48.670 --> 06:50.850]  Granville Woods invented...
[06:50.850 --> 06:51.830]  Well, you can read it.
[06:51.890 --> 06:52.930]  I always mispronounce it.
[06:53.010 --> 06:54.530]  But I'll say it's the induction telegraph.
[06:54.870 --> 06:58.350]  It allowed people to communicate with voice over wires.
[06:58.670 --> 07:02.170]  It was used to help trains not crash into each other.
[07:02.350 --> 07:04.490]  We could tell I had trains coming.
[07:04.930 --> 07:08.590]  Eventually, this would lead to other kind of communication devices like the walkie-talkie.
[07:09.610 --> 07:13.950]  Louis Latimer helped Alexander Graham Bell patent the telephone.
[07:14.130 --> 07:18.070]  You know about Alexander Graham Bell, but this cat did some of that work as well.
[07:18.230 --> 07:20.850]  He improved on the work of Thomas Edison.
[07:22.730 --> 07:25.690]  Dr. Charles Drew did a lot for medicine.
[07:25.690 --> 07:30.030]  He developed methods to process and store blood plasma, basically invented the blood bank.
[07:31.450 --> 07:33.590]  Garrett Morris is an actor and a comedian...
[07:33.590 --> 07:34.470]  No, that's not right.
[07:35.150 --> 07:36.470]  Garrett Morgan, right.
[07:36.750 --> 07:38.390]  Patented the three-signal traffic light.
[07:38.990 --> 07:41.170]  Previously, the traffic signal said stop and go.
[07:41.350 --> 07:43.030]  Now we can slow down, and that's very important.
[07:43.990 --> 07:47.710]  Of course, Harriet Tubman, we all should know who Harriet Tubman was.
[07:47.850 --> 07:50.990]  Born into slavery, escaped, led people on the Underground Railroad.
[07:51.090 --> 07:52.190]  Was nicknamed Moses.
[07:53.290 --> 07:55.610]  Man, you don't call someone Moses just offhandedly.
[07:56.130 --> 07:56.910]  Madam C.J.
[07:57.230 --> 08:00.790]  Walker, businesswoman in a haircare field, invented a straightening comb.
[08:00.970 --> 08:03.670]  I think they did a show on her on one of these channels.
[08:04.270 --> 08:07.530]  By some accounts, maybe the first African American millionaires.
[08:10.210 --> 08:10.870]  That's me.
[08:11.250 --> 08:12.290]  I'm not one of them.
[08:13.470 --> 08:16.310]  Now growing up, I didn't know about a lot of these people at all.
[08:17.050 --> 08:20.490]  Even though I grew up on Long Island, just a little short, stone's throw from here.
[08:20.490 --> 08:22.810]  In a predominantly African American community.
[08:22.970 --> 08:24.710]  I went to a predominantly African American school.
[08:25.110 --> 08:26.670]  Friends were predominantly African American.
[08:26.910 --> 08:28.190]  We hung out in their houses.
[08:28.390 --> 08:32.310]  We heard about the stories of, you know, the things that they learned in their communities and their culture.
[08:32.510 --> 08:33.810]  And I picked up on some stuff.
[08:34.050 --> 08:35.710]  My father was a sociologist.
[08:35.850 --> 08:39.350]  He taught the sociology of minorities, as it was called at the time, in urban studies.
[08:39.510 --> 08:41.950]  So we were kind of woke-ish before that was a thing.
[08:42.250 --> 08:44.150]  But I still didn't know a lot of these people.
[08:44.270 --> 08:45.450]  And neither did my friends.
[08:46.750 --> 08:48.910]  We weren't taught this stuff in school every day.
[08:50.070 --> 08:50.910]  Then in 1989...
[08:57.390 --> 08:58.550]  Give me a little volume on it.
[08:58.910 --> 08:59.890]  Turn me up in the monitors.
[09:03.720 --> 09:04.120]  Sorry.
[09:04.420 --> 09:06.420]  When one doesn't know about the other one's culture.
[09:06.900 --> 09:08.500]  Ignorance swoops down like a vulture.
[09:08.660 --> 09:10.720]  But you don't know that you ain't just a janitor.
[09:10.900 --> 09:12.900]  No one told you about Benjamin Bannocker.
[09:13.040 --> 09:15.080]  A brilliant black man that invented the almanac.
[09:15.240 --> 09:17.180]  Can't you see what KRS is coming at?
[09:17.180 --> 09:18.140]  Well, Eli Whitney.
[09:18.500 --> 09:19.240]  Holly Solasi.
[09:19.540 --> 09:21.220]  Granville Woods made the walkie talk.
[09:21.500 --> 09:23.520]  Lewis Slatterman improved on Edison.
[09:23.740 --> 09:25.680]  Charles Drew did a lot for medicine.
[09:26.020 --> 09:27.760]  Garrett Morgan made the traffic lights.
[09:28.140 --> 09:29.860]  Harriet Tubman did the slaves at night.
[09:30.000 --> 09:32.020]  Madam CJ Walker made the straightening comb.
[09:32.300 --> 09:34.120]  But you won't know this if you weren't shown.
[09:34.300 --> 09:36.300]  The point I'm getting at, it might be hard.
[09:36.580 --> 09:38.500]  Is we're just walking around brainwashed.
[09:38.500 --> 09:39.520]  See what I'm saying?
[09:39.820 --> 09:40.980]  It's not to dis a man.
[09:41.120 --> 09:42.880]  We need the 89 school system.
[09:43.240 --> 09:44.820]  One that caters to a black return.
[09:45.040 --> 09:46.660]  Because you must learn.
[09:47.820 --> 09:54.140]  So here you have, in 1989, KRS One drops a single and mentions every single one of those people in that song.
[09:54.660 --> 10:02.860]  And we instantly, in less than a verse, learned about these amazing contributions by African American inventors and innovators that have contributed to science and technology.
[10:03.280 --> 10:07.880]  People that I hadn't really known about that much before that day.
[10:08.760 --> 10:10.160]  Among all the... I'm going to read.
[10:10.340 --> 10:21.000]  Among all the myriad ways this country has insidiously worked really, really hard to discount, discredit, and disown the efforts of minorities, silencing the ones who have made incredible impact on our nation's prosperity is particularly harmful.
[10:21.300 --> 10:26.740]  As it denies generations of people of color, and others, the idea that they have been as important to our growth as anyone.
[10:27.260 --> 10:32.780]  And as we know now, because we talk about it all the time, diversity, inclusiveness, belonging, that representation matters.
[10:34.000 --> 10:37.500]  Hip-hop found a way to deliver that message to young people.
[10:37.940 --> 10:40.360]  In a way that wasn't being done otherwise.
[10:41.100 --> 10:43.860]  I gotta say, KRS One took a couple of liberties with his song.
[10:44.140 --> 10:46.040]  Benjamin Banner didn't invent the Almanac.
[10:46.200 --> 10:48.540]  He improved on it and did some really great stuff.
[10:49.000 --> 10:50.420]  And Eli Whitney is somehow in there.
[10:51.220 --> 10:52.840]  He's the guy that invented the cotton gin.
[10:53.160 --> 10:55.460]  And throughout history, some people thought he was black.
[10:55.460 --> 10:56.320]  And he's not.
[10:56.440 --> 10:58.320]  And there was some Mandela effect thing happening.
[10:58.320 --> 11:09.400]  But, if nothing else, KRS One's lyrics opened the eyes of a generation of rap fans to some badass African American inventors who they, for the most part, weren't taught about much at all.
[11:09.520 --> 11:12.800]  Now, hip-hop would continue to do this on the radio through groups like Public Enemy.
[11:12.800 --> 11:15.960]  We've talked, you know, everyone knows Public Enemy's political movements.
[11:16.280 --> 11:20.560]  Brand Newbie and Poor Righteous Teachers would teach black history, of course, and different aspects of culture.
[11:20.820 --> 11:28.740]  Now that it was being put out on the radio and that a lot of people could get their hands on it, get their ears on it, it spread to the masses and a lot of people learned some stuff through these artists.
[11:30.020 --> 11:32.380]  Now, through the years, that stopped.
[11:32.740 --> 11:34.780]  That stuff's not on the radio as much anymore.
[11:35.000 --> 11:38.780]  You don't hear that kind of message out there in popular music anymore.
[11:38.780 --> 11:42.140]  It still exists in, you know, a whole lot.
[11:42.380 --> 11:43.660]  Well, that's another talk.
[11:43.780 --> 11:44.460]  It still exists.
[11:44.660 --> 11:56.040]  And we can talk about why that message in the music, that, you know, educational aspect of it, or that, you know, positive message, as they might call it, disappeared.
[11:57.220 --> 12:02.520]  But what the end result was, is that the perception of rap and hip-hop culture, by extension, changed.
[12:02.880 --> 12:09.480]  And so the general public thought lesser of this music and cultural movement.
[12:10.780 --> 12:16.960]  I want to talk to you real quick about this guy that I know that kind of really, to me, and a lot of people, personifies what hip-hop actually is.
[12:17.240 --> 12:18.360]  You've seen some tech stuff.
[12:18.420 --> 12:20.040]  I'm tying it in and we're going to bring it back.
[12:21.100 --> 12:23.440]  This guy was an artist and a recording artist.
[12:23.560 --> 12:24.120]  He was a musician.
[12:24.220 --> 12:24.680]  He was a rapper.
[12:25.680 --> 12:26.960]  And he was an activist.
[12:27.480 --> 12:30.500]  He went around the world and worked with other activists in different places.
[12:30.840 --> 12:36.880]  And this man died at 36 years old in Las Vegas, a few years ago.
[12:37.660 --> 12:46.180]  At his memorial service, New York City, a place called the New Yorican's Cafe, memorial service, a bunch of folks came to pay tribute, memorialize him.
[12:46.180 --> 12:57.680]  There were other artists, of course, and other activists that had gone around the world with him to places like Palestine and Cuba, so that they could fight against human rights abuses in those countries using, you know, art.
[12:59.600 --> 13:11.600]  A bunch of rap artists that pledged to continue the free public display of music that has been going on for many, many years, that entertains tens of thousands of people every year.
[13:12.640 --> 13:14.600]  Happens every Friday night from 8 p.m. to midnight in Union Square Station.
[13:14.620 --> 13:16.440]  to midnight in Union Square Station.
[13:16.580 --> 13:20.560]  You get outside the subway, you walk up, and you're going to see these folks out there rapping in a circle.
[13:20.680 --> 13:21.820]  It's called Legendary Ciphers.
[13:22.000 --> 13:23.020]  It's been going on for years.
[13:23.020 --> 13:23.740]  He started that.
[13:24.280 --> 13:27.220]  They were there pledging to keep it going in his name, and they have, years later.
[13:28.400 --> 13:36.860]  What he would do is he would bring, in album release parties, he would bring politically active organizations like Cop Watch.
[13:37.100 --> 13:48.920]  Cop Watch is an organization that goes around and kind of teaches you how to film police, you know, in public interactions, so you know your rights, you know how to do it, so that you can film and keep police accountable for their interactions with the public.
[13:49.400 --> 13:53.900]  We all saw how, years later, that became really, really important.
[13:54.320 --> 13:55.700]  The George Floyd case.
[13:57.500 --> 14:00.100]  This man's name was Daniel Majesty Sanchez.
[14:00.420 --> 14:04.120]  And he touched all of these people in all of these ways through hip-hop.
[14:05.480 --> 14:13.760]  So he's someone I like to say, listen, this personifies to me and a lot of people and all those people, those hundreds and thousands of people that had come across him in his life and the work that he did.
[14:14.440 --> 14:15.640]  That's hip-hop to us.
[14:16.880 --> 14:19.780]  And I discovered this when I was a journalist and I started Birthplace Magazine.
[14:19.780 --> 14:23.860]  I was covering New York hip-hop, the music and the culture in the five boroughs.
[14:24.340 --> 14:30.500]  And I started coming across so many people using hip-hop in these innovative ways that are not just making music.
[14:31.760 --> 14:35.480]  So, for example, preparing for state tests in New York, we have a thing called the Regents exams.
[14:35.700 --> 14:38.680]  These kids were failing the Regents exams left and right every year.
[14:38.920 --> 14:40.360]  Some kids would fail three or four times.
[14:40.360 --> 14:43.160]  They keep trying to get them to take the tests and pass the tests.
[14:43.280 --> 14:43.680]  They can't.
[14:43.980 --> 14:51.020]  So a bunch of artists got with a bunch of teachers and they developed curriculum that basically made rap songs out of the study material.
[14:51.580 --> 14:57.140]  Kids memorized the songs and up to 80% of those kids who failed then went on to pass those tests.
[14:59.600 --> 15:00.600]  Called Fresh Prep.
[15:00.600 --> 15:02.920]  Take that to a technological 10X.
[15:03.180 --> 15:05.980]  And these folks called Flo-cabulary.
[15:06.620 --> 15:07.640]  I talk fast.
[15:07.760 --> 15:08.140]  I'm from New York.
[15:08.500 --> 15:08.620]  Look.
[15:09.780 --> 15:14.240]  Flo-cabulary has taken videos of all kind of subjects.
[15:14.520 --> 15:16.200]  Science, math, reading, writing.
[15:16.620 --> 15:21.200]  Even some things as important as social development and mental health for young people.
[15:21.200 --> 15:22.940]  And turned that into curriculum.
[15:23.440 --> 15:24.240]  All set to music.
[15:24.500 --> 15:27.320]  All with a staff of authentic teaching artists.
[15:27.540 --> 15:28.080]  Rap artists.
[15:28.380 --> 15:30.600]  That have some, you know, some education chops.
[15:31.440 --> 15:35.900]  And they've now, I think 10,000 schools are using Flo-cabulary videos.
[15:37.940 --> 15:40.300]  But see how this ties into why I like it so much?
[15:40.380 --> 15:47.240]  Because I was phreaking and we were figuring out ways to get into, you know, systems and bulletin boards and phones and making free phone calls.
[15:47.360 --> 15:50.720]  It's that hacking, the reprogramming of something that already exists.
[15:51.300 --> 15:52.240]  Circumventing those systems.
[15:52.440 --> 15:54.100]  Challenging authority and exchanging information.
[15:54.560 --> 15:55.760]  Just like KRS One was doing.
[15:55.960 --> 15:58.940]  He circumvented the entire school system and taught us some stuff.
[16:01.560 --> 16:04.620]  And it's amazing to me that it's come from this.
[16:04.620 --> 16:09.160]  It came from the Bronx where it was burnt down and rubble filled the streets.
[16:09.420 --> 16:11.120]  Literally for years.
[16:11.360 --> 16:15.220]  There were no resources from New York City in the Bronx at the time.
[16:17.360 --> 16:19.820]  School music arts programs gone.
[16:21.120 --> 16:22.080]  Firemen were gone.
[16:22.220 --> 16:23.300]  There weren't fire services.
[16:23.600 --> 16:25.740]  There weren't people helping the community.
[16:25.820 --> 16:26.940]  It was literally on fire.
[16:27.040 --> 16:28.160]  You've heard the Bronx is burning.
[16:29.700 --> 16:34.400]  But through all of that, young people involved with no resources.
[16:34.400 --> 16:36.440]  Gang violence all over the place.
[16:36.900 --> 16:42.340]  Got together and found a way to create something amazing.
[16:42.660 --> 16:44.160]  And it was always tied to technology.
[16:44.300 --> 16:45.180]  Look at all this technology.
[16:45.640 --> 16:46.960]  That looks like this setup right here.
[16:47.780 --> 16:48.480]  There's wires everywhere.
[16:51.020 --> 16:54.380]  They also took the electricity from the street lamps.
[16:54.380 --> 16:55.800]  Like they rewired.
[16:55.900 --> 16:58.040]  They re-engineered the actual electricity to do park jams.
[16:58.900 --> 17:10.880]  So hip-hop from its inception, this worldwide culture that now exists on every country in the planet, all started from using technology to mix it with the art to create something new.
[17:11.000 --> 17:13.360]  Technology in a way that wasn't originally developed.
[17:14.300 --> 17:15.680]  This cat, Grandmaster Flash.
[17:15.800 --> 17:16.420]  You might have heard of him.
[17:17.740 --> 17:19.000]  If you haven't, that's fine.
[17:19.520 --> 17:27.540]  Netflix did a great show called The Get Down, which is sort of a fictionalized account of young people's trials and tribulations and fun when they were coming up in this time period.
[17:28.400 --> 17:31.000]  Flash was a consulting producer on the show.
[17:31.160 --> 17:32.200]  So that was, you know, authentic.
[17:34.140 --> 17:40.480]  And one thing about Grandmaster Flash, y'all know, and some of you may and some of you may not, so forgive me if you know this stuff already.
[17:40.920 --> 17:53.520]  But when DJs are on the two turntables, right, there's a whole thing where you play music on this side and then you're listening in the headphones and you play music on this side and either it blends together or it transitions to this side.
[17:53.820 --> 17:56.840]  That's what you see a lot of DJs, hip-hop DJs, EDM DJs.
[17:56.840 --> 17:59.360]  Every DJ from like this time period does that.
[18:02.340 --> 18:03.580]  Wedding DJs, they all do it.
[18:04.520 --> 18:07.980]  This guy sort of was among the few that kind of invented that.
[18:08.720 --> 18:13.600]  So there was a time that the disco jams were playing, but there was a part of the song that had that drum beat.
[18:13.620 --> 18:14.860]  It just broke down to the drums.
[18:15.060 --> 18:17.020]  And all the dancers would go off on that time.
[18:17.100 --> 18:18.880]  They would just love dancing to that particular break.
[18:19.100 --> 18:21.700]  So Flash was one of the DJs and said, we've got to extend that somehow.
[18:21.760 --> 18:24.640]  We didn't have loops and, you know, all the machinery we have now.
[18:24.820 --> 18:25.840]  You had to do it manually.
[18:26.220 --> 18:31.020]  So you find the part on the record that has the beginning of that little break and you mark it with a crayon.
[18:31.160 --> 18:31.840]  He goes through this.
[18:31.920 --> 18:33.020]  It's shown in the get down.
[18:33.220 --> 18:35.720]  But if you just watch any of his interviews, he breaks all this down.
[18:35.940 --> 18:39.680]  So he's writing with a crayon this little part on the record and he's getting ready to spin it.
[18:40.180 --> 18:41.840]  And then he goes on this side and he does it.
[18:42.140 --> 18:45.640]  But what we do as DJs, we listen to what's on the net so we know when to time.
[18:45.700 --> 18:46.700]  That didn't exist yet.
[18:47.600 --> 18:50.860]  So Grandmaster Flash had to do a bunch of things to make this thing happen.
[18:51.880 --> 18:54.340]  So number one, he needed a turntable that had the right torque.
[18:54.340 --> 18:55.860]  He called it the torque theory.
[18:55.980 --> 19:02.260]  I needed to be able to have this record get back up to speed after you see I pull it back and stop it and throw it back forward.
[19:03.020 --> 19:04.680]  It'll start like this and that's no good.
[19:05.720 --> 19:08.000]  So he has to test out and go into...
[19:08.000 --> 19:09.180]  He's in thrift stores.
[19:09.340 --> 19:10.100]  He's in electronic stores.
[19:10.140 --> 19:12.000]  He's buying all the turntables he can.
[19:12.260 --> 19:13.300]  He's dumpster diving.
[19:13.600 --> 19:14.980]  It's another little hacker thing, right?
[19:15.520 --> 19:18.080]  And he's fixing them, seeing which ones would do what.
[19:19.980 --> 19:21.840]  The quick mix theory is that back and forth.
[19:21.920 --> 19:22.980]  He called it the quick mix theory.
[19:23.060 --> 19:27.060]  He's speaking in scientific terms without being told what these things really mean.
[19:28.680 --> 19:31.120]  So then he has to go and figure out a couple more things.
[19:31.320 --> 19:32.120]  I think I have...
[19:32.120 --> 19:36.000]  See, he says, Grandmaster Flash on the scientific approach he used to pioneer turntablism.
[19:36.100 --> 19:44.220]  I think it's a quick little video of him talking about one of the things he had to figure out as a 16-, 17-year-old kid with no training in this.
[19:48.980 --> 19:50.300]  I guess I got to click it.
[19:52.180 --> 19:54.400]  Two classes of styluses.
[19:55.220 --> 19:56.280]  Stylus is a needle, people.
[19:56.420 --> 19:56.880]  It's a needle.
[19:57.020 --> 19:57.580]  Stylus and a needle.
[19:57.660 --> 19:58.080]  Two styles.
[19:58.240 --> 19:58.880]  Two types.
[19:59.240 --> 20:00.680]  One was called the elliptical.
[20:02.580 --> 20:04.160]  The other was called the conical.
[20:04.360 --> 20:04.940]  You can hear this?
[20:05.080 --> 20:05.300]  Now.
[20:07.760 --> 20:16.120]  The elliptical, when you look at it under a microscope it's built like a backwards J, right?
[20:16.120 --> 20:21.840]  And the conical was built like a nail.
[20:22.900 --> 20:35.040]  My quest was while the platter was spinning clockwise I had to have a needle that would stay inside the groove while I went counter-clockwise.
[20:36.020 --> 20:53.360]  And although the width of the elliptical needle inside the groove was further from left to right which meant the stereo spectrum overall would sound better when I pulled the needle back it kept sliding out of the groove.
[20:54.200 --> 21:13.940]  The conical, when that sat in the groove although it sound horrible when I counter-clockwise the vinyl while the platter was going clockwise it hung inside the groove.
[21:15.160 --> 21:16.820]  That part was figured out.
[21:17.120 --> 21:19.620]  Two classes of styluses.
[21:19.760 --> 21:20.060]  Go forward.
[21:20.360 --> 21:23.580]  So now he goes on to say some other things and one of the other things he invented was...
[21:23.580 --> 21:24.060]  This is crazy.
[21:24.280 --> 21:27.740]  He says, when you first get a turntable there's a rubber mat underneath there.
[21:27.740 --> 21:31.680]  And to do this back and forth that he wants to do on the record he can't...
[21:31.680 --> 21:34.560]  The rubber mat produces too much friction too much drag.
[21:34.780 --> 21:35.460]  You hear him talk about it.
[21:35.520 --> 21:36.160]  He uses friction drag.
[21:36.240 --> 21:36.640]  All these words.
[21:37.120 --> 21:39.560]  And he says, so what I needed to do was find a way to...
[21:39.560 --> 21:42.300]  You take the rubber mat off now there's a metal plate.
[21:42.400 --> 21:44.660]  You can't do that because you'll scratch the other side of the record.
[21:45.040 --> 21:46.680]  He goes, my mother was a seamstress.
[21:47.460 --> 21:48.700]  So I knew about materials.
[21:48.900 --> 21:53.940]  I went to the material store and I felt all these materials and I found felt, actually.
[21:54.140 --> 21:55.440]  It's a soft, you know, fabric.
[21:55.800 --> 21:57.100]  He goes, this would be great.
[21:57.240 --> 21:59.100]  It would give me the amount of friction I need.
[21:59.200 --> 22:01.180]  But felt is limp.
[22:01.540 --> 22:02.220]  It folds.
[22:03.060 --> 22:07.860]  He goes, I go back to my mom's house and I cut out two felts in the shape of a record.
[22:08.040 --> 22:10.340]  And when she wasn't looking I took her spray starch.
[22:10.600 --> 22:13.260]  And I spray starched the felt to get it firm.
[22:13.820 --> 22:15.860]  Took some wax paper from when my mom...
[22:15.860 --> 22:21.620]  He would say, when I got good grades my mother would make cookies and put it on wax paper so I knew that the wax paper would help.
[22:21.720 --> 22:28.340]  So he got the wax paper, put the wax paper on the felt, put it on the turntable and now he had just the right friction to be able to work those records back and forth.
[22:30.020 --> 22:31.960]  That's called a slip mat now.
[22:32.200 --> 22:38.900]  And every single DJ ever since he did that used a slip mat.
[22:39.380 --> 22:40.840]  So this is an inventor.
[22:41.740 --> 22:55.540]  And if you listen to any kind of music that's electronic based, DJ, you know, hip-hop, lo-fi, EDM, it starts from the DJ and the innovations that Grandmaster Flash and a few others around that time were able to do.
[22:55.720 --> 22:56.380]  So hold up.
[22:56.480 --> 22:57.400]  Let's take a stance.
[22:57.560 --> 22:58.320]  Y'all with me so far?
[22:58.380 --> 22:58.720]  Are we good?
[22:59.480 --> 22:59.880]  Okay.
[23:01.320 --> 23:01.860]  Thank you.
[23:02.320 --> 23:03.860]  I didn't need all that, but thank you.
[23:04.460 --> 23:04.980]  Hold on.
[23:05.060 --> 23:05.440]  I'll take more.
[23:05.540 --> 23:05.620]  No.
[23:05.620 --> 23:06.180]  All right.
[23:06.400 --> 23:07.360]  So hold up.
[23:07.440 --> 23:09.320]  Hip-hop is a culture is what I'm saying, right?
[23:09.380 --> 23:13.000]  Because I'm saying that we haven't barely even talked about music yet.
[23:13.680 --> 23:14.120]  Right?
[23:14.280 --> 23:18.540]  We've talked about like the entertainment part, the thing that most people think of rap and hip-hop.
[23:19.180 --> 23:26.720]  We've talked about these cultural influences and things that I picked up along the way and inventing and figuring things out to play the music in a certain way.
[23:26.720 --> 23:27.620]  Oh, one more thing.
[23:27.800 --> 23:28.980]  There's some folks here.
[23:29.340 --> 23:31.240]  Remember that thing I said we can't listen?
[23:31.300 --> 23:32.880]  We listen to what's on the other record?
[23:33.100 --> 23:34.320]  That didn't exist yet.
[23:34.860 --> 23:36.440]  I had to throw this in because it was brilliant.
[23:36.700 --> 23:42.860]  He went to RadioShack and got a switch and rewired the headphones and so he would switch it manually.
[23:43.300 --> 23:45.640]  Like now we have a little crossfader built onto the mixer.
[23:45.820 --> 23:46.740]  He invented this.
[23:47.540 --> 23:52.060]  Those mixers didn't exist because no one was doing that back and forth thing that he was trying to do.
[23:52.540 --> 23:54.700]  So again, electrical engineering into the mix.
[23:54.700 --> 23:55.540]  I wanted to throw that in here.
[23:55.740 --> 23:56.140]  It's important.
[23:57.200 --> 23:58.300]  Hip-hop is a culture.
[23:58.460 --> 24:00.500]  Hip-hop was created by black and brown Americans.
[24:00.660 --> 24:06.180]  It's a fact that we know and gotta say because sometimes it's either forgotten in the history of America or that happens.
[24:06.580 --> 24:09.820]  But it's incredibly multicultural.
[24:10.980 --> 24:16.160]  It's incredibly inviting and inclusive when it comes down to it.
[24:17.580 --> 24:26.660]  And it exists, it takes existing resources, new ingenuity, taking something old, remixing it, smacking it, flipping it, rubbing it down, make it right, let's go.
[24:27.440 --> 24:27.900]  Right?
[24:28.040 --> 24:28.500]  Something new.
[24:30.100 --> 24:31.440]  Communication and inspiration.
[24:31.460 --> 24:34.040]  It's what's at the heart of good hip-hop music.
[24:35.760 --> 24:36.680]  And collaboration.
[24:37.500 --> 24:43.580]  That's where I think hip-hop minded folk, hip-hop spirit, hip-hop ethos got something unique.
[24:44.900 --> 24:53.460]  I'll give you a couple examples of how that collaborative idea, that inspirational idea, technology helped spread something valuable around the world.
[24:54.060 --> 24:57.260]  This article says the original Uber, the OJ car service.
[24:58.160 --> 25:00.780]  So if you're in New York and you know some things, you know about the OJs.
[25:00.820 --> 25:05.060]  OJs would be, you know, the OJ car service sort of luxury cars would get rented out.
[25:05.720 --> 25:14.180]  And so if you were a baller, if you were, you know, some kind of, you know, looking like a star, you wanted to pull up to the club, you would have an OJ driver, they drive you up, you'd step out the back of a Cadillac and look smooth.
[25:14.420 --> 25:17.600]  And you get into the club and everyone's like, oh, you're wearing your fur coats because it's the 70s.
[25:17.760 --> 25:18.120]  Right?
[25:19.480 --> 25:23.500]  So this was original Uber, sort of renting out the car so that you could look, you know, da-da-da.
[25:24.060 --> 25:34.880]  So what happens is a bunch of fledgling rap groups in New York City, Cold Crush Brothers, folks like that, had a big battle and someone recorded it on cassette in the club.
[25:35.300 --> 25:36.700]  And they felt they won the battle.
[25:36.780 --> 25:42.360]  They felt that this cassette tape that they had of them, you know, performing was a good representation of their prowess as musicians.
[25:43.300 --> 25:45.600]  And so what they did was they made copies of the cassette.
[25:45.920 --> 25:46.720]  That's what you did, it's the 70s.
[25:46.800 --> 25:48.440]  You make cassettes and you make these copies.
[25:48.880 --> 25:51.680]  And they went around and they gave it to all the OJ drivers.
[25:52.120 --> 25:56.340]  Probably slid them a couple of bucks and said, hey, play this in your ride.
[25:56.540 --> 26:02.120]  Whenever somebody gets out and pulls up to the club and the fur coat dude and his girl gets out, you're gonna hear our music.
[26:02.660 --> 26:03.440]  Oh, who's that?
[26:03.540 --> 26:04.320]  Oh, it's the Cold Crush Brothers.
[26:04.480 --> 26:05.080]  Oh, that's dope.
[26:05.400 --> 26:05.720]  Oh, that...
[26:05.720 --> 26:10.540]  And by doing that, they pollinated the city of New York with their music.
[26:10.820 --> 26:11.920]  There was no radio.
[26:12.080 --> 26:13.500]  There was no rap on the radio yet.
[26:13.580 --> 26:14.120]  You gotta understand.
[26:14.480 --> 26:18.280]  And they said, this is a way to distribute my music throughout the city.
[26:18.420 --> 26:21.320]  So original Uber, but original influencers.
[26:22.320 --> 26:23.460]  Social media.
[26:23.960 --> 26:25.920]  Before there was anything like it.
[26:27.680 --> 26:28.520]  Shouts to Summer.
[26:29.280 --> 26:30.260]  Mixtape Museum.
[26:30.500 --> 26:31.480]  I know she's watching.
[26:31.720 --> 26:35.320]  Listen, so the mixtapes then became this powerful tool.
[26:35.860 --> 26:38.300]  Again, not really what they're being used for.
[26:39.880 --> 26:41.400]  You'd record songs off the radio.
[26:41.540 --> 26:42.540]  You'd make your little pause tapes.
[26:42.700 --> 26:43.140]  We used to call them.
[26:43.240 --> 26:43.860]  You'd play some songs.
[26:43.960 --> 26:45.980]  Play pause and wait until the next song you wanted to get on the tape.
[26:46.200 --> 26:49.140]  And then you unplayed pause and recorded the next song.
[26:50.160 --> 26:54.660]  And people were recording the concerts and sneaking them into the Grateful Dead concerts and stuff like that.
[26:54.760 --> 27:03.420]  But using it as a tool to, you know, not commercially, go through the city or go through a community and pass around this information.
[27:04.140 --> 27:04.940]  That was new.
[27:05.160 --> 27:05.860]  And they were doing that.
[27:05.940 --> 27:10.800]  Now that then turned into people would come up to New York because hip-hop was only in New York really at the time.
[27:10.940 --> 27:12.500]  And again, it wasn't on the radio so much.
[27:12.600 --> 27:15.820]  But you could listen to hip-hop in New York City from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
[27:18.300 --> 27:22.060]  DJ Mr. Magic and Molly Mall or Red Alert on these two radio stations.
[27:22.480 --> 27:25.180]  That's the only time you could get hip-rap music on the radio for a while.
[27:25.240 --> 27:26.180]  So you'd take the cassettes.
[27:26.280 --> 27:27.180]  You'd record off the radio.
[27:27.420 --> 27:28.360]  Then you'd make copies.
[27:28.420 --> 27:29.320]  And then your friends would come.
[27:29.320 --> 27:30.860]  Your cousins would come from out of town.
[27:31.220 --> 27:33.940]  And they'd take a copy back to Washington, D.C.
[27:34.140 --> 27:37.560]  or down to Atlanta or Maryland, wherever they, you know, Virginia, wherever they lived.
[27:37.780 --> 27:41.880]  And now you have pollination happening through this technology.
[27:42.380 --> 27:45.900]  Then they send it to their cousins, some overseas in the military.
[27:46.360 --> 27:51.560]  That's how you get hip-hop in Germany or Japan or wherever people were stationed back then.
[27:52.140 --> 27:54.320]  It's pollinating the world through the use of cassettes.
[27:55.360 --> 27:59.180]  Now, it got to be so big that the actual record industry didn't like it.
[27:59.300 --> 28:01.520]  They're like, hey, you're putting these things over.
[28:01.700 --> 28:03.440]  People were making mixed CDs and selling them.
[28:04.600 --> 28:12.060]  Record labels are like, wait a minute, you can't just take music that we make and we don't get a cut to a point where it actually shut down when it got to the CDs.
[28:12.340 --> 28:22.280]  They actually, the FBI and the recording industry, recording in the RIAA, shut down DJs, raided their equipment, shut them down.
[28:22.420 --> 28:23.040]  But it was too late.
[28:23.700 --> 28:24.360]  It was too late.
[28:24.420 --> 28:25.600]  This was a way to get music out.
[28:25.680 --> 28:29.640]  Because what the DJs would do is, the artists would say, hey, I want to put out a song.
[28:30.320 --> 28:31.640]  The record labels say, you can't put out a song.
[28:31.800 --> 28:33.440]  We're not releasing until September.
[28:33.480 --> 28:34.920]  We have our fourth quarter projection.
[28:35.740 --> 28:36.380]  That's how it worked.
[28:36.960 --> 28:38.080]  Artists are like, I got a song.
[28:38.200 --> 28:38.760]  Someone dissed me.
[28:38.820 --> 28:40.060]  I got to respond.
[28:40.120 --> 28:41.320]  Or, I just got this heat.
[28:41.320 --> 28:42.700]  I want to put it out and get some buzz.
[28:42.820 --> 28:43.760]  They said, no, you can't do that.
[28:44.920 --> 28:46.440]  So they said, okay, no problem.
[28:46.600 --> 28:46.780]  Cool.
[28:47.140 --> 28:50.680]  Let me just leak this song to a DJ that's making these CDs and passing them around.
[28:51.640 --> 28:53.420]  Oh, now this DJ has an exclusive.
[28:54.520 --> 28:55.620]  He's copying CDs.
[28:55.760 --> 28:58.440]  And remember those little things you put in the CD and they would copy it.
[28:58.520 --> 29:01.620]  He's copying CDs, selling them, making a fortune because he got an exclusive.
[29:01.840 --> 29:03.360]  So the next DJ is like, wait a minute.
[29:04.100 --> 29:06.920]  Who I know that could give me a song that nobody else can get.
[29:07.540 --> 29:08.680]  Then I start doing that.
[29:08.800 --> 29:09.400]  All these DJs.
[29:09.500 --> 29:11.640]  Now the record company is like, ah, damn it.
[29:12.160 --> 29:13.760]  We don't got to cut any of this.
[29:14.760 --> 29:17.920]  And so they one time decided, all right, well, we'll put out a mixtape.
[29:17.920 --> 29:19.720]  And then got Funkmaster Flex and they made a mixtape.
[29:19.960 --> 29:25.480]  But they couldn't do what the ingenious kids making music were doing.
[29:25.600 --> 29:31.340]  They figured out a way to distribute music in a way that the record, the mighty record labels couldn't control anymore.
[29:31.560 --> 29:37.280]  And if you go to Dat Piff online now, you find that, well, then a few years ago, that it translated to online.
[29:37.680 --> 29:39.640]  And then that kind of turned into SoundCloud.
[29:40.240 --> 29:47.300]  And SoundCloud, if you know, you can put out a song and become famous and rich just by touring because it gets picked up by the people.
[29:48.020 --> 30:01.640]  And record labels hate that because they don't have control over the artists from their early days because of the ingenuity and the ingenious way that hip-hop rap artists really use this technology in a different way.
[30:01.720 --> 30:02.720]  Can we talk about Soulja Boy?
[30:03.800 --> 30:05.120]  Y'all know who Soulja Boy is?
[30:06.260 --> 30:07.560]  Some of y'all, maybe not everyone.
[30:07.560 --> 30:09.220]  Some of y'all might be asking...
[30:11.320 --> 30:12.420]  Who is Soulja Boy?
[30:12.580 --> 30:14.060]  And what in the heck is that dance?
[30:14.600 --> 30:15.400]  Okay, fair enough.
[30:15.620 --> 30:16.120]  Who is Soulja Boy?
[30:16.340 --> 30:16.720]  You!
[30:18.180 --> 30:18.580]  Okay.
[30:19.040 --> 30:20.180]  Soulja Boy, that's up.
[30:20.760 --> 30:22.280]  Hey, I got this new dance for y'all.
[30:22.440 --> 30:23.400]  Call the Soulja Boy.
[30:23.540 --> 30:24.340]  I'm not gonna do it.
[30:24.440 --> 30:25.180]  It's not gonna happen.
[30:25.400 --> 30:25.900]  It's not gonna happen.
[30:27.200 --> 30:29.740]  But if you didn't know, you might recognize this now.
[30:30.140 --> 30:30.540]  So...
[30:31.040 --> 30:32.300]  Soulja Boy, I'm in it.
[30:32.560 --> 30:34.280]  Why me crank it, why me roll?
[30:34.520 --> 30:35.960]  Why me crank that Soulja Boy?
[30:37.260 --> 30:44.300]  What I love about this is that if you have no idea what you're looking at right now, you may think something, you know, trivial.
[30:45.920 --> 30:47.000]  But let's talk about this.
[30:47.080 --> 30:50.140]  Soulja Boy wrote and self-produced this song in 2007.
[30:50.520 --> 30:50.920]  Okay?
[30:51.000 --> 30:52.160]  By himself, basically.
[30:53.740 --> 30:55.340]  He uploaded the corresponding dance.
[30:55.460 --> 30:56.000]  That was a dance.
[30:56.120 --> 30:57.500]  It's a syncopated dance.
[30:57.620 --> 31:02.020]  It's meant to be repeated and it got the attention of a lot of young kids and everyone wanted to do it and it was all cool.
[31:02.840 --> 31:04.020]  Uploaded that dance to YouTube.
[31:05.760 --> 31:11.260]  The song went to number one on Billboard for seven weeks.
[31:11.800 --> 31:13.540]  It's not coming out of a record label.
[31:13.640 --> 31:14.120]  This was in 2007.
[31:14.780 --> 31:17.040]  So it was just kind of this random thing that was out there.
[31:17.660 --> 31:18.300]  First U.S.
[31:18.380 --> 31:20.960]  song to sell three million digital copies.
[31:20.960 --> 31:23.820]  At a time when nobody was selling millions of digital copies.
[31:23.900 --> 31:25.320]  It hadn't started happening yet.
[31:25.640 --> 31:27.240]  Record labels were trying to figure it out.
[31:27.240 --> 31:28.280]  How do we do this?
[31:30.300 --> 31:33.040]  Soulja Boy said, well, this is what I do to get people to buy my song.
[31:33.200 --> 31:34.200]  Or to listen to it at least.
[31:35.600 --> 31:37.100]  Whatever song was popular at the time.
[31:37.200 --> 31:37.540]  Jay-Z.
[31:37.660 --> 31:38.620]  Something was hot at the time.
[31:38.620 --> 31:42.040]  He would put his song on the peer-to-peer networks.
[31:42.400 --> 31:42.720]  LimeWire.
[31:42.940 --> 31:43.260]  Napster.
[31:44.420 --> 31:46.480]  But he would rename his song their song.
[31:50.120 --> 31:51.960]  So I'm looking for Jay-Z's new joint.
[31:52.120 --> 31:52.800]  And I download it.
[31:52.900 --> 31:53.660]  And I get you.
[31:55.120 --> 31:56.500]  And I'm like, this is not what I...
[31:56.500 --> 31:57.020]  What the...
[31:57.020 --> 31:57.620]  Who he got?
[31:57.740 --> 31:58.120]  What is it?
[31:58.180 --> 31:58.600]  What is it?
[31:58.800 --> 31:59.720]  But it's catchy.
[32:01.040 --> 32:01.540]  You know?
[32:01.660 --> 32:03.220]  And then maybe I see the dance.
[32:03.380 --> 32:04.100]  And I'm like, oh.
[32:04.840 --> 32:05.740]  And I'm building...
[32:05.740 --> 32:06.620]  Now there's recognition.
[32:06.620 --> 32:07.300]  There's a whole thing.
[32:07.380 --> 32:09.680]  The whole thing was this brilliant plot.
[32:11.280 --> 32:11.800]  Bless you.
[32:13.180 --> 32:17.460]  This guy was making $10,000 a month on SoundClick.
[32:17.580 --> 32:22.060]  It was an early kind of platform where you could get paid to put up stuff and get some attention.
[32:22.900 --> 32:24.360]  But here's what he really smart was.
[32:24.640 --> 32:37.020]  When MySpace came out and they had an artist section, he redirected his SoundClick page, which was getting all this traffic and making all this money, coming to MySpace, and then instantly became the number one artist on MySpace.
[32:37.360 --> 32:38.820]  And then everyone was on MySpace.
[32:38.840 --> 32:40.200]  MySpace was the thing of all things.
[32:40.380 --> 32:42.540]  So everybody knew who this cat was.
[32:42.900 --> 32:44.340]  Everybody was listening to his music.
[32:44.440 --> 32:46.500]  He didn't have managers telling him to do this, by the way.
[32:47.540 --> 32:49.940]  Said, I was the first rapper to get paid on YouTube.
[32:50.900 --> 32:53.340]  I did not verify that fact, but it sounds right.
[32:54.120 --> 32:54.940]  I believe him.
[32:56.860 --> 32:58.760]  Sold millions of ringtones.
[32:58.900 --> 32:59.580]  Remember that time?
[33:02.180 --> 33:03.820]  That ringtones were a thing?
[33:04.760 --> 33:05.720]  Whew, that was a thing.
[33:05.880 --> 33:08.760]  That was a big thing for a minute, and then it wasn't.
[33:11.340 --> 33:13.900]  But when it was, perfect timing.
[33:14.560 --> 33:15.800]  Recognized that technology.
[33:16.340 --> 33:18.580]  Recognized it fit into his whole thing.
[33:19.580 --> 33:20.180]  Jumped on it.
[33:20.300 --> 33:21.200]  Sold millions of them.
[33:21.520 --> 33:24.580]  That all led to a multi-million dollar contract.
[33:24.600 --> 33:25.360]  I don't know exactly.
[33:25.560 --> 33:26.360]  I think it was a million dollars.
[33:26.480 --> 33:28.240]  But it was a real record label within a scope.
[33:28.240 --> 33:31.260]  So all those things happened, and then he had the leverage to walk in a scope.
[33:31.440 --> 33:32.880]  I don't know if he got a really good deal or not.
[33:34.100 --> 33:35.640]  Yes, to some degree.
[33:37.240 --> 33:40.740]  But all of that, to now say, okay, I'd like a record deal now, please.
[33:40.880 --> 33:43.140]  And they said, yes, sir, Mr. Boy Soldier.
[33:43.440 --> 33:43.760]  Yes.
[33:44.960 --> 33:45.280]  100%.
[33:46.840 --> 33:48.000]  And I got to say this.
[33:48.320 --> 34:03.260]  Oh, and then again, the fact that this kind of independent spirit of just releasing things to the public did lead to the SoundCloud era, which I mentioned before, which artists are getting found and discovered and picked up and touring and having their own little enterprises without major labels,
[34:03.360 --> 34:04.520]  without major corporations.
[34:04.940 --> 34:09.640]  I think a lot of people here like when there's no major corporations involved in your stuff.
[34:11.560 --> 34:12.360]  I've got to say this.
[34:12.420 --> 34:13.640]  He did this when he was 16 years old.
[34:17.250 --> 34:23.070]  So, man, if we're talking about ingenuity and innovation, again, hip-hop doesn't own innovation.
[34:23.230 --> 34:26.990]  A lot of innovative folk throughout history and here and, you know, in our respective fields.
[34:27.750 --> 34:41.350]  But this is a really unique angle that folks that come from hip-hop, that culture, all the things that get associated with it, not having access to resources, but being able to find ways to make it happen.
[34:42.890 --> 34:50.610]  And now you see it with folks like Travis Scott taking it to the metaverse, which is not probably what they thought it was going to be.
[34:50.750 --> 34:54.410]  But at the moment, again, jumping on the technology, jumping on the popularity.
[34:55.210 --> 35:05.370]  Travis Scott's Astroworld Tour 2018-2019, 58 shows, four months of travel in front of 850,000 fans and grossed $64 million.
[35:05.610 --> 35:07.310]  That's a successful music artist.
[35:07.950 --> 35:09.410]  He's on a successful tour.
[35:09.550 --> 35:10.230]  He's making a lot of money.
[35:10.970 --> 35:11.710]  There's no Billy Joel.
[35:13.090 --> 35:14.170]  I don't know why I said that.
[35:14.650 --> 35:15.430]  Who cares about Billy Joel?
[35:16.050 --> 35:17.330]  But he's making money.
[35:17.490 --> 35:18.950]  This guy's doing a good job being an artist.
[35:19.770 --> 35:24.490]  But then he had his Fortnite concert, which was four virtual shows.
[35:24.910 --> 35:26.230]  Didn't have to go anywhere for that.
[35:26.350 --> 35:30.490]  One weekend, 28 million people checked it out.
[35:30.490 --> 35:32.210]  And he bagged 20 mil.
[35:33.650 --> 35:39.150]  As Dan Runcie, who writes a good newsletter on hip-hop finances, says, I doubt he doesn't know the 50 city tour after that.
[35:41.590 --> 35:46.730]  And the biggest metaverse concert to date, I think, or certainly was the first big one.
[35:46.810 --> 35:49.930]  So again, recognizing the technology and jumping on it.
[35:49.990 --> 35:52.190]  Hip-hop's fingerprints since day one.
[35:52.490 --> 35:53.750]  We know how to do this.
[35:55.550 --> 35:58.310]  Now, you see it now in small and large ways.
[35:58.830 --> 36:00.210]  Bonfire Radio is out of Brooklyn.
[36:00.550 --> 36:01.950]  They've been around for about 10 years.
[36:02.210 --> 36:04.390]  They're a community-based online radio station.
[36:04.410 --> 36:05.570]  I've had a couple of shows there.
[36:05.630 --> 36:05.850]  I'm a DJ.
[36:06.010 --> 36:06.550]  I've done some things.
[36:06.850 --> 36:13.950]  But they have great shows where they have local perspectives from the culture, of the culture, by the culture.
[36:14.450 --> 36:19.610]  They've put this together in a way that kind of recreates community radio in a new way.
[36:19.610 --> 36:23.310]  Not just local, because they had, like, obviously it's the Internet, so it can go all over the world.
[36:23.490 --> 36:25.350]  But really smart programming.
[36:26.310 --> 36:30.030]  The kind of stuff you probably want to hear on the radio now, but can't.
[36:30.650 --> 36:33.070]  Because the radio is all owned by three corporations.
[36:33.850 --> 36:39.250]  So you want to take it back to that kind of, just, you know, community, good music, new music, music discovery.
[36:39.430 --> 36:43.370]  All the things you complain about the radio, and you don't listen to the radio anymore, but they're doing it online.
[36:45.850 --> 36:46.210]  Nas.
[36:46.650 --> 36:47.350]  Y'all know Nas?
[36:47.590 --> 36:55.710]  So, a few years ago I wrote a piece because Lonzo Ball, a young basketball player, was asked, like, you know, what about, you know, who your favorite rappers are?
[36:55.790 --> 37:02.010]  And somebody mentioned Nas, and he said, you know, Nas, yeah, I know who he is, but, you know, he's not really relevant to me.
[37:02.750 --> 37:06.890]  And all the old rap fans were like, how dare you say that Nas isn't relevant?
[37:06.950 --> 37:07.730]  He's one of the GOATs.
[37:07.770 --> 37:08.210]  He's great.
[37:09.430 --> 37:11.890]  And Lonzo Ball was like, yeah, but he's not, you know, he's not relevant to me.
[37:12.670 --> 37:14.470]  And to be honest, I'm an older hip-hop guy.
[37:14.470 --> 37:15.030]  I get it.
[37:15.610 --> 37:17.570]  Nas, at the time, hadn't put out an album in a while.
[37:17.650 --> 37:18.490]  He wasn't on the radio.
[37:18.970 --> 37:21.870]  He wasn't in front of young rap fans.
[37:22.830 --> 37:24.170]  But I said, you're missing the point.
[37:25.070 --> 37:27.390]  The point is, he's a venture capitalist now.
[37:28.010 --> 37:30.910]  And he's since put out, like, three amazing albums after that.
[37:31.050 --> 37:32.450]  So, uh, take that, Lonzo Ball.
[37:35.530 --> 37:36.050]  Facts.
[37:36.350 --> 37:36.670]  Yeah, look.
[37:37.870 --> 37:40.190]  All these startups, he invested in them.
[37:40.270 --> 37:45.870]  Queensbridge Venture Partners invested early stage ring.
[37:46.230 --> 37:49.710]  I think when they sold, they made quite a bunch of money.
[37:49.790 --> 37:51.190]  Casper, Lyft, Coinbase.
[37:51.650 --> 37:51.930]  Nas.
[37:52.550 --> 37:53.450]  Incredibly relevant.
[37:54.070 --> 37:54.590]  Why?
[37:54.850 --> 37:55.510]  I don't know.
[37:55.810 --> 37:57.110]  You know, he has a good eye for things.
[37:57.110 --> 37:59.670]  Like I said, hip-hop folk know technology.
[38:00.370 --> 38:01.890]  And they know what's going to be big.
[38:03.890 --> 38:05.110]  It's inherent in our nature.
[38:05.190 --> 38:05.910]  Let's take it back down.
[38:06.270 --> 38:08.550]  Breakbeat code started by a bunch of folks at Google.
[38:08.770 --> 38:14.610]  And what they're doing is they take all-day workshops, and they work with young kids, about 14, 15, generally speaking, you know, middle school.
[38:14.910 --> 38:17.390]  And they teach them the basics of coding.
[38:17.510 --> 38:18.130]  They use Python.
[38:18.390 --> 38:21.790]  And they have an online repository of music loops, beats, right?
[38:21.970 --> 38:23.990]  And they teach these kids, make your beats.
[38:24.690 --> 38:25.150]  Go ahead.
[38:25.250 --> 38:25.730]  Layer them.
[38:25.890 --> 38:27.290]  Start, you know, one in this layer.
[38:27.430 --> 38:32.330]  And then add another layer of beat, you know, a drum pattern or a guitar riff.
[38:32.950 --> 38:34.110]  Start this one at bar one.
[38:34.250 --> 38:35.130]  Start this one at bar four.
[38:35.230 --> 38:36.090]  Have it go eight bars.
[38:36.210 --> 38:37.370]  Have it bring this thing in.
[38:37.470 --> 38:38.270]  Fade this one out.
[38:38.910 --> 38:40.010]  But it's not drag and drop.
[38:40.110 --> 38:41.150]  No, they've got to do it through programming.
[38:41.830 --> 38:48.650]  And so by the end of that four-hour workshop, they've now learned the rudimentary, you know, programming, coding.
[38:50.050 --> 38:58.470]  And we take this into schools where they don't, where they continue to be underfunded and continue to not have access to that kind of technology.
[38:58.710 --> 39:01.690]  You're turning kids onto something that they never even knew was possible.
[39:02.510 --> 39:04.230]  And you're doing it through their love for music.
[39:04.450 --> 39:05.390]  And I've seen them.
[39:05.490 --> 39:09.630]  And at the end of that four-hour workshop, every single one is like, when's part two?
[39:12.390 --> 39:16.690]  On a larger scale, Black Girls Code, a big organization you might have heard of, does the same thing.
[39:17.030 --> 39:21.290]  Not hip-hop, you know, per se, but certainly in its spirit and ethos, absolutely 100%.
[39:21.290 --> 39:23.570]  So you can find a small organization doing this.
[39:23.630 --> 39:25.390]  You can find big organizations that are doing this.
[39:26.710 --> 39:31.410]  Even large institutions, NJPAC, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, right across the river in Newark, Brick City.
[39:32.330 --> 39:35.970]  I taught a course there in podcasting, actually.
[39:36.170 --> 39:38.350]  But they have a full summertime hip-hop program.
[39:38.490 --> 39:41.210]  Dance, emceeing, drawing, the visual arts.
[39:41.890 --> 39:43.770]  And then I came in and I taught a podcasting course.
[39:43.790 --> 39:44.970]  I do podcasting as well.
[39:45.810 --> 39:48.050]  And I taught that, but also with a hip-hop angle.
[39:48.490 --> 39:52.550]  And I know I'm gonna give almost a few minutes and then we're gonna have to take questions if you got them.
[39:52.770 --> 39:57.450]  But I do a podcast called Newsbeat, where we actually do social justice journalism.
[39:57.450 --> 40:02.250]  We interview people that are in the social justice realm fighting the good fight against things that are happening.
[40:02.550 --> 40:07.570]  We interview activists and experts and people who are going through injustices.
[40:07.790 --> 40:12.430]  We weave the whole podcast episode with music so it's sort of like a score, like a documentary.
[40:12.690 --> 40:13.410]  It gives a mood.
[40:13.910 --> 40:16.370]  And then we have independent, brilliant, independent hip-hop artists.
[40:16.770 --> 40:19.190]  Original lyrics crafted for each episode.
[40:19.490 --> 40:22.410]  And we drop it in parts of that podcast.
[40:23.110 --> 40:25.530]  So again, intersections of hip-hop and anything.
[40:26.150 --> 40:28.330]  And you're gonna get something compelling out of it.
[40:28.530 --> 40:29.430]  And I'll say this.
[40:29.730 --> 40:32.690]  We are currently, right now, the reigning champion.
[40:33.150 --> 40:34.530]  That's not the right word.
[40:34.770 --> 40:38.210]  We're the New York Press Club Journalism Podcast of the Year.
[40:41.480 --> 40:44.100]  A news show that got a bunch of rappers in it.
[40:44.320 --> 40:45.540]  Beat the New York Times.
[40:46.640 --> 40:48.120]  So that's what I'm saying.
[40:48.340 --> 40:56.040]  It's compelling and it's valuable to look at these intersections about what these folks can do and bring them into whatever you're doing.
[40:56.920 --> 41:01.280]  My favorite iteration of this on the tech side is Hip-Hop Hacks.
[41:01.480 --> 41:05.360]  It's where I started really understanding that this connection is super valuable and super powerful.
[41:05.820 --> 41:06.600]  Shouts again to Summer.
[41:07.500 --> 41:14.300]  Hip-Hop Hacks is a hackathon based and grounded in anti-racism and hip-hop.
[41:15.000 --> 41:17.100]  So again, inclusivity brought it all in.
[41:17.340 --> 41:18.260]  My favorite thing from this.
[41:18.360 --> 41:19.480]  I think this is a picture of it right here.
[41:19.920 --> 41:21.740]  The hackathon, the quest.
[41:22.000 --> 41:23.720]  I know there's like hardware hacking going on here.
[41:23.780 --> 41:24.120]  I love it.
[41:24.460 --> 41:30.200]  Was we're gonna make an inanimate object out of a musical instrument, electronic musical instrument, out of inanimate objects.
[41:30.320 --> 41:31.120]  They had a pizza box.
[41:31.300 --> 41:33.180]  They had aluminum foil that they cut into squares.
[41:33.460 --> 41:34.300]  They had some wires.
[41:34.540 --> 41:35.620]  They had a raspberry pie.
[41:35.620 --> 41:37.860]  And in about two hours they made a drum machine.
[41:41.000 --> 41:42.460]  And these kids were blown away.
[41:42.620 --> 41:44.760]  They never knew that this was a thing you could do.
[41:48.230 --> 41:54.390]  So, innovation, communication, inspiration, collaboration, uniquely through the lens of Hip-Hop.
[41:54.390 --> 42:02.450]  Only these kind of combinations that could be found in places or with people where the soundtrack of their lives was Hip-Hop.
[42:02.930 --> 42:03.810]  Don't own it.
[42:04.690 --> 42:05.910]  Innovation happens everywhere.
[42:06.690 --> 42:08.410]  But there's some unique stuff here.
[42:08.710 --> 42:12.110]  So, one more Asian, and we'll close it out, is continuation.
[42:12.570 --> 42:13.590]  So why am I here?
[42:13.670 --> 42:14.530]  Why am I doing this?
[42:15.370 --> 42:18.090]  Well, there's two types of people in this audience, I would guess.
[42:18.210 --> 42:18.670]  Probably a few.
[42:18.830 --> 42:22.070]  But, you know, generally speaking, folks that have been listening are like, Yes!
[42:22.190 --> 42:22.690]  I know!
[42:22.890 --> 42:23.690]  I am Hip-Hop!
[42:23.790 --> 42:24.370]  And I'm Tech!
[42:24.530 --> 42:27.410]  And I've been telling people, This is me you're talking about.
[42:28.270 --> 42:29.710]  I see what you're talking about.
[42:29.730 --> 42:30.510]  Or I'm close to it.
[42:30.530 --> 42:31.110]  Or I know people.
[42:31.210 --> 42:31.490]  Yeah!
[42:32.710 --> 42:34.770]  And there's some people here like, Well, that's very interesting.
[42:34.970 --> 42:36.130]  I didn't think about that before.
[42:37.850 --> 42:38.910]  It's fascinating stuff.
[42:40.030 --> 42:40.390]  Right?
[42:41.470 --> 42:41.830]  Okay?
[42:42.630 --> 42:51.150]  And I would like to know how to authentically communicate and collaborate with the great folks of Hip-Hop into my industry.
[42:51.310 --> 42:57.130]  So that I can similarly help disrupt and build my company or build my industry or build innovation.
[42:57.370 --> 42:59.270]  But not just off the backs of folks.
[42:59.570 --> 43:00.750]  Take their ideas and run.
[43:01.010 --> 43:02.670]  Because believe me, they're all doing it already.
[43:02.810 --> 43:04.370]  Soldier Boy did his thing and was doing it.
[43:04.430 --> 43:07.050]  So now they had to come to him and say, Can you help us out?
[43:07.870 --> 43:10.490]  And hopefully he had enough, you know, leverage at that time to say, Yeah!
[43:10.570 --> 43:11.170]  On my terms.
[43:11.930 --> 43:12.810]  So they're doing it.
[43:13.510 --> 43:14.310]  Authentically communicate.
[43:15.110 --> 43:21.190]  So my job here, again, if you're from a company in the industry, I just told you about a bunch of people doing a bunch of things.
[43:21.390 --> 43:22.950]  And I could have talked for four more hours.
[43:23.910 --> 43:25.090]  So come see me.
[43:25.830 --> 43:26.410]  Holla at me.
[43:26.670 --> 43:27.030]  Let me know.
[43:27.190 --> 43:29.230]  Say, hey, how can I... who can I work with?
[43:29.310 --> 43:30.050]  Who can I talk to?
[43:30.110 --> 43:30.970]  Who can I connect with?
[43:31.190 --> 43:38.510]  So that we can bring this innovation and get... and move forward towards equity and equality in the tech sector.
[43:38.950 --> 43:41.750]  Which, as we know, we talk about it.
[43:42.330 --> 43:43.390]  So this is one way to do it.
[43:43.810 --> 43:45.310]  So I guess I got questions.
[43:45.770 --> 43:46.630]  But other than that, thank you.
[43:52.660 --> 43:55.340]  We're gonna open up for Q&A, so feel free to come up.
[43:56.840 --> 43:57.480]  Is that good time?
[43:57.580 --> 43:58.160]  I got a few minutes.
[43:59.680 --> 44:01.160]  I'm not gonna do a Soulja Boy dance, though.
[44:02.680 --> 44:03.640]  Hey, how you doing, man?
[44:03.700 --> 44:04.120]  I'm doing well.
[44:04.180 --> 44:04.340]  How are you?
[44:04.340 --> 44:05.820]  I appreciate this presentation.
[44:05.820 --> 44:06.560]  I really do.
[44:06.820 --> 44:07.060]  Thank you.
[44:07.380 --> 44:11.120]  It was nice to see something a little different at a hacker conference.
[44:12.060 --> 44:13.180]  I'm originally from Brooklyn.
[44:13.500 --> 44:15.720]  I live not in Brooklyn anymore.
[44:15.720 --> 44:17.040]  I live on the other side of the U.S.
[44:17.400 --> 44:17.620]  Okay.
[44:18.460 --> 44:20.680]  I'm also a rapper in my spare time.
[44:22.060 --> 44:22.900]  When I have that.
[44:24.760 --> 44:32.040]  I live in this weird genre of hip-hop called nerdcore, and it's usually a lot of nerd rappers doing a lot of things.
[44:32.160 --> 44:38.100]  But every time I talk to people, particularly the hacker community, they're like, oh yeah, I listen to hip-hop, I listen to KRS One.
[44:38.280 --> 44:41.940]  I'm like, yo, bro, that was like 40 years ago that you're listening to music.
[44:42.100 --> 44:48.100]  And I understand you're trying to relate, but it's not necessarily where the music has evolved to right now.
[44:48.340 --> 44:49.260]  You talk about Soulja Boy.
[44:49.380 --> 44:51.080]  They probably weren't listening to Soulja Boy.
[44:51.320 --> 44:53.500]  Other than you know, you might have been hearing them on the radio.
[44:53.960 --> 45:12.600]  So how do you feel, or what opinions or thoughts do you have on trying to integrate hip-hop into places where, like this, no offense to anybody in here, no offense to the second group of people, but how do you feel like those approaches should best happen?
[45:12.600 --> 45:14.340]  Because I find it, like, really difficult.
[45:14.680 --> 45:14.940]  Yeah.
[45:14.940 --> 45:17.780]  Like, I'm a very, like, wordplay-heavy person, and people are like, oh, I don't get it.
[45:17.860 --> 45:21.260]  Because, like, wordplay is like a very niche part of hip-hop, maybe.
[45:21.440 --> 45:21.520]  Yeah.
[45:21.620 --> 45:21.900]  Well...
[45:22.820 --> 45:23.380]  For us.
[45:23.480 --> 45:23.660]  Yeah.
[45:23.780 --> 45:24.620]  It may not be, but...
[45:24.960 --> 45:25.580]  No, I think...
[45:25.580 --> 45:25.720]  You know what I mean?
[45:25.940 --> 45:27.060]  Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
[45:27.200 --> 45:30.360]  And, you know, part of it is that's my job, right?
[45:30.360 --> 45:38.040]  So I'm trying to figure out ways to do that more, you know, more effectively, to get into places that don't normally accept hip-hop or have that part of the mix and say, hey, this exists, right?
[45:38.040 --> 45:42.140]  So some of that is talking about the music and saying whatever you want from hip-hop musically still exists.
[45:42.660 --> 45:43.640]  And, you know, it's out there.
[45:43.740 --> 45:45.720]  You've got to kind of try and find it or whatever the case may be.
[45:46.440 --> 45:52.920]  But, again, tie it into their interests or what it is that they are passionate about, right?
[45:53.440 --> 45:57.360]  If you're trying to get people to listen to music, that's, you know, that can come and go.
[45:57.520 --> 46:00.100]  But if you take them to a show, you know what I mean?
[46:00.100 --> 46:10.360]  Like I used to work with the folks at Freestyle Mondays and Legendary Cyphers and, you know, all the end of the week, you know, and these are where some of that music still exists and there are young people doing that, you know, younger people doing that music,
[46:10.840 --> 46:11.140]  you know?
[46:11.620 --> 46:17.040]  So it's sort of on us in some ways to find ways to bridge that, you know, that connection.
[46:17.220 --> 46:18.620]  But I talk to educators all the time.
[46:18.720 --> 46:20.300]  So the shirt I'm wearing, just see, I see it.
[46:20.460 --> 46:23.780]  Hip-Hop to Save America is the name of my podcast.
[46:23.780 --> 46:25.840]  And so what I do is actually talk to a lot of people who are doing this.
[46:25.960 --> 46:29.460]  So educators have this problem all the time because they know.
[46:29.460 --> 46:32.320]  They got the receipts to show that these programs work.
[46:32.720 --> 46:34.440]  That if you bring, you know, stuff I was talking about.
[46:34.540 --> 46:35.560]  Helping kids, do all this stuff.
[46:35.740 --> 46:40.720]  But they have to convince the superintendent or the people that, I want to start this pilot program.
[46:40.920 --> 46:41.540]  And they're like, what is it?
[46:41.540 --> 46:43.460]  Well, we're going to have rappers come in.
[46:43.540 --> 46:43.700]  What?
[46:43.800 --> 46:44.380]  Whoa, no.
[46:44.680 --> 46:45.480]  No, we're not.
[46:45.600 --> 46:46.260]  No, sir.
[46:46.640 --> 46:47.660]  That's not going to happen.
[46:48.340 --> 46:56.600]  And it's like, do you not know all of the things that this guy, I saw Manny do at the conference that he talked about?
[46:56.880 --> 46:58.540]  Like there's so many good things happening.
[46:58.540 --> 47:01.980]  So there's a dearth of, you know, journalism.
[47:02.220 --> 47:06.000]  There's a dearth of advocacy, you know, to try to make those connections, I think.
[47:06.440 --> 47:07.680]  And that's on the music tip.
[47:07.820 --> 47:13.780]  Just like I said, let people know that the music that you loved back in the day or that type of thing still exists.
[47:14.240 --> 47:15.480]  But you got to look for it a little bit.
[47:15.560 --> 47:18.940]  And there has to be a little bit more care taken to get those messages out.
[47:19.000 --> 47:22.040]  And I'll tell you that, unfortunately, hip-hop itself doesn't do a very good job of that.
[47:22.460 --> 47:22.980]  You know what I mean?
[47:23.000 --> 47:24.600]  There's a few people here and there, a few organizations.
[47:24.780 --> 47:25.740]  But most people don't really...
[47:25.740 --> 47:28.160]  They chase the money just like everybody else, you know.
[47:28.400 --> 47:31.220]  And so there's advocacy work to be done.
[47:31.280 --> 47:34.900]  I got to look at it like, you know, ballet wouldn't be still popping.
[47:36.500 --> 47:37.260]  You know what I mean?
[47:37.260 --> 47:45.280]  If there weren't non-profits and philanthropy and pushing all that stuff to let people know that this beautiful thing exists.
[47:45.880 --> 47:46.340]  And so I don't know.
[47:46.440 --> 47:48.400]  My little part is this, doing it like here.
[47:48.560 --> 47:51.860]  But I think the more of us, you know, that are out there trying to do that could help.
[47:52.160 --> 47:52.940]  Yeah, absolutely.
[47:53.440 --> 47:55.340]  Nobody behind me, so I'm going to ask a follow-up question.
[47:55.440 --> 47:55.900]  Okay, yeah, yeah.
[47:56.360 --> 47:58.800]  You mentioned like advocacy, which is like super important.
[47:59.040 --> 47:59.120]  Yeah.
[47:59.240 --> 48:04.240]  But it's probably easier to do in more diverse, like, neighbors.
[48:04.420 --> 48:06.640]  Like, you come to New York, like, you know there's hip-hop in New York.
[48:06.640 --> 48:07.100]  Yeah.
[48:07.360 --> 48:08.640]  Right now I live in Seattle.
[48:09.340 --> 48:09.780]  No, I got you.
[48:10.280 --> 48:11.220]  No, but let me tell you.
[48:11.300 --> 48:12.200]  Like it's Macklemore, you know what I'm saying?
[48:12.360 --> 48:12.960]  No, no, I got you.
[48:13.700 --> 48:21.000]  You know what, but surprisingly, again, I talked to a woman, her name is Dr. Andrea Hunt, and she teaches in the University of North Alabama.
[48:21.560 --> 48:23.520]  And it's the University of North Alabama.
[48:23.720 --> 48:24.020]  Right?
[48:24.840 --> 48:26.720]  It's a very red district, most of her students.
[48:26.800 --> 48:29.080]  So why, she teaches a sociology of hip-hop course.
[48:29.780 --> 48:31.800]  And a lot of people are like, I don't know.
[48:32.000 --> 48:34.580]  And again, most of her students are not really familiar with hip-hop culture.
[48:34.580 --> 48:36.400]  They're not really from a very cursory level.
[48:36.560 --> 48:47.220]  She goes, but at the end of my course, I'm able to show that through the lyrics and through the culture, you can actually get a better understanding of another culture, of who these people actually are.
[48:47.320 --> 48:51.060]  And what they're really saying beneath the surface or beneath your perception.
[48:51.520 --> 48:56.220]  So if you show them that, then they get some sort of understanding.
[48:56.980 --> 49:00.180]  So there needs to be more work in non-urban areas.
[49:00.320 --> 49:02.000]  There needs to be that kind of, do that there.
[49:02.480 --> 49:02.880]  You know?
[49:03.020 --> 49:07.000]  There's a lot of work being done to stop this kind of thinking, by the way, in case you haven't noticed the news.
[49:07.960 --> 49:08.500]  You know what I mean?
[49:08.580 --> 49:10.560]  But I think that there are ways to do it.
[49:10.600 --> 49:11.860]  Because here's the thing about hip-hop.
[49:11.980 --> 49:13.360]  This is why I say hip-hop could save America.
[49:13.420 --> 49:14.940]  And I want to get a question in before I got to go.
[49:17.380 --> 49:23.080]  KRS One says in one of his lectures, speaking about KRS One, who was problematic on some other levels, but we won't go there.
[49:24.480 --> 49:25.360]  He did say this.
[49:25.460 --> 49:32.700]  He says, in America we have Dr. King's vision of, you know, my children should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
[49:32.760 --> 49:33.820]  And that's a beautiful thing.
[49:33.940 --> 49:39.600]  But he says, and it's a speech he did in the Netherlands, he says, nowhere in America or the world does that actually exist.
[49:40.160 --> 49:47.040]  There is no place, there's no community that automatically will judge the people around them by the content of their character.
[49:47.500 --> 49:51.900]  Even within communities of like people, there's colorism, there's classism, there's all these things.
[49:52.080 --> 49:53.560]  It doesn't happen anywhere.
[49:54.600 --> 49:55.820]  But it happens in hip-hop.
[49:56.680 --> 50:07.620]  Because if I got a cypher, dance cypher, not a code cypher, shouts to the guys before me, but a dance cypher, and you could pick me up right now and drop me any, you could come with me, right?
[50:07.760 --> 50:13.620]  And we could drop us in any place on the planet, just really drop a pin where there's people, not in the ocean.
[50:15.600 --> 50:17.440]  And we'll find hip-hop by the end of the night.
[50:17.640 --> 50:19.000]  We'll find people that are doing hip-hop.
[50:19.140 --> 50:20.960]  And we will be invited into their circle.
[50:21.120 --> 50:22.180]  We'll be dancing with them.
[50:22.300 --> 50:22.940]  We'll be rapping with them.
[50:22.960 --> 50:23.960]  We don't have to speak the same language.
[50:24.780 --> 50:25.880]  We don't have the same ideology.
[50:26.220 --> 50:27.080]  We don't have to be the same religion.
[50:27.260 --> 50:28.220]  We don't have to be the same color.
[50:29.320 --> 50:30.560]  And we'll be rapping together.
[50:30.760 --> 50:31.700]  And we'll be dancing together.
[50:31.840 --> 50:32.760]  And we'll be drawing together.
[50:33.400 --> 50:34.780]  And we'll probably have a place to sleep.
[50:35.400 --> 50:38.620]  And we'll get food recommendations and maybe a date.
[50:40.160 --> 50:41.220]  All by midnight.
[50:41.460 --> 50:42.320]  I promise you.
[50:42.500 --> 50:43.400]  Where else does that happen?
[50:43.560 --> 50:44.080]  Let me know.
[50:44.440 --> 50:46.280]  If you don't got it, it's hip-hop, baby.
[50:46.360 --> 50:47.020]  We do that.
[50:48.300 --> 50:49.800]  So, if that helps.
[50:49.960 --> 50:49.960]  Thank you.
[50:49.960 --> 50:50.140]  I appreciate it.
[50:50.280 --> 50:50.660]  Thank you, bro.
[50:55.300 --> 51:06.180]  I just wanted to ask, with hip-hop and rap spread all over the world, and the education programs that are so successful here, is that exported out of the U.S.
[51:06.260 --> 51:06.520]  at all?
[51:06.740 --> 51:07.340]  Good question.
[51:07.980 --> 51:11.100]  Yeah, I focus on America, but the next step is obviously the world as well.
[51:11.220 --> 51:18.020]  And yes, in pockets, you see actually better examples of hip-hop affecting politics in some other countries, right?
[51:18.020 --> 51:25.200]  Where they're really using that as... Rush has done it, I think, Senegal had a... You know, where there was some actual influence on the political scene.
[51:25.620 --> 51:29.040]  I think that we... It actually happens in America a little bit more, politically speaking.
[51:29.160 --> 51:31.320]  And that's a huge area that I'm exploring and working on.
[51:31.800 --> 51:33.740]  Because I think it happens more than people think it does.
[51:33.880 --> 51:37.780]  And I think it can happen a lot more than it ever has.
[51:38.660 --> 51:39.980]  But you see that around the world.
[51:40.140 --> 51:43.140]  So, you'll see that New York City still doesn't have a hip-hop museum.
[51:43.200 --> 51:45.360]  And I know they're building, you know, the Universal Hip-Hop Museum.
[51:45.520 --> 51:47.800]  And there's been, like, all of these little projects that have been coming out.
[51:49.100 --> 51:53.160]  But they... But France, Paris, has a culture center called Laplace.
[51:53.340 --> 51:55.800]  And it's a hip-hop culture center in the middle of Paris.
[51:56.080 --> 51:58.480]  And it was built and paid for by the city.
[51:59.020 --> 52:07.240]  So, you do see in places around the world, I think, there's a little bit more respect for the art and culture or subculture, however they want to phrase it, of hip-hop.
[52:07.360 --> 52:19.500]  And they're willing to look at it differently than we do here because we're so driven by capitalism and so driven by the money it can make and the exploitation of young people either in the business themselves or the consumers of it, that that's where all the focus is.
[52:19.800 --> 52:22.600]  But it happens in pockets and it happens elsewhere around the world.
[52:22.620 --> 52:27.420]  And we want to learn lessons from them and import those back into, you know, here.
[52:27.580 --> 52:29.740]  But we're also exporting a lot of those ideas as well still.
[52:32.200 --> 52:32.600]  So...
[52:32.600 --> 52:34.940]  We are going to take one more for hip-hop.
[52:35.140 --> 52:35.180]  One more.
[52:35.180 --> 52:35.180]  All right.
[52:35.180 --> 52:37.080]  It is $5.50, but just for hip-hop.
[52:37.200 --> 52:37.580]  Coming up.
[52:37.720 --> 52:38.500]  I appreciate that.
[52:39.840 --> 52:42.480]  And yeah, and listen, can you put my info up again?
[52:43.120 --> 52:48.640]  And just, like, reach out, like, hit me up, email me, anything, and I'll follow up with any of y'all.
[52:48.800 --> 52:50.140]  I talk, so let's go.
[52:50.900 --> 52:51.160]  All right.
[52:52.160 --> 52:52.380]  Yes.
[52:52.920 --> 52:54.820]  I want to thank you again for your presentation.
[52:55.460 --> 52:56.260]  You have my appreciation.
[52:56.260 --> 53:10.220]  And I want to ask, is there any particular technology that you feel is, I guess, under, I guess, is there a technology that you would like to see hip-hop address even more?
[53:11.100 --> 53:11.460]  Technology?
[53:11.680 --> 53:11.940]  Yes, indeed.
[53:11.960 --> 53:12.680]  That I'd like to see them address.
[53:12.840 --> 53:14.000]  A particular...
[53:14.000 --> 53:14.340]  Yeah.
[53:14.700 --> 53:14.800]  Ooh.
[53:17.220 --> 53:18.240]  Geez, that's a good question.
[53:18.340 --> 53:19.060]  That's a really good question.
[53:20.380 --> 53:23.100]  Not specifically, but again, I'm all about these intersections.
[53:23.300 --> 53:26.400]  So when I talked about the work we do for the podcast, right?
[53:26.520 --> 53:29.620]  I wouldn't expect that hip-hop, like, we wouldn't expect that combination.
[53:29.620 --> 53:32.620]  There's hip-hop podcasts, which is just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
[53:32.820 --> 53:38.080]  And then there's, you know, there's podcasts that look at hip-hop louder than a riot on NPR is a good one.
[53:38.260 --> 53:41.540]  But what we did is actually we literally smashed them together.
[53:41.720 --> 53:45.200]  We literally have, you know, original lyrics in a news podcast.
[53:45.200 --> 54:05.280]  So the technology is media there, and I'd like to see, you know, hip-hop be better represented through media, and if that's the creation or the disruption or the remixing of media itself to get the better... the narrative of hip-hop needs to be better,
[54:05.340 --> 54:10.160]  and if hip-hop can learn to do that by itself, by, you know, creative uses of technology, of media technology...
[54:10.160 --> 54:10.700]  I'm a media guy.
[54:10.820 --> 54:12.760]  I used to work in newspapers, and I'm a journalist.
[54:13.060 --> 54:13.500]  So media.
[54:13.680 --> 54:22.580]  I would say media would be the... the technology... media technology would be a place I'd like to see, you know, hip-hop both do more work in and also be better represented.
[54:22.900 --> 54:24.160]  And sometimes we've got to do that ourselves.
[54:24.600 --> 54:25.600]  And so, yeah.
[54:25.740 --> 54:26.400]  I hope that helps.
[54:26.720 --> 54:26.920]  Indeed.
[54:27.060 --> 54:27.320]  Thank you.
[54:27.520 --> 54:27.680]  Yeah.
[54:28.340 --> 54:28.960]  Thank y'all.
[54:29.100 --> 54:29.660]  I appreciate you.
[54:29.780 --> 54:30.220]  I know we've got to...
[54:30.220 --> 54:31.880]  Let's give it up one more time for Manny.
[54:31.880 --> 54:32.200]  Thank you.
[54:34.800 --> 54:46.840]  And as we wrap up this talk and get ready for the next one, I want everyone, hopefully, to leave this place, think about how can we make it more inclusive for people, where hip-hop makes it inclusive for everybody else?
[54:46.920 --> 54:48.640]  How can we make it more inclusive for hip-hop?
[54:48.780 --> 54:49.740]  Starting immediately.
[54:50.460 --> 54:51.840]  And for the next hope.
[54:52.220 --> 54:52.460]  Okay?
[54:52.620 --> 54:53.580]  So thank you so much.