The Enemy of Innovation
📖 Plus some more Big Book Energy!
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IN THE NEXT NEWSLETTER - Curated stories of Hip Hop innovation, inspiration, and insight plus upcoming CFPs and interdisciplinary Hip Hop events, and more.
📝 THE ENEMY OF INNOVATION
So a week or so ago, I was zigzagging around New York City and New Jersey for a number of events, participating in the HipHopEd Conference and celebrating the release of my new book, “Hip Hop Can Save America! Inspiration for the Nation from a Culture of Innovation.”
You’ll hear more about it, probably on one of my livestream shows most Mondays, at 9pm ET. But for now, huge thanks to Ralph McDaniels, Queens Public Library, the HipHopEd Conference, Pharrell Williams and Yellow, Aloft Harlem, Mr. Pi’s in Highland Park, NJ, and my good friends and colleagues Silent Knight and Toast from The Band Called FUSE.
(And don’t worry. Not EVERY post from now on will be me promoting this book 😁 But an interesting thing happened to me that led to some thoughts I want to share as I continue to catch up on things after those incredibly inspiring few days.) ⬇️
A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR…
One of my events was at a bar/lounge/restaurant, where a random guy approached my table as I was DJing…
(Yes, I indeed DJ’d my own celebrations, and believe me, a time was had!)
Anyway, this guy seemed curious about the book, which makes sense. With a title like this, however, it’s hard to judge the type of curiosity. Is it general interest and openmindedness? Skepticism? Confusion? Or outright dismissal — perhaps even with a sprinkle of bias… Or worse.
If I had to judge by this guy’s tone and body language, he was waffling somewhere between skepticism and outright dismissal, but at least wasn’t being disrespectful about it (I’ve seen that too… 🙄)
In fact, after scanning the book’s subtitle (“Inspiration for the Nation from a Culture of Innovation”), he actually asked me a really interesting question, one that I hadn’t been asked before.
“What do you think is the enemy of innovation?”
I hesitated. Normally, people ask me the basic, “So, what’s this book about?” or, “You really think ‘Hip Hop can save America?’” — and then I have to find a way to pique their interest when what I really want to say is “Um. Buy the book. That’s kinda the point!” 😂
But I think answering this guy’s question sets up the content, context, and importance of this book in a really thoughtful way.
I paused, thinking, then replied, “The lack of access for everyone to participate in the innovation process.”
Now he paused. He seemed a little… surprised by the answer, a subtle tilt of the head perhaps a silent admission of, “Oh. I hadn’t even thought of it like that. That’s interesting.”
Now, he didn’t say that, of course. I don’t know that he cared for my answer as much as he was setting up an opportunity to give his. Which he did, something about money, and powerful people controlling things, etc.
All true of course, and along the lines of what I was saying, but it wasn’t particularly profound. Maybe he didn’t get it out right because I had thrown him off. Or maybe I missed his revelation because I was honestly starting to think about what song to play next (no playlist DJing here!)
Still, it’s not quite what I was getting at, because it’s not just the monied and mightily powerful who try to control or deny others access to participate in innovation. Some are middle-level folks simply power-tripping. Some of it could be well-meaning folks who are just ignorant or aren’t very visionary. Some of the access-blockers might be just as poor or oppressed, with little power, but are able to trip someone else on the way to a path to that access — the whole “crabs in a barrel” thing.
Point is, I think this interaction drives home what I’m really trying to get across in the book — the “inspiration for the nation” I’m referring to.
BECAUSE HONESTLY, IT’S ACTUALLY INNOVATION THAT WILL SAVE AMERICA…
BUT IT’S HIP HOP THAT CAN SAVE INNOVATION.
If you don’t already know, the book is, in part, a collection of interviews I’ve conducted with brilliant practitioners across various fields and disciplines about the ways they utilize Hip Hop music and culture in inventive ways to help enhance the lives, livelihoods, and communities in America — especially those communities from whence Hip Hop came — to help address, alleviate, and in some cases, eliminate ongoing racial, economic, and other social divisions and disparities.
Pretty much the sole mission with my work is to make the case that folks connected to Hip Hop culture are uniquely equipped to help make these things happen, through the ways that they see the world and navigate within it.
So the question that dude asked me really represents one of the book’s underlying messages.
Yes, my/our idea of Hip Hop saving America is about fixing specific, existing problems through these connections to Hip Hop music and culture, for example, helping kids do better in school by incorporating the music and culture they love in thoughtful, intentional ways that increase engagement and educational output. But, it’s also the fact that just by figuring out that they can do this, those folks have already demonstrated the exact kind of innovative thinking we are in desperate need of across society.
Think about it. Every person profiled in this book, and the countless others I’ve interviewed who could easily have also been included, would probably be very innovative at their job even if they didn’t do the specific things I'm highlighting — merging Hip Hop music and culture with their work. Why? Because they are innovative, remix-minded folks, really good at finding out-of-the-box solutions to problems — proven by the very fact that they thought to merge Hip Hop music and culture with their work!
That’s not something that just any ol’ person in their field is going to think of, and that type of ingenuity comes from somewhere. Some of these innovators are absolutely Hip Hop heads. Others aren’t OF the culture, but have open-minded knowledge, understanding, and respect for the culture and its participants, all characteristics of folks who are willing to use their position and privilege to open paths for others to access the innovation process.
Am I making sense here? It’s all a bit meta, but my point is, where these folks and their world’s interact, we can find true innovation.
And we need that true innovation everywhere, all at once. It's not enough for a single allied person to attain some sort of position within the system(s) we seek to improve. We need a lot of them/us. As this X post reminds us:
HIP HOP INNOVATION IS BIGGER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
Black Americans have always developed ingenious ways to counteract the oppressive forces levied against them. Such was the case when Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings developed the idea of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. Merge that concept with Hip Hop — perhaps the greatest potential weapon against oppression and suppression we’ve seen in our lifetime — and we see young, Black teachers like Dr. Bettina Love and Dr. Lauren Kelly feel empowered to bring their full selves into the classroom to start sowing the seeds of a much-needed educational revolution, all while providing equally important representation and modeling for young people in her care.
Similarly, Dr. Ian Levy, a white school counselor who happens to be a fan of, and practitioner of rap music, is able to mix his traditional training with his love and appreciation for rap and cultural connection to Hip Hop, to transform a High School counseling office into a musical haven for dealing with trauma.
At the same time, Richard Achee, a technologist who doesn’t identify as a member of Hip Hop culture at all, still recognizes Hip Hop as a powerful and creative vehicle for ingenuity, and is wise enough to connect with folks who are connected to the culture to develop a program that teaches young people computer programming by building beats.
And we find Gangstagrass, a Hip Hop / bluegrass fusion band drawing equally from both genres and associated cultures to spread a message of unity — even when unapologetically calling out the kind of racist disunity that makes such a pairing seem so paradoxical in the first place.
(And then there’s some dude who realized these and other folks like them exist all over the place and started an award-winning podcast about it which was recently turned into a groundbreaking book endorsed by Dr. Cornel West and other brilliant luminaries... But I digress.)
Point is, these should be the required qualifications for anyone in any conversation about solving any problem anywhere.
By having the vision — and, to be honest, the courage — to loudly and proudly advocate for Hip Hop and its cultural participants as the brilliant, underappreciated and underutilized forces of innovation they are, these thought leaders themselves (and I count myself among them) demonstrate an inclusive, empathetic, innovation-driven, people-powered worldview that, in my humble opinion, are absolutely necessary if we’re going to ever dig ourselves out of the social, political, global mess(es) we’re in.
Caveat time. I’m not saying that every Hip Hop head is automatically qualified to lead the efforts for the kind of revolutionary actions our world needs. But my argument — which is pretty much the throughline in the book — is that the Hip Hop-aligned folks who are qualified are more qualified than anyone else.
Period.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING!
The fields and disciplines represented by the folks I chose to highlight in the book are just a small sampling of areas where Hip Hop-influenced innovation can raise the bar. One other area I didn’t explicitly touch on in the book — though it’s heavily implied throughout — is policy and politics. We hear about “big tent” politics all the time, and the implication is, “No matter who you are, we have a place for you under this tent. We will tend to your issues, we will fight for your causes, we will be in your corner!”
But when we look at leadership — or, to continue a big tent analogy, the ringleaders — we don’t see real representation of all the groups they’re asking to hang out under their tent. So those groups and communities aren’t really part of the innovation discussion, they’re just part of the activation discussion.
Politicians and policymakers have no idea how many important lessons they're missing — lessons that can only be taught by Hip Hop-minded individuals who intentionally and purposefully translate this unique cultural knowledge into practice.
No longer is it enough for them to say, “We hear your concerns and we will work diligently to incorporate as many of them in our innovation strategies as we can.” If they’re not saying “Great! Please come to the table and help lead our innovation strategies,” then it’s time to replace them with Hip Hop-inspired thought leaders who have proven themselves to be next-level, inclusive, unapologetic disruptors and innovators.
Again, period.
Because despite all the flaws it inherits from the larger society, I still can’t point to any social or cultural movement, organization, association, conglomerate, or cult — nothing with more potential than Hip Hop to truly unite people and inspire the kind of bold, collective imagination needed to confront our society’s greatest challenges.
To get there, we must be focused on defeating that enemy — the lack of access for everyone to participate in the innovation process.
We must continue demanding paths to that access be made available for everyone to be able to participate, especially young people from communities traditionally blocked from these paths who, by their very nature, are uniquely qualified to be our next generation of innovators.
The superpower of the Hip Hop-inspired innovations I highlight in the book is that, by default, they will inspire the next wave of innovations that haven’t yet been imagined. Through these existing innovations, we are literally creating paths to participate in future innovation for those who have been traditionally left out — by the monied, the powerful, the crabs, the Karens. But we have to protect these innovations today, and not allow them to be buried under the avalanche of White Supremacist, nationalist, racist, xenophobic policies and attitudes being thrust down our collective throats thanks to decades-long, concerted efforts to undue all the progress toward equality and equity that so many have given their lives for.
We must finally, fully disrupt and truly reimagine all of the systems this county has set up that create and exacerbate wealth inequality, educational disparity, criminal injustice, corporate oligarchy, and, if we're not careful, full-on fascism.
If you ask me, I happen to know the right people for the job.
Wrote a book about it. Like to read it? Here it go.
IN THE NEXT EDITION, I’M BACK WITH MY HAND-CURATED LIST OF STORIES OF HIP HOP INNOVATION, INSPIRATION, AND INSIGHT, PLUS AN UPDATED LIST OF UPCOMING INTERDISCIPLINARY HIP HOP EVENTS (CONFERENCES, WEBINARS, EXHIBITIONS, ETC.) AND MORE!
As you may have heard 😂, my debut book “Hip Hop Can Save America! Inspiration for the Nation from a Culture of Innovation” is on sale now! Signed copies are available as well! Visit www.hiphopcansaveamerica.com/book
I love hearing about your road trip!