Documenting Your Dopeness
I Was Asked to Give My “Last Lecture” as a Professor, I Spoke About Bling & Braggadocio. When the students in the Honors College at my university selected me for their distinguished “Last Lecture” Speaker Series, I immediately knew what I would talk about. Indeed, if I had to imagine delivering one last talk, lecture, speech, or words of wisdom to a college audience in my lifetime, I would want those words to be a love note to hip-hop culture-its people, its history, its artists, and its fans. I would want to honor and celebrate our ways of thinking, being and doing.
The most famous last lecture, which was given by Dr. Randy Pausch, was particularly meaningful because a month before his lecture Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It gave this idea of your “final talk” much more meaning. Colleges and universities all over the country host last lecture events. And I stood, at the lecture on my own campus, as an 11 year cancer survivor. So, I also knew a little something about how facing a cancer diagnosis and going through that experience puts your life into perspective. When you ask someone who has faced the possibility of death, what they want to talk about-be ready. I only do what matters to my heart. I only do what honors my spirit. So, for my last lecture, I didn’t want to be consistent with what others at my university had done. In the past, there were some really formal and traditional talks. And all were exceptional. But I didn’t want to fall in line with the spirit of western academic tradition. Instead, I wanted to be authentic to my purpose in life. I move differently. And this simple fact required the audience, the institution, and the students who extended the invitation to think differently about what respecting that platform or program looked like. That’s what inclusion really requires of us. To let people be free.
As a professional, I’m not driven by the desire to please or impress colleagues or any institution. I’m pursuing life work. So my tongue knows freedom and my mind is uninhibited. For me, the spirit of the “last lecture” was about saying what I needed to say, honoring who I needed to honor, and being who I needed to be. I always stand as a champion of the ignored and unappreciated. And while hip-hop is a grown as hell, half-century old, global industry, it is often still culturally appropriated and treated disrespectfully by dominant society. While hip-hop has been grossly commodified as a popular culture it has simultaneously been under-appreciated and ignored as a high art, historical culture, or academic canon. As a researcher, I am driven to mine cultures that others take for granted in order to widen our vision of what genius and brilliance looks like in our society. My work is about rethinking. As a cultural curator and scholar, I seek to understand how the act of creating culture serves as a form of freedom seeking. I examine how, as an everyday form of life-making, we create cultural spaces on a college campus or in a local community that allow us to simply live--to be ourselves, to love ourselves, to think the way we think, to move the way we move, and to resist pressures to conform. Considering culture as a professional practice is about giving ourselves the greenlight to define our own ideas about success, professionalism, and genius.
And all of this work has brought me to the Hip-Hop Mindset. In my forthcoming book, “The Hip-Hop Mindset: Culture as a Professional Practice,” I explore professional practices, ways of thinking, speaking and being that people who embrace hip-hop culture seem to share. In this blog series, I am going to unpack elements of the hip-hop mindset in each post. Hip-hop habits of mind are basically cultural assets – intelligences, skills, beliefs that hip-hop culture generates that can help all of us to be great. When you understand hip-hop as a cultural mindset that has nothing to do with your ability to rhyme, breakdance or spin records; you can appreciate that everyone can benefit from a hip-hop mindset. As I shared, I am a professor. I am not an emcee, a dancer or a DJ. But I am hip-hop. I write about hip-hop culture because I can see very clearly how the hip-hop sides of myself have saved my professional life. It is the approach that I have inherited from hip-hop culture that makes me shine in my career as an educator. This boldness and audacity is manifested in the programs that I have created as an educator. My courses, programs, and initiatives are successful because I, like the hip-hop artists who influence me, dare to imagine and be different. Walking and moving through your life or your career with cultural confidence gives you a bold kind of swag. I am interested in illustrating a different type of hip-hop performance – how folks show off and show out beyond the stage (in classrooms, boardrooms, community centers, and office spaces).
“Documenting Your Dopeness is a Critical Act of Resistance”
One of the ways that I often make sense of things and wrestle with ideas or experiences is through writing poetry. I find it to be the most freeing avenue to get my thoughts on paper. So, several years ago, I began to ask myself what I loved about hip-hop culture. I wound up landing on an ethic that I saw as quintessentially hip-hop. That ethic was self-confidence. “Talking your shit.” I wrote a spoken word poem with that title that served as an ode to the ethic of self-confidence, self-promotion, showing off, and blinging out. In the poem, I honored the art of braggadocio and the many hip-hop artists who didn’t hesitate to tell the world how great they were. I wrote the poem, “Talking Shit” because of how much I love hearing artists speak their worth and acknowledge their talent. If you are great, you know it even if you don’t say it out loud.
What’s funny about my love of hip-hop braggadocio is I am an incredibly humble and pretty quiet person. You can spend hours talking to me and leave that conversation not knowing my long list of accomplishments, who I know, or what I own. But…yet…I love braggadocio. I love it. Hip-hop culture has been showing us what Black mattering looks like for decades. Braggadocio actually goes beyond mattering. It’s about demonstrating what it is to adore, admire, and love Black and Brown minds, bodies, talents, skills, and voices-to brag on it all. I know from personal experience having had a father who always bragged on his girls that bragging is an act of love. And sometimes you just have to love yourself. You can’t wait for other people to give you shine. So, in hip-hop culture, we bling out and we brag. In other words, we document our dopeness.
Documenting your dopeness is a critical act of resistance. And it didn’t begin with hip-hop. It has a long African history. Mansa Musa is the undisputed heavy weight champion of bling—he was the wealthiest man in the world to date and traveled with a blinged out caravan. Showcasing his greatness mattered. It ensured that the world knew and remembered his name. Confidently showing off his wealth, showcasing his financial power, wearing it, displaying it, and telling it as story is what created his legacy. As Biggie famously said, “If you don’t know [who I am], now you know.” And even when we flash forward to look at current hip-hop artists, you have to appreciate the power of self-confidence. There is a lyric from Kanye West’s song, “Barry Bonds” that I love to share: “I’m doing pretty good as far as geniuses go.” While the line is funny, there is a lot of truth to it. There is no way Kanye West could achieve all that he has achieved if he didn’t believe that he was a genius. Before you can build anything you must first believe that you can. So as humble as I may be, don’t get it twisted, I know that I am both bad and brilliant. I truly believe that I am as dope as most hip-hop artists described themselves. Hot, fresh, def, dope, ill, sick. Whatever terms they are using these days- that’s me. I’ll claim it all.
These beliefs walk with me into meetings and light my fire as I work. I contribute because I know that I have something to contribute. That’s important. What do you believe about yourself? I speak because I know that I have something important to say. That’s real. Do you embrace the power of your own voice? I excel in my work because I’m not just trying to accomplish the task and cross it off, I’m always going for number one. It’s a professional lifestyle. So, just like hip-hop’s braggadocious form of confidence hypes me to claim my own excellence, it can also inspire a generation of new professionals who have been taught to celebrate everyone other than themselves. It can inspire a healthy dose of self-mattering to students who have been made to believe that the best thing they can do to succeed is change all of who they culturally are.
During a time when young adults are literally screaming for the world to care about Black lives, we need this type of audacity--to have the nerve to love ourselves and talk about it. You have to claim space and show off so that folx see you. So, talk your shit. Tell your story and acknowledge you’re greatness. We must reject the idea that promoting, showcasing, and shining a light on the good stuff that you do in the world is obnoxious. As Mansa Musa showed us, you are helping to cement your legacy.
A quick study of the DJ teaches a lot about the power of promotion. DJs don’t own the music they spin. They didn’t create it. Just like you might not own the company for whom you work. DJs are selling their ability to take someone else’s creation and make it shine—to put it all together and make it into an experience. Unless you’re the founder of the organization—that’s basically what all of our jobs require. But DJs don’t just hold up in the corner playing records and saying nothing. They make sure we know their name. They say it often and throughout the night. They check in with the audience and interact with them. They ask for feedback—"If you’re having a good time make some noise.” They also make sure that you know the next spot where they will be. They promote, promote, and promote. So, you can couch your actions in bragging on your project and its outcomes (rather than yourself). But, just get out there and talk about your work and the impact its making. Create social media updates on your work. Send out email blasts on your projects throughout your organization. Ensure that everyone knows how great it is and that your name is stamped on it. Be your own publicist. Claim your space in this work and in this world. Because being seen isn’t just about you. If the youth who created hip-hop had kept it in basement rec rooms and didn’t have the guts to show off in the middle of a public park or take the journey to Manhattan nightclubs or say yes to being on camera when television shows starting coming around; we wouldn’t know anything about hip-hop today. Showing off actually tells the story and helps to set new standards of practice. Seeing what you’re doing and how you’re moving inspires others to also move differently. And that’s how real change starts. In the case of hip-hop culture, people started to move differently all over the world. So, document your dopeness as a critical act of resistance and self-love. Establish your legacy. Bling out. Brag. Go ahead and talk your shit.