 Hello, my name is Sterling Tilly, and I am your host. Thanks to everyone for joining our Black History Month program entitled From the Street to Mainstream, the Evolution of Rap Hip Hop Music. I would like to welcome our studio guests in Washington DC and also welcome our international audiences. We are joined by online audiences in Albania, Abuja, Jerusalem, Kingston, and Yemen, as well as many other posts throughout the world. In every corner of the world, there are hip hop festivals in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. But more than 40 years ago, hip hop was born out of the disaffected youth in poor neighborhoods in New York City. It has grown into a worldwide phenomenon, including adaptation by diverse cultures, people from various social economic backgrounds, and all the way to use by mainstream media. From the very beginning, there were artists such as DJ Cool Herk, Grandmaster Flash in the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang in Africa, Bambada, that expressed themselves in ways which had not been known by many that did not live within these communities. Oh, and I cannot forget our ladies, Queen Latifah, Salt and Pepper, Yo-Yo, and MC Light. Their version of expression lives on through superstars like Will Smith, MIA, Jay-Z, Lil Mama, Eminem, Nicki Minaj, The Game, and others. Now it is my pleasure to introduce today's studio guest. First, we have Tony Blackman, an American rapper, actress, writer, a State Department musical ambassador, and the first hip hop cultural envoy who has traveled to Africa, Asia, Brazil, Canada, and Europe. She is best known for her Iran-like-a-girl foundation, and she is coming to us live via New York City. We also have Pras Michelle, a two-time Grammy-winning American rapper, best known as one of the founding members of the critically acclaimed hip hop group, The Fuji's. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you for having us. For our listeners, please go ahead and submit your questions in our chat area. You can submit any questions you have for our panelists any time throughout the program. We'd like to start off with the questions we've collected for our panelists. Tony, can you kick us a few verses for a second? Ah, when I start out with a beautiful poem, an invisible woman. Not because people wouldn't be able to see me, but they know I am a beautiful woman. It's as if my woman asks for my identity. My president will often mistake me, perhaps, as I am a beautiful woman. Whose words don't go past enough? Whose beats just aren't enough? Whose contributions go on to speak to me? I am a beautiful, visible woman. They know I'm here because I was what he did. I boy, hip hop, and he did. We are true. I am a beautiful woman. Now, I may not be, but I'll be damned if I wasn't heard. Wow, now that's a lot of how you rhyme like a girl. All right, Tony, so some people don't know the difference between rap and hip hop. Please explain to the viewing audience the difference. Well, I think that, at one point, there was this big, and there was a lot of tension around what rap and hip hop verses, the false hip hop, the fake hip hop rap. So I look at it this way, because I work with a lot of young people who embrace popular commercial creation, hip hop. The word hip hop represents the culture. And the culture is rich with many forms of creativity. Question and elements. We're talking about hip hop culture. We're talking about dancing, visual art, the art of dancing, and the spoken word. We're talking about boxing and vocal protection. We're talking about knowledge and wisdom, and entrepreneurship. But when we talk about rap, we're talking about work. Now, I have some of your colleagues who will say that rap represents the commercialized, overly commodified, overly exploited, crass version of hip hop. But I do believe that, I think, in any art form, there is good art, and there's not stuff. And then there's just that. And so there's some hip hop, others like rap, and they say that it's not hip hop. I think it's all hip hop. I think there's some of it that doesn't deserve to go in the category of being hip hop. Oh, that's very interesting. But let me switch over here to Praz. And Praz, can you kick a few verses for us? Well, you know, it's early in the morning. But I wanted to touch upon what she said. Sure, please go ahead. Because you asked me to kick a verse, and it's like, I'm coming here to the State Department. And for the first time, we're talking about hip hop culture. And so I'm not really in that zone and kick a rap because you ask what is hip hop and what is rap. Hip hop is about the culture pivot. Meaning, like, when I grew up into hip hop, listening to Africa Bambado, Run DMC, Public Enemy, it was about your swag, it was about what you wore. From Adidas to Puma, the way you wore your hat, the way you tie your sneakers, what you listen to. Hip hop was not played on mainstream radio. It was only played on Friday nights and Saturday nights in New York. So we had to tape it. We had to tape them late at night from midnight to 4 AM. And they would play it for the whole week. So like she said, you got people who rap. Rap is equivalent to singing, basically. It's like the action of what you're doing. You kick a verse. We call it spit now. We don't call it rap now. But for lack of better terms, you rap. But hip hop is about how you feel, how you embrace it. You'll swag like the way Jay-Z will wear his hat. Or the way life, for example, when Will Smith came out with Mama Don't Understand, that was his style of hip hop. So those are the difference between hip hop. And today, obviously, it's been more commercialized. But you still got people still trying to maintain the culture for what it is today. Like, for example, how you mentioned like, look at Ice Cube, for example. He represented more like the West Coast of hip hop. And then he made that transition from hip hop to being a movie star. But he still always maintained his essence of where he came from. Right, right. OK. Well, Tony, Pras, what is your first memory of hip hop? And how do you think that impacted you and brought you to where you are right now? My first memory of hip hop was I was young. I remember when I first went to a summer school, like 1983, I think, or a summer camp. And there was this record I heard. Because back in the day, they used to carry this big radio. It was called a boombox. Right. Yeah, I had one of those. You had the pango, you know, your walk, you know. And the big clocks. Well, the clocks came afterwards. But that's favorite play. But so these guys was walking around with this big boombox. And it was playing this song. I'll never forget it. It was a song by this group called Run DMC. It's called Sucker MCs. Two years ago, a friend of mine asked me to say some MC rounds. So I'm going to say this round. I'm about to say the round went deaf. And it went like this. You know, it was like, boom, boom, bop, bop, boom, bop, doo-doo. And I was like, wow, that's fresh. You know, I was like, man, I want to be like that, you know. So that was my first memory of hip hop. And then later on that fall, what made me want to get into music was the 25th anniversary of Motown, where Michael Jackson first performed. I didn't even know who he was. And then he did the moonwalk, which he took from hip hop. Because that was break dancing. And he incorporated it with his style and made it mainstream. See how he took something from our hip hop, incorporated it. And that's why we embraced Michael Jackson, because he was like, he was borrowing something from us. Wow, that's awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit more about why it is important for people to celebrate Black History Month in your view. Well, I mean, if we look about where black people started from Africa coming here within the slavery times, I'm, personally, I'm Haitian-American. So I celebrate black history, because Haiti being the first black republic to win its independence in 1804. So that makes us proud. We were the second independent country behind America. It also makes us proud, because we helped America gain its 21 states through the Louisiana Purchase. You look at black history culture from Frederick Douglass to James Baldwin to Marcus to Garvey to Christopher's Addis, who started basically the Boston Tea Party Revolution. I think it's something we need to celebrate, because it's a very part of American culture. And I think people need to understand our impact. We had not just America, but globally. We had our first elected black president in 2008. I think that's something that's very rich, something we need to celebrate. But not just black culture. I mean, now we're talking about black history, because it's a black history month. But I think a lot of people who came to America, the impact they had, whether it be Irish, Italians, but black people definitely had a lot to do with what's going on in our culture. Now, you mentioned that you were a child of immigrants. And I want to go back to that. And I want to know whether or not how you view that experience as being a child of immigrants. And what type of perspective does that lend you when you are talking or expressing yourself in your music? Well, I mean, when I express myself in my music, or in general, it's coming from two perspectives. See, I was born here as an American, some first-generation American, but I also had my family culture that was instilling me, growing up. When I was growing up, it was interesting to go back to hip-hop. My parents didn't want me to do anything with hip-hop. She thought it was satanic music. So when I used to live at the house, I had to sneak in my sneakers and my book bag. So when I left the house, I put on my Adidas, put on my little gazelles, glasses on, try to look fresh and fly. But I had both culture. My thing was to maintain both culture. The American culture, obviously, because I'm American first and foremost, but also my parents' culture was relation. So everything has a dual perspective to it. OK. Tony, in your view, how has hip-hop evolved over time? I think over time, hip-hop has gone from this folk art, street art, young people just hanging out to now being this multi-billion-dollar music industry. Hip-hop has influenced industries in every field. When we look at technology, we can look at what the DJs did and how they utilized the record player in ways that it had never been used before. There, the beat makers and the producers, they created the foundation for a lot of the instrumentation that was then created. A lot of the equipment that producers now use today happened because of the early hip-hop heads who were creating artwork and music. And it shaped the future. I think hip-hop created a lot of entrepreneurs. A lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise identified ways for them to sustain themselves and to build wealth for their family, this came about because of hip-hop. And so hip-hop has evolved into opportunity for people. Hip-hop has evolved in the academy. We can look at the universities and the institutions and how many of the elite institutions have departments for hip-hop that they've dedicated fellowship. Harvard has the Nazir Jones fellowship at Harvard University and in his name, in celebration and honor of what he has contributed to the music and to the culture and so hip-hop is receiving all sorts of acknowledgment now. And I know there's loads of hip-hop educators all over the world, I have friends in South Africa and the South of France and in South Central LA. Their life and their life purpose is dedicated to teaching. They are teachers and they are educated, but the foundation from which they teach is rooted in the principles of hip-hop music and culture. Gosh, Tony, you know I love the way you speak sometimes. Anyway, what do you think hip-hop culture has done for black Americans in the U.S. and how do you see it around the world, being that you've traveled around the world and actually talked about hip-hop culture? Well, I've been talking about this a lot recently with some fellow creatives and lovers of hip-hop about how hip-hop has impacted the lives of black Americans. And I think one of the things that we must note is that hip-hop is the most significant form of cultural expression, the most significant arts movement, I guess since the Harlem Renaissance. And we can tie it into, hip-hop came out of the black arts movement of the 60s and the civil rights movement, but in terms of its impact and its ability to penetrate throughout black American culture, it has, it's incomparable. And I think hip-hop provided a microphone for the oral tradition. African people for centuries, the African oral tradition has played a functional and integral role in our development and our community as a people. It's one of the reasons why the church is so important in the black community in America because of the minister and the preacher. It's one of the reasons why when we gather together as families, there's the storytelling, there's the tradition known as signifying where we tell jokes about one another and out of love, though, and we love one another in a way through a sense of humor. And I know one of the things that I discovered during my travels was how common this was in the continent of Africa and that things that I thought were very specific to my experience growing up weren't that specific at all because they were quite universal amongst people of African descent. And I think what it, black Americans, what it does, it reinforces a lot of ideals that I think that a lot of black Americans aren't even aware of. That it is not understanding like the cultural depth that's occurring, that this person is not just doing a rap song. This person is storytelling. This person is signifying. Yes. Wow, thank you both for that background. Now let's go now to some questions from our viewers overseas. This question is for both Pras and Tony. What is the best advice anyone ever gave you? Tony, we'll go to you first. The best advice anyone ever gave me, I guess the best advice was honoring what I know I'm supposed to do and serving and remembering that what I do is not about me. And as I live my life from that principle, I feel like I've been able to live a very fortunate life, to travel the whole world in service. And who would have imagined 15, just 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that I would have been able to travel the entire world because of hip hop? Like that's not something that was in my head and that I would have been able to do my two things I love the most, teach and perform because of hip hop. So I think it's really important to have the best advice I've gotten is to honor what was in my heart and to do what I knew inside of me I was meant to do and to stay true to that passion. Right. So Pras, best advice someone ever gave you? Best advice, I would say my dad once told me he said every man wants to go to heaven but no man wants to die. And when I think of hip hop, like Tony said, there's a lot of black folks that would be out of a job right now if it wasn't for hip hop. A lot of other folks too besides that's capitalizing on hip hop that aren't black, you know. But because of hip hop, I've been able to sell over 25 million records, been able to travel the world, been able to sit here on this forum and express my opinion. And so what I've learned from that saying was you gotta have a cause and that's what hip hop was. It was the voice of the youth. During the late 70s, 80s, you know, the police brutality, the birth of crack, the gang wars, the way that they weren't paying attention to us. You know, non-corporation has to pay attention to us because we have a voice, you know, people follow what we say. And so for me, my cause, you know, always been especially when I started the Fugees was we're going to do what we love, you know. But we want to have a cause behind it. You know, so everything I do is about a cause. Still, you know, just being able to support my family, being able to do my art, but also want to have something to be said behind that. That's why when you invited me, I thought it would be a great place to come and kind of like be a part of this. And because I remember a hip hop when it first started. When I tell you I remember, it was the most incredible feeling. It was like, this is what I must and have to do. Right. And so every day, you know, what I love about doing hip hop also is we're in our own little world. You know, Tony can understand what I'm saying. We're in our own, you know, we have our own culture, our own language. We can see, you know, what's going on. We can hear it, we can feel it. You know, our intuitive vibe is a little bit more heightened. You know, like for example, you know, remember when, you know, President Obama was first running and then Senator Obama. And there would be little things he would do that caught the attention of us who were into hip hop, like when he went like this. You know, that's something that Jay did. You know, Jay Z. And so we automatically identified with that. You know, so it's things like that. You know, that I think that when I think about the best advice, that's what comes to my head. Yeah. Proz, this next live question is for you. Your music has influenced from many different cultures. Why do you think diversity is important in music? Well, you know, diversity is very important because when you look at the Fuji, for example, it was very diverse. You know, Lauryn Hill was African-American. White Clef Jean and myself were, well, White Clef was born in Haiti. Right. And I was kind of like the guy in between Haitian and American. And Lauryn brought in the soul. All she listened to were Motown because she grew up, her family grew up on that. And that's what she picked up from her family. Well, White Clef was straight from Haiti, had the Haitian culture. I grew up in a household where my parents only listened to like Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Bee Gees. Nothing really black. Only two black artists my mom ever loved was Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, nothing else. So when we got together, I brought in kind of like the rock-pop element where Lauryn brought in the soul and White Clef brought in that Caribbean Haitian. And when you blend that together, it gave a sound that resonated throughout the world. And that's why diversity is important because and even when you travel the world, you pick up something. You go to Africa, you pick up the drums. You go to Europe, you pick up like that classical European vibe. You go to Asia, you got that vibe going. And so you get influenced by that. So when you go to make your music, it automatically becomes diverse. If you're not diverse, then you kind of like stuck in like in a little box. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that you can't resonate with the rest of the world. Right, right. Well, from Perth, Australia, what do Tony and Prost think the most influential moment in the history of hip-hop? Or who do either of you think is the most influential artist historically? And I'll leave that to you first, Tony. The most influential moment in hip-hop? Yeah, there are too many to name, right? There's so many. I guess we have to go back to the beginning. I would think in the very beginning, when Cool Herk's sister, Cindy, suggested that they go to the park and they plug in the speakers into the light post and they have a jam, a hip-hop jam. And that's where it all started. I think it's critical to remember, you know, you know, the roots, the roots of the music and the roots of the culture. And I think that has to be, in my mind, just on the spot, the most influential moment. I think the most influential artist is a very difficult question. Because one of the things that we do too often with hip-hop is we put everybody in the hip-hop box. Not really realizing that hip-hop is a genre, you know, hip-hop is a culture. And it's a kind of, and rap is a genre of music. But underneath that is all sorts of kinds of rap. And it's not just one vibe. It's not just one style. And you can hear, like, probably because of these influences, there are a lot, and a lot of artists, they have those same influences. And sometimes that makes their music sound different from someone who has a different set of influences. And so, yeah, that's a tough question for me. Now, if I'm talking as an artist, then you're talking, I think, the most influential. It's kind of based on the era and the point at which you were introduced to hip-hop. And so, for me, I would say K.R.S.1 and Rockingham are influential. But my mentee is gonna say something different. Yeah, completely different. Right, what about you, Pras? So it's the most... You know, there's been a lot of pivical moments, like she mentioned, Kool-Hert going to the park. It's working, you know. Right. But, you know, that's the pivical moment because if he was three minutes late, made that happen, if it rained that day, hip-hop, I wouldn't be what it is today. But okay, it happened. I would say the next pivical moment probably would have been the first time MTV played rap on MTV, which is Run DMC. Right, yeah. To let the world see, like, wow, what is this? Who are these guys with gold chains? Black suits. Yeah, leather suits. And the D&C. Right. So, there's been a lot of pivical moments. And like she said, hip-hop is not a monolithic thing. It's very diverse. From Haitian Americans to Eminem being a rapper, a white rapper, to West Coast, to the South, you know, Atlanta, then you had the dirty South, you had the Miami Bays. So, MIA, you know, she's not from here, but we embrace her as being part of hip-hop. You know, in the mid to late 80s, you started to have like, the French started to have, try to make an impact with MC's solo. He was really big then, you know. So, you know, hip-hop, influential hip-hop, man, that's very hard because it really, the gamut is so enormous. You can't really pinpoint, you know, you can go from Run DMC to like she said, Public Enemy, Rock Kim, to Biggie Smalls, to Tupac, to Eminem, I mean, Queen Latifah, you know. If you really want to get down to it, you can go back to Roxanne Chante, you know. I mean, Dougie Fresh and Slick Rick, there's too many, there's so many hip-hop, and like she said, depends on whatever. Like, I'm from the 90s, but for me, the best ever is the 80s. You know, because that's the birth, that's when it was really free. It wasn't about, you know, I gotta make a record for the radio, okay, I'm gonna make a record for the streets, I'm gonna make a record for ladies, it was just about who you were. Like she said, Kara's won. Right. You know, he didn't care, he gonna bring it to you. He was the battle MC, no matter what, you know, so it was too many to go down the list. Okay, Tony, I have a shout out to you, and it's coming from Jetta South Africa. Is radio play as important as before? There's a radio host, Big Haas, who's asking that question. Is radio play as important as before? I said, you know what, that's interesting question. Radio play is still important, but not as relevant because radio play is so limited. And so there's a handful of artists who have access to the financial resources that are necessary to get played on the radio, and those are the artists that get played, and those same 10 artists get played. Radio, at least in America, and I think in many, European countries, has been corporatized, and the corporatization of radio, I think has impacted hip hop culture in a way that stifled its growth and created stagnation for a time. But now that we have access to the internet, and hopefully can maintain some sort of net neutrality, that it levels out the playing field just enough for hip hop to continue to grow, and to evolve, and to develop, and for the next phase of hip hop to occur. And I think what's most beautiful about the flatlining of hip hop in terms of what's popular right now is that it's creating a subculture, and an underground culture, and I think that happened in the 90s a couple of times, and we had great groups come out like the Fugees. And so the artists just go within, and it's like hip hopers begin to just create what they create, and then they come out, and there's another birth of something else. And I think that's what's happening right now, is that there are artists all over the world. Like there are artists collaborating, artists in France can work with artists in Haiti, and artists in Hawaii at the same time, because of the internet. They think it's very beautiful. We do have to learn how to use it, and to maximize it, and to not take for granted, because the internet is so rich with information it's sometimes hard to sift through. But I don't know, maybe I'm being an optimist and idealist, but I see good things unfolding in the future. Right. So Prows, we have another question for you coming from Yerevan Armenia. And they ask, how does rap in the 1990s like Tupac and Biggie, compare to rap today like Jay-Z and Kanye? Well, first of all, Jay-Z is from the era too, the 90s. Right, right. But how you compare Tupac, it's just two different era. Biggie, God bless his soul, who I knew personally, and Pop both. I thought they were, to me, they're my two favorite rappers of all time. Lyrically, they were the one and two of the best. Look, I have to be honest with you, it'd be hard pressed to argue, you know, Biggie and Pop and Jay-Z and I'm being probably three of the greatest lyricists of all time. Now, you know, obviously it's all subjective, right? So, but I think that you go back and you listen to the vibe, you know, you know. But like I said, the Kanye, you know, and the Drake, you know, all those guys, they bring something else to this era, to the hip hop. You know, they continue letting it expand. You know, like you said, hip hop, kind of like flat line a little, which is good, because what it does, every time it flat lines, it brings something else. If you look in the late 80s, when it started to flat line, you know, when P.E. and The Rock Kims, all those guys, Big Daddy Kane over there came out, it flat line, and then when it came back, for a hot minute, it came back with the MC Hammer, the Young MCs, you know, the vanilla ice, then it flat line a little again, then it came back with the Naughty by Nature, the Red Mans, the Laws of the Underground. It was a surge, nozz, you know, it became, you know, so I think right now, that's what you're starting to experience now. And so, I'm one of those people who, I found something great in each era, you know, you ask me, what's my favorite ever? I'm always go back to the 80s. You ask me, what's my favorite rappers? I'm gonna go back to Biggie and Tupac. It's just like music, you know, when you think about rock and roll, people would tell you the 60s and the 70s, was the best era of music, especially for black music. You know, when Motown started, because people don't know this, like in the 60s and 70s, black artists weren't allowed to put their photos on the albums. You could hear their voices, but they put white faces on it. So that's, and out of that frustration came the generation in the late 70s and 80s, that's how the birth of hip hop basically came about. You know, like talking about, like, you know, our frustration being the CNN, if you will, of the hood, of the ghetto, of these neighborhoods. But yeah, like I said, there's this, there's this bunch of different networks. Right. So Tony, how do you see hip hop being utilized as an educational tool? You mentioned that a little bit earlier for us. Well, I mean, as an educational tool, like it's, like the surface is just being scratched in terms of hip hop being used in the classroom. And I'm actually going to, well, for a few hip hop education conferences where we're working with teachers in later this month and in March and traveling with Urban Word and YC and working with Michigan State. And it's interesting because you can use hip hop to teach virtually anything. Dr. Chris Emden is known and becoming very acclaimed because of his work using hip hop to teach science. And he's got all these kids in the Bronx excited about science, but he's using hip hop to do it. And then there's a guy went to college with DJ Paul Howard, Saeed Howard, who, I remember him using hip hop to teach math, mathematics, and you can use hip hop to teach social studies. And you can use hip hop to teach history. Dr. Dia in Atlanta is a psychologist who uses hip hop as a tool for healing. She uses two pop lyrics to get young people to process what it is they're going through and what it is they're suffering from. And I think we're just at the space where you have people who grew up on hip hop who are now in their 30s and early 40s who are just digging deep. And they are, they've studied education, they're working with teachers, they understand the training of how to reach students, but they also understand hip hop music and culture and they're researching. Once Dia produces the hip hop think tank via a project she started, the Hip Hop Education Center. And there was a huge conference in November and at the Schomburg here in New York City and it brought hip hop educators from all over the world, as far as from the Czech Republic, from South Africa, from Japan. And I think it's really exciting. I know for me, as I started out teaching hip hop when I was still in college because of Deborah Minkart teaching for Change, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that is this focus on providing support resources for teachers. And it's gonna be interesting to see what happens as the hip hoppers get older because now there are kids in college who can start out studying hip hop education and there's material and there's research and there are resources and there are conferences and so they don't have to figure everything out. I think hip hop is a wonderful teaching tool. We saw a video that went viral recently of a school teacher who was in the cafeteria with his students and he got on the floor, they were playing beats and he started break dancing. And you could see the ice break and the ice melting and the student's reaction to him being able to break dance. It's the same thing when I go to a school to speak, the kids have never heard of me, but if I freestyle, it's on. They're eating out of the palm of my hand and I can tell them, do most anything. Okay, Prost, from South Africa, they have a question for you. Do you think hip hop was used as a weapon against racism? Wow. Well, I mean, look, if you look at how hip hop started, it was about a group of people, blacks, who felt like they weren't being heard. They felt like they were being oppressed. Now, they weren't being physically oppressed at that time, but they felt like they were being oppressed. And so they used that to talk about what was going on and how they were being treated from NWA, with the police situation, from people like rock him dropping knowledge, from people like public enemy, stopped the violence. Karis One was very conscious. So you had these conscious rappers who were talking about, yes, racism, they were talking about socialism, they were talking about the economic differences in these classes, the way that the police would take hours to come to their needs, the way that they would just get stopped and frisked in the 80s and the 90s. So yes, hip hop was definitely like I said, hip hop is about people at that time that weren't being heard. So when you're not being heard, that means someone's not paying attention to you. They're not paying attention to you. That means they think of you a certain way. So one can say that is racism, especially because it started out in the black community. But that goes back all the way when the slaves were brought here in America. See, people don't stand like, back then when they used to sing in the cotton fields, that's hip hop too. That's how they went through their days. It's the same. They had fun amongst each other. Yeah, we're picking this cotton, it's hot out here. But it's all good. Because we're enjoying something. We're seeing some poachers with each other. We're cracking jokes on each other. We're having fun. How else you gonna manage those hours on that cotton field, especially after those long hours? So it started from there, the beat of the drums, that's the rhythm. It started, then it naturally evolved. And now, myself, Tony, we can capitalize on it. She came by teaching something that she loves. The best thing in the world is to do something that you love and get compensated by it. It could be financially, it could be her rewards, could be just seeing these faces of these different people and different cultures. That's embracing something that we created. At the end of the day, we created this. Black people created this. When you look at someone like Molly Cyrus, twerking, right? That's something that came from our experiences, that came from our culture, that she took and embraced it. And thank God for her, she made it a worldwide phenomenal. But it all came from us. Like when Michael Jackson did the moonwalk, it came from us. Like when Rodney Jameson fell, people don't know what I'm talking about, but you know, God bested soul. Sorry to remember. When he was rapping, that came from us, part of our culture, hip-hop. Hip-hop is being embraced in so many different ways, even from the Super Bowl. And I think that hip-hop is this phenomenal, that it's basically a way of life. You can sit back and think about it. I mean, think about it. We at the State Department, talking about hip-hop, that's when you know the world has changed. What's coming to a change. Right. But that's very interesting observations, Praz, very interesting. And we've got another question for both of you. What advice do you have for young people who want to have their voice heard? We'll start with you, Tony. I guess for young people who want to have their voice heard, I think it's really important to listen to those who you admire, who are being heard right now. That's the first thing, to listen. And to not just listen to what's contemporary and popular at the moment, but to listen back. And to listen to things from the past, to listen to stuff from the 90s and the 80s, even the 70s, to listen back. It's also important to read. And that's one of the beauties, I think, of being really coming into hip-hop in the 90s is that I knew a lot of artists and including a lot of the popular mainstream artists. They're all red. And you could hear the distinction in what it is they rapped about and how they rapped and the way they told stories. And reading is a very important part of writing poetry, of storytelling, of being able to put words together. I think that's really important. And to take care of yourself in order to be true to your own voice, you gotta love it. And if you dislike yourself, if you hate yourself, if you are not able to approve of yourself, it's gonna be very challenging for you to honor your own voice. That is so true. And Tony, I have another question for you. What role does music play in bringing different people and cultures together? With that in mind, I forgot. I was supposed to shout out D. Jack Munoz from the Congo. He's live in Abidjan right now. So what up, D. Jack? He sent me an email on Facebook. You know, hip hop is a universal language. So whether we're talking about the dance, element of the culture where dancers gather at international festivals and conferences, or we're talking about the DJing battles, like the DMC battles that have been going on recently where the top DJs in the world are now gonna compete, or whether we're talking about MCing, that I don't know if I can clearly articulate how the communication tool hip hop is. If you drop a beat, okay, I tell teachers in my hip hop 101 workshops I've done for teachers just breaking down a coach for them, but I've always said, I said, you can take me anywhere in the world. You can drop me out of an airplane. And if you can show me where the hip hop heads are, I know I have a place to sleep tonight and something to eat. That's how powerful hip hop is as a tool to bring people together across cultures. Wow, that is something. And Pras, how have you seen hip hop and rap inspire social change? Oh, man, once again, I go back to public enemy, Kara's one. Chuck D, he had a big impact. NWA, when they were tired, they brought police brutality to the front stand of stage, I.S.T., you know. When I look at rappers who also made that transition from being hip hop artists going into movies, being entrepreneurs, like Puffy, doing his clothing line, his beverages. That's change. That's telling kids, you know what? I can use this as a platform to do what I love and then go make some change and go do other things. Hip hop, I'm part of hip hop. I was born into it. I know what we've done. I know, you know, being going, you know what's interesting is when I get my royalty checks, for those who don't know what royalty checks are, there's every time you guys hear my song or you buy my songs or it's being played. And when I look and, because they tell us every place in the world that's played the song, right? When I look, some of these places I never even heard of before. Right. That are playing my music. Like I remember when I went to Somalia a couple of years ago, you know, the last place I would think anyone would have an idea who I am. And these people came up to me, Bryce, what are you doing in Somalia? I'm like, you know what? You know, but what you stand for, what you do influences the world, you know? And that's the power of music in general. But there's something about hip hop that, like she says, you know, you can drop it anywhere in the world. Just tell me where the hood is at. I guarantee you, they playing some kind of hip hop music, you know, period, you know? True, true. And Tony, we've got a question from our viewers in Abuja. We have a strong interest in hip hop here and formed hip hop on wheels. Last year after a visit by hip hop dancers, the dancers noted that hip hop has roots in Africa traditional dance. Do you agree with that? Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed. You can look at the movement. Even as Pradha just mentioned twerking, twerking is not actually twerking. Twerking is actually a traditional movement that people of African descent have been doing for centuries. It's actually most done by women who are well endowed. And to twerk, even just using the word twerking is I find it a bit disturbing because it's a dance movement and it does to people who are outside of the culture or who approach life from a certain shame when it comes to the physical body and the beauty of the body, they would say that it is shameful and that it is sexual. It's not necessarily a sexual dance. It just happens to be that the human body radiates a certain sensuality when a woman makes certain movements which is why they're there. They're places where, you know, sometimes women are dressed modestly because it's just, it's in a woman's essence to radiate a certain energy. But indeed, the dance moves, you can look at certain break dance moves and there's an organization called Step Africa based in DC. They look at the connection between traditional stepping and South African gumbu dancing. And there's no difference. It's the same move. So how did that happen? And how did that connection occur? There are a lot of the popular dances that young people do here that are popular right now. I can't remember the names of them, but you can go to West Africa or East Africa and you can see the same exact dances. And so indeed, I agree with the dance dancers that visited the country, yeah. And as far as the history of rap and hip hop goes, do either of you have a personal connection to jazz music? If so, how has jazz influenced your music? And I'll start with you, Pras. Well, I mean, I know about jazz and obviously when I was coming up, jazz wasn't something that I listened to. But I know like the cold trains and all those guys and the Miles Davis. Look, when you look at someone like Nas, for example, his father was a jazz musician. So jazz has influenced our gangsta. People don't probably don't know what gangsta is, but God bless his soul too. Gangsta was influenced by jazz. Me personally, my influence was more like rock, Caribbean. So that's just happened to be me. So that's the flavor that I brought. Just like Dr. Dre, Snoop, they funk. That's where their music has a certain sound to it, is that West Coast funk. Where East Coast is more like B-Boy style. It's more like, you know, I think it's more, our style is more about being slick. You know, it's about like, you know, the swag, where the South, it's like, it's that, I don't even know what you call that kind of music, but it's just kind of like- It gets you jumping though. Yeah, it's like, and like what Tony was saying about twerk, she's right. I mean, these dances been going on for centuries, but that's the term that they use now, you know, twerk. I don't know what it was called before that, but today they call it twerk, you know. And you know, it's funny, I went online the other day and I see these rushing girls twerking. It's the most, like I can't even, words can't even express, like wow. Well, we have another question from Yuravine Arminia. Tony, for you, who is the most powerful female rap artist that you know? I think it depends on what you mean by power. I think that women in hip hop have been disenfranchised so much that women in terms of art as artists, they don't have a whole lot of agency and a whole lot of power, but I think if we're talking about creatively, spiritually, I go through a list all the way from, I guess, from Lauryn Hill to Latsi for the MC Light, then I go to artists whom I adore and know personally like Bahamadiya and Medusa and Eternia and Invincible and Saurak. And I could go on and on and on because I think that there's, right now, there is a right underneath the surface, right underneath the radar. I could probably, if you give me an hour, I could write you a list of 100 women MCs, rap artists that are recording music right now. And I don't know what will occur. Like over the past few years, several female MCs were signed, but we didn't get to hear much from them except for those who are, I guess the reality show type of personalities who create beef on Twitter. But the real artists, we haven't heard from them yet. And I think that one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the internet is we'll get to at least see their videos and hear their music. And then what happens next will happen. But I think there's a lot of power and I could list, in terms of professional, creative, artistic power, there's a lot of it. Business-wise, I would have to, I don't know, I don't have answer for that. Wow, we have another one from Urivan. They are really engaged. They all are also curious to know if you think hip-hop creates its own culture and also what effect does it have on language? And I'm gonna have to leave that with you, Toni, since you've been doing the educational side of hip-hop. Well, hip-hop, yeah, hip-hop does create its own culture. I mean, if you look at dance, if you look at clothing, the way people dress is hip-hop. The way people talk is hip-hop. You can look at major news outlets like CNN, or ESPN Sports, and you can hear the announcers utilizing slang and dialect words that come out of hip-hop music and culture. Hip-hop also popularizes certain concepts and ideas and ways of talking about life and the way we talk about ourselves. And for many of us in hip-hop music and culture, hip-hop is a part of our identity. We don't separate our hip-hop from what we love to eat or how we choose to pray. Hip-hop is a part of our identity, and it's like, hip-hop could show up in Somalia, and the hip-hop has, he's like, yo, I've been chill, I don't know why you guys know who I am, but they do. Hip-hop is important to them, and of course it influences language. And that's a whole discussion in itself on how hip-hop has influenced language. Right, and Pras, overall, how has music helped you to express yourself? Can you think of a particular time where music helped you to make it through a difficult time in your life? Well, listen, like Tony just said, you know, for us, hip-hop, for who we are, it's not a switch. You know, there's some people that switch. Most people switch, like, meaning like, you go to work, you put on a switch, you leave work, you turn off the switch, you go home, you turn on a different switch. For us, my switch is on 24-7, I'm like, Conn Edison, I'm on 24-7, you know? I'm always on, and now obviously, you know, depending on my setting, you know, I might have to adjust, you know, my vernacular a little, you know, all my vocabularies, you know, like when I go see the president, our president, you know, I have to be a little bit more conservative, but it's still hip-hop, you know? I may wear a suit, but I got my scarf on, you know, and to let him know, like, this hip-hop is here, you know, or if I go to Cambodia, you know, I'm still gonna represent something that's gonna let you know he represent hip-hop, you know, and it's a culture thing from how I eat, how I think, what brands I wear, you know, how I express myself, it definitely helped me to express myself and become the man that I am today. Now, obviously, because of success, it helped me to really form myself to be the man that I am today. Hip-hop definitely helped me through a time, you know, I remember growing up, my family, well, my mom and my dad, but particularly my mom, she was very strict, you know, I came from a strict household. There's a lot of things we couldn't do, couldn't watch television past 7 p.m., you know, go read your books, go do your homework, you don't have any homework, I'm gonna tell your teacher, give you more homework, you know, it was one of those things, you know? And I remember, like, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, you know, I had the pressure of having to be a doctor or a lawyer, and, you know, when I started to listen to, like, hip-hop, hard hip-hop, like, going deep into, like, the Run DMC, the Rock Kim, the Big Daddy Kane at the time, along Bob Marley, you know? Right. It really helped to make me make that decision of what I want to do. And I was like, this is what I want to do, hip-hop. I'm hip-hop. I used to wash my laces and iron my laces, who does that? But that's what it was back then. And the creases in your hands. Oh, so you know about that, right? Oh, absolutely. I grew up wearing hip-hop, too. It was part of the culture. Now, it's obviously today to cut to 2014, it's different, it's a different movement. But like Tony said, it's still about the culture. I don't even have to know Tony, like, I mean, obviously she's speaking a very diplomatic style right now. But if I was to see her in person, having never met her before, and she saw me, we're automatically going to connect. Because there's gonna be something about her I'm gonna be like, oh, that's hip-hop. You know, subconsciously, in my mind, and she gonna know, oh yeah, that's hip-hop all the way. And that's the connection right there. Like, when I first met you, you suited up. You work for the State Department, so you gotta be on your State Department role. But I knew you was hip-hop, because I saw your swag the way you was walking. I was like, oh, that's not a state, you slip a little. I was like, that was the hip-hop swag, you know? But that's what hip-hop is, being able to express yourself, you know? And that's what I love about it. I wouldn't change anything about it. And we have our last question. This has been a great discussion, and it looks like we've reached our final question that this last question is for both of you, a simple one. What is the future of hip-hop? Tony. Ooh, the future of hip-hop. I think that the future of hip-hop, you're gonna see a lot more spirituality injected into hip-hop. One of the things that I've noticed is that I started working on an inspirational audio project in the hip-hop meditation project. And as I started to kind of test market it and to do workshops, I do workshops on the sacredness of cipher, on the sacredness of the cipher, it was fascinating to me how many people were already there. And so we find a lot of people, as we're dealing with the crisis the world is, environmentally and politically and with the economy, people are seeking a sort of refuge. And music and art has always been where people go to first for peace of mind. And so I think hip-hop is going to play a different kind of role in providing a safe space and becoming a container for what people are experiencing emotionally. And in that it's gonna bring more people together. We're gonna see many more collaborations across cultures, people connecting in the world getting smaller because of hip-hop. Absolutely. And Pras, your thoughts on this? Well, I think there's a multifaceted to that question. Hip, like she said, you can go from the spirituality point of view of it. You can go from hip-hop, the commercialism of it. And obviously one of the reasons why hip-hop, in my opinion, is a global thing is because some parts of it has been commercialized. And I know a lot of people have issues with that. Well, some people have issues. They used to use this term called sell-out. I think that as long as you stay true to the essence of who you are, there's nothing wrong with expanding it because the thing is hip-hop has, I think hip-hop created a lot of jobs. How about that? And so coming from Tony's perspective, teaching and being able to do her poetry, traveling the world, that's one facet of it. Then you have the facet where people like me, where we're able to integrate what we've done with the U.S. government to help represent a side of it, to get kids to learn more about their country, to want to read, because a lot of people don't know it. A lot of hip-hop artists went to school, graduated. Like I went to Yale. I went to fuckers. A lot of people don't notice. And I think when kids start to learn more about us, that's gonna make them feel like, wow, if he or she did this, then maybe I should do this. Hip-hop obviously is gonna grow. You're starting to see the integration with corporations. You're seeing it also with the journalists on a news cycle. You're seeing it with our own president of the free world, the most powerful man on land. You're seeing how, if you go on his website, one of his favorite band are the Fugees. And he's friends with Jay-Z. You can go to any corner of the world. I don't care where you go. Someone somewhere in that place is listening to hip-hop. You can go to Cuba. You can go to Venezuela. You can go to, I know you can go to Russia, because I've been to Russia many times performing. You probably can go, I think you can go somewhere in North Korea. It's not really one person there listening to, I don't know, Rock Kim, whatever, Biggie Smalls. Hip-hop is a global phenomenon. You know why hip-hop is because to me is so true to what it is. And that's being a culture. And what's great about it is, you could be anyone and it embraces you as long as you bring something to the table. Real quick, I can't be a country singer. I'm not from Tennessee. I don't wear a cowboy hat. I don't wear my boots. You gotta be, I can't be really a jazz musician. I can't be a rock and roll guy because I just, I'm not that guy. But in hip-hop, it ranges, the gamut ranges to a plethora of different sources. And that's what's great about hip-hop. That's why I think it's one of the greatest genre out there right now. Well, thank you very, very much, Pras, for your time. And thank you, Tony, as well. And thanks again to everyone who joined us from here in Washington, D.C., and all around the world. This broadcast is now closed. However, we're going to keep the chat forum open for a while in order to allow the audience to continue to interact with Pras. So keep sending in your questions. A recording of this program will be available in a few business days and can be found in the media archive at connects.state.gov. I want to thank the IP Connects team for assisting us with making this program possible. And let us know what you thought of the program on Twitter using the hashtag pound black history. Thank you and take care out there. This program has been brought to you by Kinex.