Can you share with me what the Can’t Stop Hip Hop Conference at the Harvard Graduate School was?

It was a conference focused on gathering communities to educate them on the benefits of the hip hop culture, lifestyle, and mindset. It empowered Hip Hop activists, artists, students, teachers, and practitioners of hip hop. It was very colorful, as hip hop should be. And it was emphasizing more of the original mindset of hip hop of peace, love and unity storytelling.

Wow. It sounds incredible. Who was in the room with you? What was the setting and audience like?

There were plenty of people from New York, the mecca of hip hop, from Brooklyn, the Bronx, etc. There were a lot of MCs and musicians in the room. The host, Aisha who is incredible, has been running this and supporting this conference for the past eight years. Aisha was a teacher at Harvard previously. 

This was a multi day conference with different nonprofit organizations, academics, rappers, dancers and MCs all presenting in class settings and educating each other. 

I hosted a workshop on Chicago Footwork. I realized about one quarter through the class that people will keep walking in throughout the session, so there were both viewers and dancers. There were a handful of very opinionated people in the class who were Chicago west side natives. When I have homegrown people from Chicago in my class who want to sit there and judge, I am totally fine with that, because they light my fire. My city is a very fiery city and it puts the pressure on me to sweat the details in a good way. I showed some clips of documentaries to educate people on the history and cultural context. I also shared about Creative Netwerk and the community work that we’re doing. I tried to make everyone feel good about something they might be nervous about. I took personal time to talk with attendees throughout the conference afterwards too, to make sure they had the time and attention they deserved. Everybody had a good time!

How did you get involved and hear about the conference?

Through Kelli (CN’s Executive Director). Kelli saw that Aisha was organizing the 8th annual conference and was opening up submissions for people to present at the conference, and she encouraged me to apply. 

I’m not impressed by school or institutional names, I am always more interested in the people involved who have made names for themselves, but Kelli pushed that she thought it would be a good opportunity for us and so we gave it a go.

Did you attend any workshops that stood out to you, outside of the one you hosted?

One of the workshops I attended was a movement session hosted by an organization called Dancers Unlimited. I loved the way they executed the workshop which asked us to create ways of movement together to act out our connection to stories, cultures, even food. 

There was another workshop hosted by an organization called Genius Potential. Their workshop was based on epic rap battles of Black History and they dove into how to use technology in an integrative way with rapping. 

There was also a Lite Feet workshop by Kut the Rug Institute based in New York that I stepped into. I loved seeing how they made it less of a showcase and more of an interactive class.

I also spent time talking with an organization called Dancers Unlimited, where there’s an opportunity for CN to partner with across the country. There was a lot of networking and building bridges.

They even had me rapping! I have been a retired MC for a long time, I put the mic down a while ago, but that night they definitely got that mic in my hand.

What was your preparation for this conference like?

I did some recon, looking at past conferences to get a feel for the types of artists and workshops held. I also checked in with people in my netwerk who have done more conferences in the academic environment to get some feedback and guidance on how to structure my session. I got a lot of great feedback to worry less about how it’s done and just “do you”. I also spent time gathering the visuals and footage to show the attendees.

What did you learn and take away from the experience?

I'm continuously learning. I've been a little stubborn because of some of my trauma with schools and institutions - butI'm continuously learning that my training, my background, and how I like to share and connect and help people grow - it’s needed in those settings. So a takeaway for me is that I need to go to those places and be a part of that.

Sometimes if you want something to change or evolve, or if you want to wake up big institutions to realize the value of what you are presenting so that they can support it financially and in different ways, you gotta go there and be present.