Hip Hop for Change

This podcast was transcribed through a third-party application. Please disregard any misrepresentations.

Brad Caruso (00:00):

Welcome to civic warriors brought to you by Withum. On this podcast, we bring the conversation to you, sharing, engaging stories that motivate and build consensus in the nonprofit community. This podcast is about the innovators, the leaders on the frontline of adversity, guiding lights in the nonprofit industry affecting change and through their stories, we can all join force to become civic warriors.

Brad Caruso (00:23):

Welcome to Withum’s civic warriors podcast. Say we have a very special guest Khafre Jay who’s, the founder and executive director of an awesome, not for profit named hip hop for change. And hip hop for change is an organization based outta California that uses grassroots activism to educate people about socioeconomic injustice and advocate solutions through hip hop culture. They raise funds for local causes that enrich marginalized and historically oppressed communities. So welcome to the show C. We’re really happy to have you here.

Khafre Jay (00:51):

Yo, Thank you Brad so much for sending the platform. You know, we’re fighting to get our word out there. So I really appreciate this man.

Brad Caruso (00:57):

Maybe you could start out. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What drove you to start the organization and then share a little bit more about hip hop or change?

Khafre Jay (01:05):

Absolutely. Um, I’m a black man. Uh, it’s my culture. I’m also hiphop culture and a lot of people don’t understand hip hop past it being a musical form, but hip hop is actually my culture. It’s how I walk, talk, dress, paint, act, dance, think it’s also rap music. Every culture has, you know, or musical elements as well. Uh, so I’ve been, I’ve been hip hop since, before I knew what hip hop was and, and hip hop formed a lot of the ways that I interacted my community and, and to be straight up kids in America at least are either hip hop cultured or hip hop curious though, hip hop. It was big for me, you know, being a young black man trying to find self work, right? My self-esteem my efficacy in life. Uh, not seeing that reflected in my curriculums or in mass media, you know, so hip hop, it has this tiny nugget of self affirmation.

Khafre Jay (01:54):

That’s just ingrained in it. So a lot of kids coming from backgrounds like mine, where we have less access to art classes and things, that’s why hip hop, you know, really takes us. And it took me, allowed me at the time and the introspection to really find myself, you know, and I, I think the biggest reason why I started hiphop for change is because right now, you know, the culture of hip hop isn’t controlled by the community anymore. Uh, it’s controlled by three corporations, time, Sony and universal. They own about 90% of the platform that perpetuates hip hop and they only care about money. And it’s the historically black people have never had enough money to dictate how we look in mass media. So not only are we being misrepresented because 75% of hip hop is bought by suburban white college age men, you know, who probably aren’t investing in women that are empowered rapping about their lives mattering.

Khafre Jay (02:40):

You know, it doesn’t mean we don’t have them in our culture. It just means we’re struggling as a culture to see our most beautiful selves, our most powerful voices, uh, in lieu of, you know, suburban, mostly white men buying our most disempowered voices. I, I tend to think they buy what they believe. And there’s a lot of stereotypes about who we are, but more importantly than, than that, I think kids who are hip hop just need to have access to this healthy expression. They need to have access to these empowered voices in the positivity that makes up the majority of our culture. They need to be able to see themselves. So that’s what we’re fighting for here.

Brad Caruso (03:13):

Love it. I mean, you bring up a lot of good points. I think ignorance is a lot of it when it comes to the people controlling the monetary system. I think a lot of people just, they don’t understand, you know, they didn’t grow up with it. They didn’t work with it. They didn’t live with it. It’s not personally relevant always to them. And so, and, and if they’re the ones that are controlling all of the media controlling all of the dollars that go to it. Yeah. You know, they’re, they’re less inclined because they don’t feel it. They don’t feel the same thing that you feel they don’t have the same passion for it. And I think it’s an injustice. I think it’s a problem. And I think it’s something that with you and the voice and the message you’re trying to get out, I think you’re certainly having an impact. And you know, certainly there’s a lot of people that are gonna listen to this that are gonna learn a lot of things that they probably took for granted or didn’t fully understand.

Khafre Jay (03:51):

I would just add on top of that, that, you know, we don’t get mad at Mexican people because taco bell is crappy. Right. You know what I’m saying? Like that’s not their fault, but that’s what we’re doing with hip hop. We’re getting mad at black and brown people and hip hop culture because the media’s only investing in these pathological narratives. I mean all media sex, drugs or violence in America, but hip hop is connected to blackness. And it’s another way to otherize us. You know, they say, oh, why are, why are y’all being so misogynistic? Uh, when every part of media is rooted in patriarchy and misogyny, you know what I’m saying? And, and it’s just terrible because every community has misogynous, jerks, violent people, but no community other than the black community has massive billion dollar corporations that are just invested in sharing just the worst people in our community, that are the, you know, just the most stereotypically I relevant people in our community like black people have.

Khafre Jay (04:43):

Uh, and it’s really killing us. You know, when I walk through the liberal streets of Berkeley, if I’m not walking with my daughter, you know, I look hip hop and other people with children, they grab their babies. Most people with babies grab their babies. When they pass me, cuz I’m wearing a, you know, a hoodie and a hat that’s to the side and some Jays. And I tell people sometimes I don’t eat babies and that’s just because we’re more segregated than we’ve ever been in the history of America, 70% of white people report to not have any friends of color, let alone a hood, hip hop, black dude like myself, you know what I’m saying? But they do have media representations and they do have empowered opinions. You know, I would love for the community to be able to control hip hop and how hip pop looks.

Khafre Jay (05:22):

Cuz when we did the number one song in the, in the nation in 1991 was public enemy fight the power, right. And that had a 70% white audience too, you know, and you know, what else do we want for folks other than to know us? So it’s not a problem that white people are in hip hop. I mean the principles of hip hop or peace, love unity and having fun. Everybody’s welcome. You know, saying it’s just that we have to make sure that the people who understand the cultural values, the cultural norms, uh, and, and who’s really dope. You know what I’m saying? Who’s really powerful. They’re the ones in control of, of passing out the paychecks. Cause that’s essentially the biggest thing about this. It’s not just our creative expression. This is a $7 billion industry. That’s our money. You know what I’m saying? That’s our money.

Khafre Jay (06:03):

So why do we have the most genius empowered people, struggling, struggling to even make enough money at crappy jobs where they’re not geniuses to hopefully have enough energy after the end of the shift to go produce hip hop. So essential for the development of our young children in our communities. That’s what hip hop for change is doing. We’re really integrating our pathway of all the means of producing hip hop under a 501 (C)(3) community control platform. And that can get kids recorded, get kids produced, get kids, learning, engineering, get kids, learning to put their graffiti on t-shirts and sell it. Get kids. I was teaching and educating getting a fingerprinted TV, tested trauma and trained and employed as educators, teaching hip hop. That’s what we’re doing here. Um, and we are not stopping until we take our culture back. So if anybody wants to join the fight, man, https://www.hiphopforchange.org/, check us.

Brad Caruso (06:52):

Yeah. And we encourage everyone to do that and just learn more. We’ve only known each other for a little bit already. I’m more curious and already wanna invest more just because I hear your message. And it’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t impact us every day. And I think the more and more we get that out there, the better. Khafre, When was the first time that you feel that you used hip hop as a vehicle for change or as a vehicle to start educating others? At what point did that transition from your love for hip hop to, I can use this as a mechanism to change age of the world.

Khafre Jay (07:19):

Well, I started working as a paraprofessional when I was like 19, 20. You know what I’m saying? I used to work with kids in San Francisco after school programs where like parents got ESL classes and I, you know, kids always loved rap and whatnot. So I was rapping, I was rapping about positivity. So I would do all kind of stuff with kids, but I, I think it wasn’t until I worked at Trinity youth services, the level 12 group home up north in Ukiah. And you know, I was like, Ukiah is the middle of nowhere. It’s like, it’s like a hundred miles north of San Francisco. You know, I was like one of the only black people in this town. And I was pretty much one of three black people that worked at this huge group home that house, almost a hundred kids coming from foster placements or juvenile detention.

Khafre Jay (08:01):

And you know, those kids really resonated with me cuz I was from their hood. You know what I’m saying? I was like, I knew some of their uncles and stuff like that, you know? And I was the only cat there that worked there that really understood them. And all these kids were rapping. You know what I’m saying? And um, there’s one kid in there, dudes, amazing. He was just amazing rapper, but he was rapping out, you know, the stuff that he saw in his community, in east Palo Alto, he was rapping about his life and hip hop. You know, it is something that we use to speak our experiences and our stories, but it’s about how we do that. You know? So once he started hearing me rap positive about hood life, you know, that really resonated with him. And we were just free styling and rapping all over.

Khafre Jay (08:39):

And I remember he always said, you always rapped that positive rap, rap, write some gangster stuff. I even wrote a song for him called you want me to be a gangster? Huh? And it was all me faking gangster stuff. And I was like, yo, I can do that. You know, anybody can tell stories, but I think he had this this iMac. He was the only kid in the group home with the iMac and had garage band the first year it came out. So I taught him to use garage band and I got him rapping more and more positive and it really touched him. I think that was the first time I saw the effects in, in a real, tangible way that, Hey, I can literally use this hip hop stuff and show this kid, this, this man who’s going on tours and stuff like that, doing all this thing that you can be in your own space, speaking your own story and, and actually speaking to your desire to empower yourself rather than, you know, just the stuff you’re dealing with. Uh, that really resonated with me, man. And uh, once I got a chance to start hip hopfor change about 10 years after that it was a no-brainer for me.

Brad Caruso (09:33):

Yeah. I imagine that young man just felt empowered, you know, you gave him the confidence to do it.

Khafre Jay (09:37):

I mean, I break it down, you know, hip hop for change. We, we use hip hop pedagogy in a number of ways, everything from teaching, uh, environmentalism and ecology, uh, with parks, California and east bay regional trust, we’re building an autism class right now, actually working with folks with hip hop on the spectrum. Uh, it’s just really the important, especially when you’re dealing with minority communities, not to just teach them, but to show them that they can be in your position to show them that you can be that empowered voice looking like you are. And you know, that’s another thing teachers hit us up like, yo, how can we use hip hop pedagogy? If we’re not hip hop, we even teach D and I classes for teachers, how to be a teacher that brings hip hop into the class, but not lead the way, let your children lead the way. And, and a lot of teachers say, man, I’ve never seen these kids so focused. And I’m like, you you’ve probably never used their culture before.

Brad Caruso (10:25):

That’s right. Well that that’s exactly it. Yeah. I mean, that’s the biggest part of it is that we think we know cause we watch TV or so. And it’s like, that’s the complete opposite of what you should know.

Khafre Jay (10:34):

Yeah, exactly. And it is just, you know, it just works. And I think a lot of people, when they really start to understand what hip hop is, they see it as a vehicle for information, you know what I’m saying? You get kids break dancing. You know what I’m saying? Every kid wants to break dance. I still wanted to learn how to do it with me, myself, you know? But now these kids are getting stronger. Neuromuscular, junctions, proprioception, vestibular sense. Now how the kids are talking about being vegan and working out like that’s just information. That’s the way we pass it through our culture. Whether you’re dealing with graffiti and people are talking about Kiara Scuro perspective and things like that, it’s this how we do it. And to make sure these kids know it’s not just painting on a wall, but you can, you can understand that every graphic design student is learning graffiti, right?

Khafre Jay (11:17):

You can understand where you fit in into the capital structure of the world and you can make it with your own culture, right? You can go teach a graffiti class. You can go graffiti people’s offices or their rooms. You can do murals. These kids not only need to know that their art form is valid and important for their growth and, and their building, but they also need to understand that there’s a business to this. You know what I’m saying? So we’re trying to directly lift up our culture, get kids connected to it, get ’em empowered with it, but then also show them how they can make it with that and how they can succeed and be successful and pass that on to the next generation. That’s essential for us right now.

Brad Caruso (11:52):

Yeah. That pay forward concept, this model you’re creating and what you’re building for your community, I think is helped the lives of the next generation and the next generation there, after that, and I did, uh, in advance of this, I, I was poking around, I saw your TEDx speech. Yeah. Yeah. I heard your food, justice rap, Robin hood tax rap. I was like, that was legit.

Khafre Jay (12:12):

Right. You know, so I have a history of doing these kinda like rhymes. I think it started off when I was in, uh, international relations at SF state. And I was like, yo, I’m not doing a paper for my vinyl project. I did a rap. I, I, I highlighted this organization called Skate, Stan that, you know, girls in Afghanistan, this weird intersection where they can’t play soccer group when they get above, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11, uh, cause it’s not feminine. Um, but they don’t really get skateboarding yet. So women can actually skateboard. Uh, and I love them. So I did this little sneak attack piece on them. Uh, I’ve done that for a bunch of other organizations like green peace and whatnot, that food justice song I wrote for, uh, a organization called planting justice that works with former incarcerated people and gives them jobs, building gardens in, in the hood and food deserts. And so people have hit me up. I just did a performance to the climate music project for the global climate summit. I’ve done songs for the Robin hood tax. Like you saw on that thing. Like it’s, it’s just fun. I take, I work with organizations, I’ll take their mission statements and I just put ’em in the bars. It’s just fun.

Brad Caruso (13:16):

How long does it take you to do something like that?

Khafre Jay (13:19):

It depends. It depends. You know, if I’m writing, if I’m writing something that is just like off my head, it could take days, you know what I’m saying? Like first draft, second draft, third draft, making sure my SAV intonation is actually hitting. Uh, that’s the one thing about rhyming it’s taking a four, four time signature and using the syllable and how you, how you put emphasis in certain syllables and how those sense syllables dance single repeatedly over that four, four time signature. So you’re really working on the, with your, with your words. So it’s not just the meanings, but it’s also how it hits. If I’m just writing something just outta my head. Sometimes it could take, you know, 30 minutes to write a two minute to write a 16 bar or something like that. But usually when I’m writing for an organization, it’s a lot more than that.

Khafre Jay (14:03):

It’s, it’s a kinder writing a report. So I I’d pour over to their mission statements. Some of the stuff they’re working on, things like that. And it’s literally like writing a report. You got a thesis statement, you know what I’m saying? You got a main point that sometimes as your course, sometimes it’s not. And you have to kind of build the structure of your rhyme. A lot of the times when I’m working with an organization, I’ll try to, uh, do things in a problem solution, victory format, where the first part of the rhyme is about the issue at hand and then how we have to fix it. And then if the second verse will be about what the organization is actually doing to accomplish that, you gotta get your R then you turn on your beat and you know, you can kind of block out your ideas and then you gotta put ’em in the rhyme form. And that’s, that’s, that’s a little bit different, but it’s just a kind to writing report.

Brad Caruso (14:46):

That’s awesome. Yeah. It’s not a skill I’ve ever developed. I read Dr. Seus. That’s about it.

Khafre Jay (14:50):

I got your back, man. I actually teach rap classes and freestyle classes for all ages. I actually start them off saying, I’m gonna prove you. You can freestyle in two minutes. And the reason you think you can’t is because of white supremacy, right. That’s why I start my rap class. And then the reason why, uh, you know, a lot of people in class, people like let’s do poetry, right? And everybody’s like, when they, when a teacher says let’s write poems, some people are like, ah, I like poetry, but no one says, oh, I don’t think I can do a poem. Right? No one says that. Right. But when people engage in hip hop culture, a lot of times people think in order to rap, I gotta like grab my genitals. I gotta slouch. I gotta think really badly about women. And then I gotta think I’m the dopest thing that ever think the face of the planet.

Khafre Jay (15:31):

And if I can’t embody that space, then I don’t have the right to try to freestyle my heart out. And that comes from all these tropes and stereotypes that the industry has put forth because most of our culture is not like that. You know what I’m saying? If you go to the Cypher freestyle, like you get to go, it’s about trying your hardest. And I was teaching a class one time. It was a predominantly black in Latino class. And there was this one short, like white kid in the corner was like really quiet. And I always try to get everybody to rap in the class, you know? And, and towards the end of the class, he was like, all right, I’ll, I’ll do it. And he got up and mind you in that class, there’s these three black kids that they’re the known rappers in
the class.

Khafre Jay (16:08):

Right. So they just knew they had this in, in the bag. Right. And everybody, they raps and this one little, you know, meek kid, he gets up and he’s going, and I’m paraphrasing. He is like, I don’t know what I’m doing, but dammit I’m gonna try. And he just like, I’m outta my element, but I’m going for it. And when he finished the entire class erupted, right, they start slapping him on his back harder than he even wanted to be slapped. But he won the cypher and those three kids in the quarter, they could not believe it cuz they didn’t get standing ovations. And a lot of people don’t get that about hip hop. They think hip hop is about you being the, the hardest the, you know, I shoot you or whatever, this, this space they think black people are trying to elevate. That’s not what we’re elevating. What we’re elevating is the number one thing. And then only rule in hip hop is key. It real. And that kid kept it realer than anybody in that whole space. That’s why he won. So if you come in here saying I can’t rap, you know, but I’m gonna try you go into, and that’s all hip hop is about, you know what I’m saying? Anything short of that is just white supremacist stereotypes of what it takes to be a hip hop person.

Brad Caruso (17:12):

You gotta try, you gotta accept it. And you gotta just, you gotta be you. And I think that the key, I keep it real concept I think is so necessary in everything you do. And especially in, you know, as you said in education, like keep people authentic to who they are, I think is so important to just succeeding because you, you wanna be yourself. You don’t wanna just go be someone else’s stereotype or someone else’s conformist. It doesn’t work.

Khafre Jay (17:32):

Look, that’s the problem. Because when I was trying to figure out my base is self worthless, right? When gangster, raps start getting out there, you know? Yeah. So I was like learning how to treat women. Right. You know what I’m saying? I’m learning how to stand up for myself. And I’m being bombarded with these false ideas about what it means to be hard. Not only that we got all these rappers that are literally lying about what they do now, if we controlled our community, they would be like, now wouldn’t say excommunicated, you know what I’m saying? But they’d be putting place. Um, people keep it real in the culture. So we have all these kids that are seeing nothing but lies, right. And they’re trying to emulate those lies. It takes people. So to get over our trauma as people of color, just by itself, let alone this conditioning that we see on a daily basis of what it takes to be a strong man, you know what I’m saying, or what it takes to be a strong woman or, or whatever, you know what I’m saying?

Khafre Jay (18:21):

So that’s, that’s, that’s the thing that’s important when we have these kids trying to find out how they feel about police brutality or how they feel about, you know, going to crappy schools or how they feel about the country, but they’re rapping about stuff that has no relevancy to that. If I was rhyming at 15 about police brutality, I would know how I would feel faster because I got beaten up at gunpoint twice by the SFPD before I was 17. You know what I’m saying? Like they, they destroyed me and I was rapping about stuff that didn’t help me with that. You know what I’m saying? So if, if we were able to control our culture and put the, the, the, the real, savants the real profits that we have up, they would’ve helped me deal with the stuff that I was dealing with at a younger age. And I, I wonder where I’d be right now with it. You know what I’m saying? So that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make sure that the number one number one force that drives our children’s education is controlled by the community and not three corporations that only care about money from suburban white men. It’s just gotta change.

Brad Caruso (19:18):

You know, obviously with your, not for profit, you’re doing that in a variety of ways. You have some awesome goals. You’re getting the message out. Talk a little bit about where hip hop for change is going.

Khafre Jay (19:27):

Well. Hip hop for change is built off of grassroots street, fun fundraising model. I was the first black city coordinator for green peace, uh, in their 2000 fundraising push. I ran the entire bay area street team. Um, so I took that street model. We’ve employed over a thousand people with the living wage, uh, access to healthcare, mental health services and employee development to go into white affluent neighborhoods talking about the, of co-optation of hip hop, um, and, and getting paid to become activists. You know, the same principle practices that Rosa Parks and Ida B Wells and Medgar Evers did. So people are learning how to be empowered people in neighborhoods. They’ve never really felt comfortable. That’s where we get most of our funding from. And we bring that back to the hood as our kind of Robin hood, you know, so we taught 27,000 kids, K through 12 half of those kids have been taught for free.

Khafre Jay (20:16):

Since we don’t turn down, you know, title I schools or broke brown organizations that need it, that doesn’t sound very hip hop to me. Uh, and to teach, we actually get local artists, fingerprinted, TB, tested trauma informed and employed going into these workshops, teaching experiential classes. So at least kids are understand the culture and also how to practice it for, you know, positive, healthy outcomes. Other than that, we throw the fattest progressive hip hop shows in the bay area, uh, and around the nation too. I mean, we’re, we’re always centering our events around social justice. So every year we’re having women’s empowerment summits, things like that. Our, our environmental justice summit, where we get Sierra club, uh, three 50 dot Org surf rider foundation, California arts council to put up the money for it. And then last year we booked black thought and dead pres and south rock.

Khafre Jay (21:02):

And it’s a free all ages show for everybody. You know, hip hop started out with free park jams. So we’re trying to bring that culture back and it’s not like green peace and Sierra club get to say anything. Um, we actually invite all the local environmental justice orgs to come that can actually connect with the people there that are working on stuff in their backyards. You know, so we have this really cool event that also always has a panel of discussion. Uh, last year we had Matthew Tejada offrom the EPA, uh, environmental justice office. The year before that we had Ilhan Omar’s daughter on our panel, you know, um, speaking truth to power. So hip hop for us is a vehicle for knowledge, for empowerment, uh, for addressing some of our biggest social ills. And not only that, we can give paychecks to all the local hip hop artists to rock cause in, in the, right now, the way it works, there’s like three party companies in the bay that throw all the shows and they don’t care about the culture.

Khafre Jay (21:55):

So they bring Uzi vert, or lil yachty out here, or put artists in there and they don’t care about DJs. They don’t care about openers. They don’t care about the violence. They don’t care about any of that. When we throw shows, we’re putting on different artists, we got people break dancing, we got people playing tests on stage. You know, we’ve got people vending food out there. There’s a whole economy that we’re trying to create. So essentially our number one job is to take money from those that have it and use it to empower the hip hop community. Number one, to make sure we can teach our kids who we are, how powerful they are, but we can take the economy back and build that and show people how to make money off this culture in a self determinative way. That’s it. So love it. I’m gung ho about this.

Khafre Jay (22:40):

Not only that, but we started out with this kind of first phase where we’re doing the education. We’re trying to empower throwing events and shows. Now we’re in our second phase where we are building a studio, that’s gonna be free for youth under 24. We got a art annex in San Francisco, uh, where we’re gonna be using graffiti practices and getting kids screen printing their, their designs and learning that, you know, uh, and also doing videography and things like that. We’re building back the means of producing hip hop now. So kids can produce their albums for free. We’ve got a, a program called pipelines, the positivity where we’re working with in, you know, formerly incarcerated youth foster youth systems impacted youth. And we’re giving them free opportunities to either become, you know, fully funded artists, you know, or fully funded engineers, uh, graphic designers, videographers.

Khafre Jay (23:27):

This is the next phase to make sure that not only are we showing people what hip hop is and we’re giving ’em opportunities to get paid, but we’re also showing them how to produce it and make their own businesses within hip hop. So, you know, we’re, we’re really ready to take the game back. We’re about to expand and open our LA office. Then New York, then Chicago and DC, Baltimore Philly, Miami-dadd, I’m literally about to spread over this country like a plague, if I can get folks like you and, and you know, everybody to get behind this and join the fight for our culture. So, uh, yeah, yeah. Watch out for us. Yeah.

Brad Caruso (24:00):

I think, I think a lot of people are gonna hear a lot more about you soon. I think, uh, you know, yeah. You have a positive message. You have a, a lot you’re working towards a lot. You’ve already done and, and really, you know, now it’s just, how do you get there? And I think you have all the right pieces in place. What do you need to make it happen? What do you need to build your empire?

Khafre Jay (24:17):

This is my first business, man. I’ve like, so when I started, I had a, a clipboard with a one sheet of paper. This said, we’re gonna save the world like green piece. Um, and I raised 26 grand my first year by myself. And then I got coworkers 183 grand the next year, then three something and five something. And last year, uh, the start of the pandemic, we broke 9 0 9 this year. We’re looks like we’re gonna have our first million dollar year. And I’ve been to make sure we’re taking hats off and hiring new people and whatnot. We even grew during the pandemic, we were running a 50% underwater budget. The government worked right with the PPP loans for once. Yay. But you know, next year is gonna be the hardest year of our lives. You know, it’s the year that we’re gonna go from realizing our model, our full potential to actually trying to execute that without a CFO or a COO.

Khafre Jay (25:09):

You know what I’m saying? Without, without, uh, a lot of the funding and, and I, you know, I’m looking at a projected budget, that’s gonna be 150% bigger than last year’s budget. If I, if I can do everything that I need to do, I have to raise two and a half million, uh, this next year. Yeah. And I’m just a dude from the hood. And, you know, it’s kinda interesting that I, I I’m intimidated by that. You know, and if you’re not intimidated by your dreams, you’re not dreaming big enough, but I, I have this kind of, I, I, you know, I’m really confident in our team. I’m confident in our model. The only thing that, that we need is social capital, white supremacy second to our lives kills our social capital more than anything else. You know, that’s why you can have, uh, a white nonprofit director come to the hood, start a nonprofit.

Khafre Jay (25:54):

And in two years, they’re fully funded. You know what I’m saying? And it’s a lot harder for black led nonprofits who, uh, across the sector have 56, see the 52 or 56% less money on hand and about 70 something percent less money in savings. So, you know, I imagine what I could do with 40, 44% more money. You know what I’m saying? I’d probably already be in LA. So right now I’m just working and getting spaces like this, man. That’s why I really appreciate you extending your platform. Cause we just need to be heard. Like we really need to get out there. I need everybody to know that this is a thing, cuz essentially everybody, everybody, most people hate hip hop and how it looks in mass media and they understand the impacts. I need everybody who feels that way to become a monthly donor hip hop or change just eight bucks or more like $2 a week.

Khafre Jay (26:39):

It’s like Netflix, but the babies get to chill you know, what, if you don’t like the way hip hop is being portrayed for any reason, this is the shot. This is the chance we’ve got the model. We’ve got the structure and, and we’ve got something that 99% of everybody who hears about it understands its importance and worth instantly. You know what I’m saying? So my biggest job is executive director is to just make sure that everybody’s getting paid here. You know what I’m saying? Like I’ve been struggling through this whole COVID thing. And, and you know, a lot of justice was funded. A lot of black justice was funded in 2020 and 2021, but not black arts. You know, black arts was the lowest funded sector of any of this. You philanthropy money that was going out last year and the year before and historically, and, and that’s the thing, uh, you know, I always tell people we’re fighting for justice.

Khafre Jay (27:31):

I, I, as a black man, I cannot bet on if white America is going to like, you know, save my life next year. I, I can’t put my chips I don’t have enough chips to put down on the table anyway. I’m not gonna bet on that. But what, and, and I’m not gonna bet on police reform anytime soon. Like I’ll fight for it, you know, but I can’t bet my hopes on that anytime soon. Cause we’re actually backsliding as a democracy right now. But what we can bet on is healing for black people. Right? I can bank on my healing. If I put a dollar into mental health, that’ll automatically help a period. Right. But also healing is art and expression. You know what I’m saying? Healing also is seeing people express, you know, seeing the stuff that gets those ancestral, Shaka, Zulu drums coming out, you know what I’m saying? Like that’s so important. So I’m just, I’m just asking everybody who wants to support black movements and black people of course think about justice. But think about healing. Healing is really the only thing black people can guarantee that’ll work for us. So please don’t forget about black arts, please donate support the black arts. And if you need somebody to donate to hip hop or change, we’ll use your dollar better than anybody in my mind. And I am a little biased, but you know, it’s yeah, you need to be. Yeah, I believe in us. Yeah.

Brad Caruso (28:45):

So if I were, if I wanna donate to you, how do I do that? How do I make that happen?

Khafre Jay (28:49):

You can go to the website, www.hiphopforchange.org, www.hiphopforchange.org We got the number four too, if you need it. Um, and you can, you can donate any amount man to the dollar and a million. Um, but our monthly donors are the things that really keep us stable. Right? Uh, we started the pandemic with about, I’d say almost 70% of our payroll covered by monthly donors and monthly supporters. Right now we’re under about 2020, we’re under 30% of our supporters being funded with our monthly donors because we lost our grassroot street team during the pandemic. And people went through hardships. So right now we’re, you know, we’re gonna make, we’re gonna make it. You know what I’m saying? We’re not gonna shut down. But my biggest thing is to make sure that we can afford all the, the new leadership that we’ve gotten during the pandemic.

Khafre Jay (29:35):

And we don’t miss a beat. So I do need people to donate monthly. And it’s really easy for people who are broke, like me to donate a couple of dollars a week, you know, or a few dollars a month. So anything, eight bucks or more, you can do that on our website. Um, we also have really cool swags. So we got end white supremacy, hoodies, and end white supremacy shirts and all kind of other things. Uh, and that all goes to supporting the work, but just, just I’d say as well, like share, share our stuff out, subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, if you do that stuff and, and just share it. Cause we just need people to know we exist and that’s it. And if we can get people in our, if we can get people to know we’re here, we’ll be fine.

Brad Caruso (30:15):

You know, from the second I met you, I know you’re making a difference and you’re gonna make a bigger difference tomorrow and the next day. So, you know, I think it’s phenomenal that you’re, you you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re making it happen. And you have the courage to do that. You know, not everybody goes out in that limb and says, you know what, next year I’m gonna raise the one and a half million the next year I’m gonna raise 2 million the next year. I’m gonna raise 3 million. You know what, forget it. I’m gonna change the entire system. That means, and that’s why rou’re making it happen.

Khafre Jay (30:33):

I mean, I’m stuck now, man. I’m, I’m stuck. I don’t know. After, yeah.

Brad Caruso (30:38):

You gotta keep making that going.

Khafre Jay (30:40):

After you second graders trying to rap battle or break down. It’s just like, oh yeah, you know what I’m saying? But, but, and, and I’m also grateful because you know, running an organization like ours, I’ve learned so much on how to be a good man. You know what I’m saying? The good leader in the last eight years, you know, I’m thankful for that as well. But yeah, man, I I’m stuck. This is the most inspirational thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You know, this is also, you know, people say, oh, be careful. You’re burned out. I’m like, dude, I was burnt out. When I realized I was a black man at 13, you know what I’m saying? Like, this is my only shot too. I’ve never, ever had a shot like this. So, you know, I mean, I know this is really only relevant to, but man, I just got asked to, to write a forward for a book.

Khafre Jay (31:27):

Uh, you know, somebody who’s working at the Obama administration, like put a tear in my eye, you know what I’m saying? Like, I I’ve been lectured at Tulane and Stanford. Like I, this is I’m, I’m baffled. I’m just blowing my mind. I’m just a dude from the hood. You know what I’m saying? I’m a dude from the hood. And, and the one thing about that is my, my parents raised me to know nothing is promised nothing, you know, and everything can be taken away from you in a second. So, you know, you have to hustle, there is no safety net, you know, us as your parents who are in your life, stable, we’re also, they could be taken from us. And so this is the only shot I got at, at taking care or my daughter making sure she has a lemon tree in a backyard, you know?

Khafre Jay (32:08):

Um, but more importantly than this, this is also the only chance I’ve ever seen for the community. I’ve grown up in the hip hop community for us not to be just dying slowly, trying to produce the genius that we have. So I’m stuck, man. I’m stuck morally. I I’m stuck financially. I’m you know, and, and this is also my love right here. So I, I see what we do. I see the kids and how they resonate, you know, when they learn that, Hey, I can actually start a business with this. And I don’t, I don’t even know if anybody could pay me enough to leave hip hop or change. So, so I’m here. I just wanted everybody else to come here with me. Let’s ride.

Brad Caruso (32:44):

I love your message, love what you’re trying to do, love what you’re gonna do. You know, I think all, all in the right direction. And at the end of the day, I want everyone to just hear it. Listen, go to your website, check ’em out, go to their YouTube channel, go to LinkedIn, just see what they’re about now. I guarantee you’ll see, I see. And you’ll resonate with it. And the least you can do is donate a couple dollars at the end of the day. I mean, that’s the least anybody can do so. Awesome. Awesome. Appreciate your time. Khafre. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being on the show, sharing your message and honestly, uh, looking forward to chatting in the future and hearing about your 2 million budget next year,

Khafre Jay (33:16):

Right on man, I’ll be here.