On 2/23/10 I spoke at Jordan High school to a group of 250+ teenage girls.
I was supposed to speak about Dreams/Success. But what is success? Is there a formula to obtain your dreams? The definition of success in Webster is to obtain a desired goal. Well that’s great but how do I tell these kids HOW to obtain a specific goal? I was told my whole life that success would come from working hard and getting a good education. But my experience has taught me that’s not nearly the case. We all know plenty of hard working folks who are still not exactly as successful as they would like to be. We also know plenty of educated and talented individuals who are very far off from obtaining their goals. Hard work, education and talent are only a part of success but there has to be more. I’m sure the teachers weren’t going to be too happy when I explained that piece. What then do I tell the kids? This kept me up almost the whole night. To top it off, I was speaking to kids who lived off grape St. in the projects, so giving them a pipedream wasn’t going to get it.
I was prepared to speak to classes of 20. However, during the last workshop because of a “logistical problem” (the girls/boys were getting to rowdy to continue to move from class to class); I was placed in the auditorium to speak to over 250 students. Although, one of my main goals in life is to speak to large audiences, I wasn’t prepared for it yesterday. I think we have to be careful of what we want in life, of what goals we set, because when the opp comes we’re often not prepared. I want to personally thank Cira; who sent an email yesterday saying when in doubt tell a story. And that’s exactly what I did.
I told the story about a young dreamer who was struggling in school like many of them. He hadn’t found school very relevant to what he was preparing to become. That’s the last thing I thought the teachers would want me to discuss, another renegade kid who didn’t like school. But this wasn’t for the teachers it was for the kids. So I began the story.
“Randomly” I received a call back in early 2005 from my sorority sister in ATL. She wanted me to have lunch with a young rapper from LA and her friend who was the kid’s play uncle. At the time, I was just an intern at Interscope. When I met with them, I told them I had no “pull” to further his career. I only had ideas of what he could do to become better. Over time I became great friends with his uncle and met with the kid’s mom. When he was really messing up in school, I did what any friend/mentor would do. I talked to him about the importance of education, and I brought in two other friends to help “guide” him. At one point his mother was so fed up with his performance in school that she told us she was out of options and was ready to ship him off to live with his uncle permanently.
But he was different that the other kids I had mentored and tutored. He had a definite goal/purpose in mind. And all his actions; and all his pursuits were in line with that goal. If he found someone who could help move him a step towards that goal, he seized the opportunity with 100% dedication. Hell, I was green in the music industry, how could I help him become a “rapper”? I wasn’t a rapper; I was just a young enthusiast of Hip-Hop who happened to think people could reach their dreams. Not knowing much, I invited him over to write to several beats given to me by my friends. Now these beats weren’t famous producers, but I told them that they were going to be huge one day. And he believed me, silly kid.
Telling the story, I realized that’s one of the truths that is often overlooked. We don’t become anything in life, we are who we are or we aren’t. People think their environment affects them but it’s the other way around, we affect our environment. And the kid came over to my house, and grabbed a pen and paper and just started writing to my friend, Dame Taylor’s beats. He acted like he was in a real studio. I told him that one day I would have an in-house studio but at the time it was just a room with bare walls. About a year later, Dame would become my roommate and he would turn that room into a real studio and create a beat there that he later sold to G-Unit… but I digress. I told the kids, maybe there is power in pretending; don’t let anyone or any adult tell you different. I’m interrupted by one of the girls in the audience. “Was he as good as Lil Wayne”? I told her, “His talent as a rapper was about average, but I remember telling the kid that he reminded me of Lil Wayne”. In fact, Lil Wayne was his source of inspiration.
By late 2005, a group of us were creating a reality show pilot with school age kid rappers and skateboarders. It seemed like a cool concept. 2 years earlier I had met Stevie Williams via a friend who was also an inner city skateboarder. I thought, well, why not throw the kid rapper into the project…it would give him another chance to compete. Of course this wasn’t sponsored by MTV; it was just 3 chicks producing it. Just like I had never been a rapper, I mos def was never a reality show producer. But we were just having fun…pretending, dreaming. It still amazes me to see so many young urban kids riding skateboards in the city 5 years later; I don’t remember seeing any of them back then. Another girl yelled out, “But this kid had an opportunity. We don’t have any opportunities in Watts.” And I told her, “then you guys have no choice but to create them”. I asked them, how many of you skate board? About 20% of hands went up. I started smiling. And said, “Sometimes you have to create and imagine what you want to see around you”. Last time I came to Watts there were no skaters.
The kid lost the battle on our pilot show. And a year later, I saw him in the Fox Hills mall with an entourage. He told me he was on tour with the group Gym Class Heroes. He had met Travis in a sneaker store on Melrose. Long story short the two became friends and the kid bugged him until he got an opportunity to perform. He later got signed to their label. If he would have quit after not “winning” that one opportunity the story would be over. But there’s more. Today, ironically, he’s signed to Lil Wayne’s label. And has a song/video out with the young money crew right now, it’s in heavy rotation on the radio. It’s called “Bedrock”. Tyga is one of the featured rappers.
I told the kids that Tyga’s story wasn’t about becoming rich and famous. It was about a kid who had “unwavering faith”, determination and talent. But after witnessing many talents in Los Angles, I’m convinced that finding a person with belief is much rarer than finding talent. I remember our ride home together when he lost the battle. He asked me, “Shak, yall rigged the competition so I can lose”. And I told him “No, Ras Kass and the other judges thought the other boy was better today”. And he looked at me with total disbelief. And said, “They must not have been listening”. LOL Maybe blind faith is what’s necessary to go to the top. It’s the type that is childlike (sees no limits), imaginative (creating as you go) and totally unreasonable (doesn’t accept defeat).
Shak
100.
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