The Hip Hop Philosopher was birthed into existence the day Hip Hop was born although he wouldn’t know it until 2015. After six years of writing as BW Writes, and Wizdom Manifest, while creating the Hip Hop Nerd Brand streetwear company, The Hip Hop Philosopher moniker was a natural progression.

Being born into Generation X, the generation that Hip Hop was born and nurtured in, I came of age during a time that saw a musical art form go from creation, being nurtured in its infancy, through puberty, into its teens and young adulthood, to what we see now, a fully grown, multi-billion dollar industry that spans the globe and has influenced the lives of youth culture for over forty years, and is directly responsible for the First Black President of the United States of America. 

The world has always looked different through my eyes! Knowing my Blackness set limits on my shoulders, but also knowing that those limits were only being placed there by a small few, I understood that I had to navigate a few Potholes In My Lawn, before I could navigate those in the streets. With that being known I started to strategize a way to success. 

First I studied the likes of Fredrick Douglass, Booker T Washington, Carter G Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey, to better understand the first wave of Black intellectualism and philosophical thinking around slavery and the Reconstruction Period, into Jim Crow. Then I started on Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Huey P Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver, to better understand the beginnings to the endings of the Civil Rights Movement, to understand what they were thinking during those times.

Then it was on to the Black thinkers that started to write soon after the Civil Rights Movement had gotten legislation passed; people like Amos Wilson, Dr. Claud Anderson, Dr Frances Cress Welling, Ben Ammi Israel, Manning Marable, Ivan Van Sertima, Cheikh Anta Diop, and John Henry Clarke to better understand the wisdom coming out of the movement that would help to build the future of Black people. These are some but not all the great Black thinkers I’ve studied over the past two and a half decades in an effort to understand the history and evolution of Black thought from slavery to this day.

During this time span I’ve also studied African History, Pan Africanism, Christianity, Islam, Hebrew, Hinduism, Buddhism, Egyptian and other religions, spirituality/new age, economics, co-operative economics, politics, startups, technology, all while living Hip Hop, so this puts me a unique position. Thats why I’ve seen the world differently than most people over the past 27 plus years. I understand the principles behind most of what makes the world go around from a Black Hip Hop point of view.

This is what birthed The Hip Hop Philosopher into existence. My Philosophy is deeply rooted in the “we can do it ourselves, and we’re gonna do it how we wanna do it, and ain’t nobody gonna stop us from doing it,” hip hop attitude. I graduated from Book Stores and the Streets. Now I’m bringing it all together here on this platform to reach out to the world and cultivate a Hip Hop Understanding.

Welcome to Hip Hop Philosophy!

– THHP://