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| StarPower, hip hop artist |
I had a crush on him in 7th grade. He was a bad boy with too much brainpower for his own good. A few years ago when I reconnected with many old junior high school friends, I learned he stuck with hip hop and was also a teacher. I went to a few of his shows and was sold on his in-your-face lyrics. I added him to my "Men of May" UrbanErotika lineup. Now he's taking those skills to teach in Qatar. We fueled up with burgers and soccer at Bill's Bar and Burger then headed over to The High Line to discuss.
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Introduce yourself
and tell us about art, your discipline.
Rod, R-O-D. I always spell it out because I went to a
workshop one time and the guy told me I don’t enunciate well enough he said,
“It sounds like you’re saying ‘Roz’” so I always say, Rod – R-O-D. Yeah, Rod AKA StarPower. My art is hip hop –
writing and performing. My discipline is discipline; discipline’s changed my
life, discipline has made me the person I am ‘cause I had none of it and now
it’s an addiction. So yeah, that’s me.
So, you’re a hip hop
artist. Is there a message to your music?
Yeah, definitely. The message is to be an individual. A lot
of hip hop used to be dangerous, it used to be about “I don’t give a fuck” but
it was not give a fuck for a reason. Now they’re not even trying to not give a
fuck anymore so I’m not gonna give a fuck for all of us. My message is you’re
here once, don’t leave anything on the table, don’t regret anything. There’s a million things that you could be rapping about but they don’t do
it. And if you’re in a position, like in
my position, I’m just a no-name rapper somewhere, I can
say what the hell I want and I’m gonna rap about it. My message is just you’re
beautiful, the world is beautiful, it’s also ugly and disgusting and you need
to speak about all of it, in detail, that’s
how I feel.
