Today we’d like to introduce you to Marcus Gray
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The Physics of Hip-Hop is a brand reframing the potential of hip-hop culture as a spiritual belief system. Through the creation of art and products it highlights the opportunity to utilize the disciplines within hip-hop culture for self-initiation, meta-programming the subconscious mind through trance states, and creating lasting change on Earth through unified communities driven by clarity and a collective purpose. To expand what it means to be human and explore the tools that may introduce us to our true nature and potential.
This journey began as a 16-page prose paper I started writing 20 years ago, which has gradually evolved into a book. The book was inspired by my love for hip-hop and my study of the nature of reality through religion, occult philosophy, science, and self-reflection. It draws upon hip-hop culture’s encrypted wisdom—wisdom I couldn’t help but perceive as the foundations of a spiritual belief system, shaped by my evolving perspective on what culture and spirituality truly are.
Which are tools used to build an evolving worldview for navigating and engaging with reality. When used wisely and allowed to evolve, these tools can introduce us to ourselves in profound ways, deepening our understanding of our true nature as pure consciousness without limitations.
The Physics of Hip-Hop has culminated in a book (still in progress) and a video series on YouTube . Over the years, it has also inspired numerous art projects and businesses. By recontextualizing hip-hop as a spiritual belief system and drawing parallels between shamanism and hip-hop’s intuitive expressions of shamanism, it has sparked ideas that encouraged my own journey toward self-actualization. It has also influenced my understanding of indigenous and western magick as an ancient approach to psychology. My favorite definition being “Magick is the art of causing changes in consciousness in conformity with the Will” – Dion Fortune.
With this perspective—viewing hip-hop culture as a portal into spirituality and self-initiation via flow states, raw directed imagination and community amplification—I first created Hip-Hop Chocolates, a symbolic communion for the hip-hop community. This project became a meditation on the input and output of culture. An output that has proven to be both influential and controversial.
For example, it gave DJs the opportunity to consume a chocolate turntable with the intention of reflecting on how their personal input (diet of food, art, beliefs) influenced the quality of their cultural contributions, or output. This was modeled after the Catholic ritual of communion and older rituals, which used symbols to focus the mind and inspire introspection and alignment with ideas in similar ways.
My next project manifested as a hypersigil (a physical symbol carrying intention) in the form of a diaper bag backpack. This diaper bag was designed to inspire meditation on the evolution of hip-hop culture into parenthood, serving as a physical metaphor for the culture’s maturation. As well as an edgy, unisex, street wear alternative to traditional diaper bags.
This has been my life’s work: to provide hip-hop culture with a new lens through which to view itself, to highlight its encrypted wisdom, and to present the opportunity to approach it as a spiritual tool and belief system. I aim to equip the culture with tools akin to those of other sacred systems—tools such as meditation, mantras, affirmations, and divination.
By identifying the opportunities hip-hop culture provides for introspection and evolution, we can access altered states of consciousness through activities like dance, freestyle rapping, turntablism, or tagging/graffiti. Which all require a level of trance to perform on a high level. On all levels these elements of hiphop introduce powerful alternatives to traditional forms of meditation. These activities, as we now understand, are techniques for self-hypnosis and portals to genuine personal development. These techniques can be used with intention to seed the subconscious mind with new habits, perspectives, and stories. By enabling the brain to enter states, such as Theta or Gamma waves, we can program the subconscious mind, thereby influencing conscious habits and actions. With intention, this process can bring profound healing and growth.
Hip-hop, therefore, can serve as a form of self-hypnosis—akin to shamanism. The Physics of Hip-Hop is my offering to the culture: It’s an invitation to become your own healer and prophet through your chosen discipline.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a journey of self-discovery and gestation. As you can imagine, developing a new mythology and spiritual philosophy rooted in shamanism and hip-hop culture requires significant processing. It has taken me almost 24 years to articulate how I see energy moving consciousness within the culture.
The main challenge has been walking a path few have traveled before me. While I’ve been inspired by many hip-hop artists I consider shamans of the culture—such as KRS-1, Jay Electronica, Kanye West, MF DOOM, MC Supernatural, Rammellzee, DJ Qbert, and many others—I have never encountered the culture framed in a way that encourages its use as a spiritual practice. With the exception of KRS-1 who has shared a similar perspective, with that said it remains largely uncharted territory.
Now, after years of reflection and countless iterations on how to present these ideas in a way that the culture can resonate with them, I am ready to offer this concept to the culture—whether it is ready to receive it or not.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Ultimately, I am a cultural engineer specializing in translating ancient occult mythologies and spiritual concepts into contemporary forms. I am known for creating Hip Hop Chocolates, which, in the early 2000s, became a presence in LA’s underground beat movement alongside the emergence of the legendary Low End Theory—a club night that served as a platform for talents such as Gaslamp Killer, Odd Future, and Flying Lotus, to name a few. As well as Hip Hop Themed Diaper bags which were sold on TARGETs’ website for a brief spell before I was told the bags were too “urban”, forced to double the price of the bags or be removed. Hence the “Brief spell”.
I am most proud of how my understanding of hip hop culture as a spirituality continues to evolve and manifest through my art and products. Products that bring the mythology to life.
What sets me apart from many other creatives is my ability to share a unique perspective through both art and functional products. Each project is infused with a worldview cultivated over a lifetime of studying religion, philosophy, hip-hop culture, and the nature of consciousness. This journey has given me a compelling story to tell about approaching personal evolution in a very grounded and practical way. Using a culture that has captured the imagination of the whole planet. I have a gift for uncovering sublime juxtapositions and presenting them within familiar themes.
My work focuses on shaping culture by illuminating hip hop’s intuitive wisdom and drawing parallels with ancient occult indigenous wisdom and practices. I want the hip hop culture to understanding how the subconscious mind is programmed, how important it is to understand our relationship with natural law and how lives are changed with spiritual practices.
In my experience I’ve learned that spirituality can be said to be any practice that identifies and acknowledges, in reverence, the energy behind a thing. The source behind a movement, a flow of word, a flick of the wrist that produces a symbol, a blending of sound ideas or patterns …all originated in a hyperdimensional space only accessed by the inner/outer limits of our physical sensory organs. Our ancestors would have called it the spiritual world. Physicists may call it the Higgs field or higher dimensions. In time that pattern of acknowledgement gives way to a clarity that allows us to experience that energy behind the thing. That experience is what changes the way we must interact with the others and move in the world. After you experience the energy that creates worlds while spinning on your head, or freestyling in a cypher you will never be the same. I believe many experience this subtle divine space but don’t have a context for what they are feeling. I intend to change that.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Besides the need to redefine success as a process of relaxing into my pursuit of self-actualization, persistence as a reaction to passion, patience as a response to a desire for understanding, and a large dash of delusion have been helpful in my pursuit of truth and my idea of success. I say ‘delusion’ because, oftentimes, even I did not know what was making its way through me into this world. I had to be delusional about the significance of its presence within me—and delusional about the importance of its presence in the world—to be obsessed with giving it life in any meaningful way. Believing is truly seeing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://marcusgraydev.com/physicsofhiphop.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thephysicsofhiphop/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thephysicsofhiphop
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C91RLSJ6?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_C9R8J6SYH9WY71X4XK9P
