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?
HipHop Dad or hiphop diaper bags came about because of my interest in creating a space for hip hops consciousness to mature into parenthood. It’s a physical symbol of hip hops evolution into adulthood. It’s evidence that the culture is raising the next generation.
It began almost 20 years ago with an epiphany that revealed to me the true potential of the hiphop culture. The potential the culture has as a tool for self-initiation into adulthood. For boys especially, there is a need for a rites of passage into adulthood. In many indigenous cultures around the world boys must be torn away from their mothers and put through an ordeal of some sort before being honored with the responsibilities and label of manhood. Without this cultural rite of passage boys naturally test themselves in an area where their courage and confidence to contribute to the community can be validated by their peers and elders. Hip Hop intuitively provides that exact environment. Although this process is not yet recognized or acknowledged.
With this thought, I began to write a manifesto of sorts called The Physics of Hip Hop, which is the current name of my umbrella corporation. In the paper, I detailed my perspective on hip hops spirit and potential to raise children into adulthood. I write about hip hops shamanistic characteristics and compare it to other religions. From there, I began a lifelong quest to produce art and products from this space of externalizing my understanding of what HipHop truly can be. My second effort was the making of hiphop chocolates as a way to commune with the spirit of hip hop.
These were chocolates in the shape of iconic symbols of the Hiphop culture such as the turntable, shell-toe shoe, boombox and many more. It was my version of the catholic communion. It invites partakers to have a deliberate spiritual experience by putting hiphop culture directly into their bodies as a symbol via chocolate. Giving them the opportunity to reflect on their personal output and contribution to the culture. It was an artistic commentary on the truth that what we consume physically or vibrationally absolutely influences what we output into the world. I drew the parallel with the output of art within the culture and the seeming diet of chaos and or beauty that inspired it. It was received well, but after some years working on the business side, it became impossible to sustain without a massive influx of capitol. I had to shut it down.
Three years later, I began to meditate on the fact that hiphop culture and its community is not only getting older and wiser but is raising families within the culture. It was fascinating to me to go to a bboy battle in Los Angeles and see all of the infants wearing colorful earmuffs being carried around by their parents. The next thought was, look at all of the amazing fathers hiphop has nurtured! Bboys becoming Bmen! All of the black, brown and Asian fathers who may not have had fathers of their own but are stepping up to the challenge of being a father. Something I could attribute to the self-initiation process of hiphop.
When young bboys enter the cypher either to dance, freestyle rhyme or express themselves in front of their peers magic occurs. They transform into more grounded, confident and coherent men more able to respond to their expanding environment. This makes them more willing and capable as partners and fathers. But where are the specific tools for hiphop parents? How are we as a culture celebrating this space where parenthood and hiphop meet? How are we acknowledging the evolution of the idea of fatherhood in disenfranchised communities? Finally, how are we holding space for hip hops parents who may feel as if they are aging out of this timeless culture? Hiphop diaper bag is my answer.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Money, financing marketing, learning the diaper bag, parenthood and baby industry. So many obstacles!!
Currently, I struggle with balancing business and work. Also known as make enough money so that I can invest in the business effectively. So that I can give this gift.
I have tried and tried to get the bags to influencers and artists but it’s difficult. Mainly because most of these efforts have a cost attached to it. For a startup with no budget the marketing strategy calls for creativity first. So that is where I’m applying my efforts now. I want to build a grassroots tribe that understands the concept and vision. A following of fathers from every culture that sees the need to celebrate fatherhood with this physical expression. As well as parents with an affinity for hiphop who understand that they don’t have to dissolve their sense of style and individuality even though they are parents. I’ve been very lucky to work and share my vision with many celebrity dads in the hiphop community and culture. All of which have been very supportive. Still, I haven’t reached my tipping point.
I want to reach parents within the hiphop culture but I also want to reach the culture as a whole as well as the streetwear fashion culture.
Not only is it a great diaper bag and symbol of hip hops maturation, it’s also insulated and makes a cool gym bag or bag for a student! Kids can literally use this bag from the time they are in diapers until they are in school. You don’t have to be a parent or have babies to appreciate it! I’ve only begun bringing that message to the proper demographic.
I also am having trouble reaching supporters of black business’s in America. Connecting with funding resources to scale during this difficult time in our world. But break throughs approach me often. I have recently been placed onto both buybuybaby.com and TARGET.com! My next goal is to sell just 30 a week which will make TARGET understand the need to carry the bag in the physical stores. I’m confident I can accomplish this within the next year and a half.
I feel like I’m still launching the product. Which is why I’m so grateful for this opportunity to share my story with your readers.
One obstacle I really want to overcome is how to reach more press outlets such as yourself.
I’m an artist learning to be a perfect businessman. My strategy has been to listen to a lot of inspirational marketing advice and contact everyone I want to work with through Instagram or the internet in general. I would love to be able to hire a sales rep, rep for product placement and PR professional soon. I Still have lots of work to do!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work beyond my role as a designer is in the realm of black metaphysician and or a cultural engineer.
What is a black metaphysician you may ask? Well, a black metaphysician looks at the world of philosophy and mysticism through the unique lens of black consciousness. Cultivated by the experiences and a world view gathered while navigating the earth as a person of color within the ubiquitous presence of systemic white supremacy. This produces an alternative sense of reality with its own symbol sets, language and understanding of the nature of reality and how to interpret and apply that knowledge. A cultural engineer, by my definition, is an artist of influencer who works from the knowledge of their power as an individual force and factory of ideas to actually engineer the direction of culture itself. Most do it unconsciously, my influence on hip hops consciousness is intentional, direct and deliberate.
First, I am a cis-gendered black male and artist living in the “United” States of America. Second, I am a philosopher and writer of fiction and nonfiction. Third, I am an Afro futurist. A conduit for abstraction and perversion of selected perceptions then directed into art, design and ideology. Lastly, I am a businessman.
Everything I’ve done and will do is to inspire culture as a whole to reexamine its dogma. To step outside of the spell of culture and recognize where the individual ends and the culture begins. We are never the culture. Culture is something we wear as a tool to fortify a belief or way of perceiving and expressing. As the late great Terrence Mckenna once said “Culture is not your friend”. I’m especially interested in seeing this examination of culture when it’s applied to hiphop.
I see hiphop as a belief system comparable to any religion linking humanity back to its most sacred relationship with divinity. My work is to draw out parallels between hiphop culture and ancient belief systems and tools used to organize the imagination. I do that as a speaker, a writer and a designer.
My forthcoming book The Physics of HipHop will deal with these ideas at depth and inspire a coagulation of similar hiphop intellectuals and mystics to approach the culture as a tool for self-mastery and spiritual enlightenment.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
What matters most to me is care and empathy. Why? Because the consciousness of separation, selfishness and greed are at the core of our culture of self-destruction as a species.
I believe that until we can understand the law of one, meaning the law that illustrates how we are all connected in this nexus of existence, we will be perceiving from a space of fear and scarcity.
When We understand that we are truly, literally all one organism and that if I hurt you, I hurt myself, only then can we begin to use our lives and minds to their fullest potential. From that space culture and community become a safe space for creative organic systems nurturing personal evolution and healing perpetually. With my work, I will hold space for that reality.
Pricing:
- HipHop Diaper bag $45 on all retail platforms
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hiphopdiaperbag.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/hiphopdiaperbag
- Other: www.target.com/p/the-physics-of-hiphop-diaper-bag-black/-/A-82039513
