Professor Lyrical: Episode 74

🎧 Join mathematics professor and rap artist Professor Lyrical as he reveals how blending academics with artistry creates powerful platforms for youth engagement while sharing industry insights about authentic success in music.

Through candid conversation and real-world experience, Professor Lyrical demonstrates how education and creative passion can combine to create meaningful impact while building sustainable careers.

This inspiring episode explores:

• Why authentic education comes in many forms beyond traditional schooling
• How to build real success in music without massive marketing budgets
• The power of connecting with your true audience versus chasing viral fame
• Why discipline and dedication matter more than natural talent
• Building genuine fan connections that sustain long-term careers
• Finding creative ways to merge different passions into unique opportunities
• The importance of staying humble while pursuing big dreams

Perfect for: Aspiring artists seeking authentic paths to success, educators looking to innovate their approach, students questioning traditional education models, and anyone interested in combining multiple passions into meaningful work. Plus: Essential insights about building sustainable careers while maintaining artistic integrity.

To learn more about Professor Lyrical or to hear his music, please click below.

https://www.professorlyrical.com/prolyrical

Transcript

00:04.15
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And welcome everyone. Today we have with us Professor Lyrical. He is from the Washington DC area. He is a professor of mathematics at a local university there.

00:15.46
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
He is a PhD, an inspirational speaker and a rap artist. His entire career has been centered around youth and young adults, which is why he is here today.

00:27.33
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So how are you doing today Professor Lyrical?

00:29.50
Pro
What's up Fatima? Thanks for having me. I'm doing great.

00:32.28
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Good. I like to dive right into it. So you have all this PhD, you have a PhD, you're really into education. You have a lot of other stuff I didn't even mention. Why rap?

00:46.37
Pro
the yeah I actually always loved that question with the academics and the and the hip hop. So I was doing rap well before academics. So the the real question for a lot of people that know me is why education? You know what I'm saying? Because that that definitely came later in life. um But to flip it, I mean, so the hip hop has always just been a part of my life since I was a kid, loved creative writing, everything, poetry since like, um I mean, like first grade, right?

01:13.47
Pro
I was that kid entering the poetry contest, the the name, the caption contest. And when I won one of them, when I was real little, it kind of made me believe my teacher's hype. She was like, oh, you're so creative. you know And I stuck with that.

01:26.30
Pro
and really kind of you know thanks to a teacher, right? like That I believed that I was like creative and always kind of remember the power of ah that I would get to feel a piece of when you'd be in a classroom talking to other kids as a performer and then seeing the attention that came and the the captive audience that the kids would have. Because you need cool mentors in society, whatever. And all too often, it's hard to get those guests to come through the class. And i just it hit me. I was just like, this would be a really dope path for me.

01:56.01
Pro
to blend in with just the performing instead of just coming and doing some, you know, look at me, jump around and do my rap thing. Like what substance are you then going to share with the captive audience? So the education thing made perfect sense.

02:05.68
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I love that that.

02:07.89
Pro
So that was it.

02:08.89
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I absolutely love that. You um took your passion and you decided to do something. Useful with it other than just entertain.

02:16.22
Pro
Yep.

02:17.50
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I this that's actually a principle that I teach a lot and Especially when I go into high schools, but even in just talking older adults, okay, you know I you've heard me say this in off-air conversation, but I look at some entertainers and I'm like Not impressed a lot.

02:20.59
Pro
Hmm.

02:33.12
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Um, you're rich You're famous and you can shake your booty on stage where you can rap harder. You can rock hard whatever the the genre is But so what what are you doing with it?

02:43.68
Pro
right I mean, I do give credit to artists who do that well.

02:44.30
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
That's what I look at.

02:48.11
Pro
you know like I mean, we all need the respite and the the break from reality kind of thing that entertainment affords, but it is really nice. I mean, that's what I gravitate to when they when you feel like it's not just junk food, right?

02:58.90
Pro
You feel like there's some substance in the meal and you know, you feel makes you make sure you know but look at marketing with food really to to continue it. It's like, if something sounds a little healthy, we like feel better about it. We're like, ah, this tastes good. And it's healthy, right? That's like the ideal. And I don't think it's much different with the way that we consume any entertainment. It's like we want to feel like the mind is getting to be as much of a part of it as possible. So um I always love it when it's that way. But I get it when it's not because sometimes you just want a chocolate bar. You know what I mean?

03:27.23
Pro
yeah

03:27.85
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, well the thing is, doing something with it, that can come in many different ways.

03:33.37
Pro
Mm hmm.

03:33.70
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So music can be used to uplift. Music can also be used politically and and has a big history of that.

03:38.83
Pro
Sure. Sure.

03:40.74
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
It can be used to make people aware, to get people to stand up and fight or whatever. That's still a usage. It doesn't all have to be butterflies and cotton candy, but it's still a usage.

03:49.97
Pro
Hmm.

03:50.97
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I'm still impressed. Even if we don't have the same political views, I love it when people use their skills to do something that, as they view as helping animals, whatever.

03:54.59
Pro
Hmm.

03:58.93
Pro
Right, right, right. No doubt. Sure.

04:01.23
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
um So I love that you did that. you do that

04:03.37
Pro
I appreciate.

04:04.37
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So right now I'm gonna let the, and play a tiny little snippet, just a few seconds of one of your ah more recent songs.

04:08.69
Pro
All right.

04:10.98
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So let's just, here we go.

04:19.76
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
All right, now that you heard that, you guys heard a little bit of what his music is about. So let me ask you, Professor Lirical, what would you consider yourself to be most passionate about?

04:33.36
Pro
oh I mean, I default to my son. I've just spent the day with him as well, so a little biased there, but um that's usually my first answer. I know for a lot of people, they want like, yeah, we know that. like We know, but nah, it's like more than that. It's like, I want to make the music that my son would have for a blueprint. um I want to make the music that he can be proud of. um I was just eating with him on the way home from this this school activity, and I said to him,

04:59.27
Pro
We were actually talking about Elf on the Shelf. And and I was like, you know it's always a good idea to act like somebody's watching or somebody's listening. right And for me, he's that person. right So I'm really conscious about you know what I say, what I don't say.

05:09.45
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
wo

05:12.34
Pro
So it's hard to say anything but that. And I think if we don't have that person in life, it's almost like fake it. Pretend your grandmother's listening. like What would you say? you know And I realize that sometimes sounds like it could be boring, but I'm like, nah, I want to say something that's going to grab my grandmother, but will still grab my son and it'll grab whoever, my my friend on the corner or the person in the boardroom, right because if it's if it's true, it should resonate. And so that true resonate part for me is important. like Just reading a book report and trying to call it a wrap probably isn't going to be the greatest thing in the world. But to the previous question, too, it's like you can get the substance in there. So trying to blend those paths, for me, I also extend to other people. So I'm really excited when I meet someone, in whether it's a seminar, conference, education, performing,

05:58.68
Pro
And you find someone who's who they talk to you, they're like, yo, you got this career that you do, this passion where you blend them together. Like, you know, how did you come up with that or whatever? And I always flip it and I'm like, what two things do you really like that don't necessarily appear like they go together?

06:12.50
Pro
And if you had to, how would you force them together? You know what I mean?

06:15.79
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mmhmm.

06:16.47
Pro
And it, it might feel a little like life coachy or whatever, but I don't think it's too far away from education, you know? So I'm always trying to learn something, try to be a lifelong learner. But when someone's working for you, you want to share it.

06:27.18
Pro
You want to be like, hey, look, look at look at this.

06:27.88
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right, right.

06:28.89
Pro
You can do this too. But you have to feel emboldened to be able to do something that maybe somebody has told you, yeah, no one's going to want to hear that. No one's going to want to see that. No one's done that before. you know and so I guess the the the long and short of the answer is is like you know trying to take my viewpoint, being able to share it with somebody else in a way that doesn't just sound like, oh, look at me, look what I'm doing. No, you can do this kind of thing too and put your own spin on it. And for me, that has a lot of reward back to me.

06:55.67
Pro
So that's a piece of inspiration, you know finding the inspiration in the music, inspiring others to kind of do something like that. um every Every time I go out, I'm kind of leading with that, you know if I can. And if I'm just up on a stage saying a song, I hope they like it enough that they're going to find something else. So if I can you know stay centered on those things too, outside of just my son, that's probably what does it for me.

07:17.46
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Okay. I like, I like that. You've taken bits and pieces of your personal life and gave them a purpose that fuels you for what you do. That's what I'm hearing.

07:27.99
Pro
Yeah, no doubt.

07:29.07
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Now tell us why, cause you know, a lot of youth don't feel like education matters.

07:35.65
Pro
Right.

07:35.29
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
It's boring. It's what's forced on us.

07:38.02
Pro
Right.

07:37.65
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
We just do it cause we gotta do it.

07:39.90
Pro
Right.

07:40.02
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
But why does education actually matter?

07:42.89
Pro
I mean, it's like the million dollar question. When you're in it, and you don't see the reward coming, Like whether you're practicing dribbling moves on a basketball court, but nobody's paying you to play, right? No one's paying you to go to school. No one's offering you a scholarship. No one's paying you NBA money. What's going to make you get up and still do it, right? So that you can get to the level to have that kind of opportunity.

08:07.86
Pro
And there's a part of that answer in school other than just the altruistic, oh, you're going to better your mind and learn things about the world, right? So let's face it. Most students, most kids want to hear about how am I going to better my life?

08:18.98
Pro
Well, it's the only pathway I know that pays dividends well after the time you get that piece of paper, right?

08:19.15
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

08:25.65
Pro
It'll pay that dividend.

08:26.14
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Good point.

08:27.18
Pro
No one can take it away, and it's the kind of thing that gives you opportunity. You might be studying something that has nothing to do with what you're going to do for a career, but it's like if you learn how to think critically about a topic, and let's say your reward for that is some university bestows upon you some piece of paper that says, I got my credential in this area. Just the process of doing it is like the process of being on the court when no one's watching and you're out there and you're dribbling, right? And you're just working on your handle, working on your handle.

08:53.68
Pro
and you're getting better and you're getting better. Someday there may be a payoff, but even if it doesn't come, you've benefited from the process of watching self betterment happen in real time, right? I go to court and I shoot every day and I record it.

09:06.21
Pro
And I remind myself when I watch the videos, I'm like, you sucked. Like not too long ago, right? And you're looking at this video here and you just hit 10 straight.

09:13.44
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

09:14.58
Pro
And sometimes we need that visual just like I got records behind me on the wall. Sometimes you need that visual to say, hey, I went and did that. Right. And how did I get it done? I was practicing in the lab when no one was looking.

09:25.28
Pro
It wasn't when the records came out or when the video came out.

09:25.47
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
ye

09:27.99
Pro
I was in the lab and no one was looking. I was skipping the the party. I was skipping the fun stuff. For me, this is fun. But I was i was sacrificing something to get it done when no one was looking and there was no reward.

09:38.37
Pro
You know what I mean? Education can is is really literally that. It feels crappy. Like, why am I doing this? yeah Once you do have some of those credentials and you start to stack them, they're permanently in the treasure chest.

09:50.87
Pro
right And you can whip them out whenever time requires. It stinks. You have to do that sometimes.

09:54.24
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm-hmm.

09:55.91
Pro
But it isn't just that it's a door opener. And it's an opportunity, if nothing else.

09:58.52
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

09:59.98
Pro
And they they pay dividends when you least expect it.

09:59.63
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

10:02.99
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I think that's an excellent point. I like the way you you phrase that. You know, it's something that the imagery that you give us there keeps giving um once you got it.

10:10.21
Pro
Hmm Yeah, yeah yeah i talk I mean, don't get it twisted.

10:11.20
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And it's not just a one-time thing because sometimes people require for certain jobs that you have a bachelor's degree and they don't really care what the topic is. They just want you to have that piece of paper.

10:21.26
Pro
that the There's the other side of that coin.

10:20.74
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
But in some cases, in some cases, anyway.

10:23.96
Pro
I mean, I know I'm making it sound nice, but it's like, there's a lot of stuff you're going to do in school that has no relevance to your life whatsoever.

10:24.64
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, I agree.

10:29.73
Pro
And sometimes it is in math.

10:29.36
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right. But.

10:31.52
Pro
Sometimes it isn't the subject I teach, right? It could be in your math class.

10:34.12
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

10:34.98
Pro
You might be, have a job with your accountant for the rest of your life. Do you really need calculus? The answer is probably no. You know what I'm saying?

10:40.16
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
No, you know, you need it in sciences, but you know I also want to point out another another way I see as a major, major, major benefit to education of any kind discipline.

10:41.45
Pro
Someone made you take it though, right?

10:53.22
Pro
Mm hmm.

10:53.35
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Everything in life that works, anything anytime anybody has success in anything, doesn't matter what the topic is, doesn't matter what the subject, doesn't matter what the career is, 100% of the time you need some form of discipline.

10:55.40
Pro
Yep.

11:04.08
Pro
Absolutely.

11:04.30
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And what I like about education of any kind, on any level, it requires some form of discipline.

11:11.42
Pro
That's right.

11:11.56
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And that alone can prepare you for life in ways that'll pay you more than just money.

11:14.84
Pro
Yep.

11:17.48
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And people don't even think about it that way, but it's true.

11:19.56
Pro
i I am inspired by that message always. I rap about that message. when ah as Someone says, hey, spit a 16. It's usually going to be a 16 and does that. ah One of the hooks to ah probably my first major solo single ad was called The Focuses back when I just went by lyrical. And it's funny, my son was just listening to the car. So again, it's fresh on my mind. um came out in ah the The album, it was almost called Infinity. It came out in 2005.

11:44.66
Pro
And the single came out in 2006 on vinyl, right? And the hook of the song is from the locks. And they say, the determination, the dedication, and discipline. And just the dope way that they said that with all those these in there, right it was like I was using it like, my determination, the dedication, and discipline, the focus is his back. And so literally talking about staying focused, having determination, dedication, and discipline. It is a secret formula. There's no shortcuts.

12:10.93
Pro
If you get a shortcut, you're just fortunate. Something fell in your lap. Don't be patting yourself in the back too hard. If you didn't put in the dedication, like you said, you know it was probably all a house of cards. you know

12:19.92
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I want to interject about shortcuts real quick. Sometimes shortcuts are like microwave food versus oven-warmed food. Microwave food, the heat's there but it doesn't last very long and it's cold in just a couple minutes.

12:34.02
Pro
Right. Right.

12:35.89
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
If you heat up something in the oven, you got that nice crispy edge. It's the heat lasts for like 20 to 30 minutes.

12:42.74
Pro
Mm hmm.

12:43.05
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
It's not the same quality.

12:44.65
Pro
No, it's not.

12:44.60
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Just something to think about.

12:45.50
Pro
It's like reheated pizza verse putting that pizza in the oven. I mean, it's just totally different.

12:48.38
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Oh yeah. Yeah.

12:51.15
Pro
Like that metaphor.

12:50.92
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Microwave.

12:51.63
Pro
You got it.

12:51.28
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
there

12:52.07
Pro
You got some verses. You might have some verses in the future, right?

12:53.22
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
yeah

12:55.04
Pro
It's all about the metaphors.

12:56.70
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So let me ask you this. We're talking about education and how important it is, but what does it look like when we don't get education we need?

13:05.77
Pro
Um, so I have a ah strong take on this. Um, and I know that I'm biased come from a position of bias here. Um, I've watched a lot of my friends who started out the same as I've done and maybe done something slightly different.

13:22.01
Pro
There's a lot of examples of some of them who've done way better than I've done. Uh, those are the outliers is what I want to say out there. It's not the one-offs to pay attention to.

13:29.68
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm.

13:31.17
Pro
We can all say, Oh, I have a friend who's a blah, blah, blah, and has done unbelievably well. On average, that's not what's going to happen. On average, the higher your education level typically is going to turn into longer term wealth. We know that statistically there's countless studies on it, right? So the fact that there are great jobs out there that you can do with your hands or you can do with a certain talent that don't require formal schooling or the traditional academy way of schooling That's great if you find one of those pathways, but traditionally doing something that requires no education or no skill is usually a pathway to no employment, no income, and no sustainability, right? Unless you turn to something that's probably fringe, illegal, or probably not that moral ethical, right?

14:18.25
Pro
the The tried and true pathways have been tried by somebody usually smarter than us. And the the alternative ones have been tried by somebody smarter than us.

14:22.79
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
you

14:25.60
Pro
But we can watch with the results of the empirical evidence of what usually happens when people take those tributaries. So it's like we all want to outsmart the system. We all want to come up with the genius way of doing something um that is like playing the lottery in a way.

14:39.94
Pro
like You might have a plan. You might be smarter than me and have a great plan for it. It might have the skill set to pull it off. I don't know if I have the skillset to pull it off. So for me, what has worked is doing what somebody else has done and trying to put my own spin on it a little bit.

14:53.76
Pro
like um Being educated is not a unique thing, right?

14:53.96
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right, right.

14:56.83
Pro
But sometimes we feel like we want to have that secret sauce you know and do it different. But it's like, well, if you just look on average, people who do it that way tend to do pretty better over the long haul. So I'm not knocking any other way to do it.

15:07.49
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

15:10.04
Pro
um I'm just saying in my life and the people that I'm around, again, it's from my own bias. When I look at the people in my world, whether it's academia or whatnot. People that are usually very ah diligent, again, that determination, de dedication, discipline comes into it, and that have achieved something worth being proud of, it's usually not by accident.

15:23.41
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
u

15:30.60
Pro
And if you're going to do something that's in the sciences or whatever, it's usually that methodical a piece of it is embedded into the system of what it means to do the scientific process anyways.

15:30.57
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

15:39.79
Pro
So you get that extra benefit in life, even if you don't do it as a career.

15:39.93
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

15:43.31
Pro
So it seems to me a win-win.

15:45.54
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I want to point something out, too, because when when we use the word education, people assume that we're only talking about college, um college education, but we're not.

15:51.03
Pro
Right.

15:53.45
Pro
Right.

15:53.53
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So for the audience listening, we we and professor lu who agrees with me on this, education just means that you learn something.

16:00.66
Pro
Absolutely.

16:01.76
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
It doesn't mean that you went into college. you your Education for you might be trade school. It could have been ah stuff that you learned on your own. There are people who are successful in careers because they'd studied themselves.

16:13.75
Pro
Hmm.

16:13.44
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Like for example, I'm a professional seepshis. I've been doing wedding gowns for over 20 years. There's no school that I can go to to get a piece of paper to officially get a PhD in sewing.

16:27.12
Pro
Hmm.

16:28.13
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
If there was, I would have it.

16:29.82
Pro
Right.

16:30.33
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
i've taught I'm serious.

16:31.55
Pro
Right.

16:31.89
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I've taught sewing, there's nothing more complex than wedding gowns.

16:35.76
Pro
Hmm.

16:36.56
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Absolutely nothing you could sew that's more complex than wedding gowns, right?

16:38.05
Pro
We see that in the prices, right? We see. Yeah.

16:40.94
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
and And I make and design them, and I've sewn them, and I've taught other people how to do it.

16:45.21
Pro
Hmm.

16:47.12
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
It's taken me years.

16:48.76
Pro
Yup.

16:49.03
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
of practice, of working in the field, my education was being the alteration manager over at David's Bridal, and I was there for 10 years.

16:50.37
Pro
Right.

16:55.48
Pro
Right. Right.

16:57.89
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
That was my education.

16:59.25
Pro
That's it. Yep.

16:59.62
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
That's where I learned. I learned while I got paid to learn. Even though that wasn't the goal at the time, that's what it became.

17:06.00
Pro
Yeah.

17:06.43
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And, you know, for those of you listening, I want you to know that when we say education, if traditional school is not set up for your brain and doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean that you don't get the education.

17:17.73
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
If you've got to go out there and get it yourself, do it.

17:18.54
Pro
Sure.

17:20.55
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
If you got to go online to learn whatever it is you want to learn, do it. And I'm talking about a principle right now. So the details of what you want to learn. I don't know what that is. You could, you can figure that out, but there's always a way for you to learn what you need to learn to get into the field that you want to get into.

17:34.28
Pro
Absolutely.

17:34.59
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So I'm off my soapbox.

17:35.49
Pro
and And you see that more than ever now, I mean, with with you know generative AI and all the stuff that we have at our fingertips now, you can do kind of like the matrix, like with Keanu Reeves, I know kung fu you know kind of thing where you almost can have the information at a snap, but again, it goes back to, let's use your analogy with the with the being a seamstress.

17:36.26
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
had

17:40.31
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
e

17:55.00
Pro
somebody may hear that story. If they didn't hear the work where you said it took years behind the scene and just say, oh dope, that's a good gig. I could probably do that and become wealthy, right? But they don't hear the work part of it.

18:06.20
Pro
They don't hear it.

18:06.25
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

18:06.91
Pro
It doesn't matter how the work is done. In other words, all ah education is going to do for you.

18:08.55
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

18:11.79
Pro
It's going to give you some facts, figures, hopefully some experiential opportunities, some other people who are mentors along the way, hopefully who are just like guides on the side and are trying to be the sage on the stage all the time, right?

18:12.29
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

18:22.32
Pro
But give you sort of a the encouragement you need, right that maybe the computer doesn't do quite efficiently yet, right and points you in the right direction and puts you around all the experts in the field. That may be what the formalized process does, but it's not any different than whether you're taking martial arts You're going to go down, you're going to learn a system, and they're going to say, here's your belt, or whatever the thing is they're going to do is you've been led down a path with somebody else who's done it before and has just made more mistakes than you.

18:42.37
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right, right, right.

18:49.55
Pro
It's all really is. Somebody's made more mistakes than you and is trying to maybe help you avoid a couple of them to save you a little bit of time. But still, it's not taking shortcuts.

18:55.31
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yep.

18:57.80
Pro
It's just saying, I don't want to send you into a pothole. That's a little different, right? so

19:02.40
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I want to point out, you just made me think of this.

19:07.00
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
For out for the listeners. Most of y'all probably don't realize, but your bet, and I know this because I had to hire, I had to, the, one of the largest, um, one of the highest volume bridal shops in America at the time when I was running the alteration department.

19:24.08
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And that meant I had to have quite a few seamstresses on staff, right? So I did a lot of interviews with people, did a lot of sewing tests, they had a lot of people. And I can tell you some of the best, and then do me the absolute best sewers that you're gonna find in this country.

19:41.87
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
98% of them learned on their own.

19:45.91
Pro
Wow.

19:45.74
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
They did not officially go to school. Take that in for a moment.

19:49.92
Pro
Right.

19:50.24
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And that's that's in my field. I can talk about my field. I don't know about all the other fields. You can't do that in medical or law. And obviously, you you need formal education for those things and um and certain types of engineering, most of it.

20:03.60
Pro
Right.

20:03.31
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
You need do need formal education for those things.

20:05.40
Pro
Right.

20:04.87
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
But there are a lot of other fields that you can learn on your own. the Some of the teachers did that I would trust to sell my own stuff, learned on their own.

20:13.18
Pro
right

20:13.66
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
They learned on their own, and then they took in whatever they could wherever they worked. So they made it a point to learn. you But I want to go back to the fact that you got to be disciplined, because if you're not going to be disciplined, don't expect to be successful in anything.

20:22.60
Pro
That's right. Yeah. I mean, even the, even the, it's a great point. Even the younger kids who are, you know, let's say coming up and they're gaming, right? There's a reason. that those kids become elite at gaming and why kids like it.

20:36.13
Pro
First of all, the gaming industry is made off, it's in the name, gamification, right?

20:36.63
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
o

20:41.08
Pro
They have a reward and payout system that keeps you going along for the next carrot.

20:41.06
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

20:45.65
Pro
And so that's even hard baked into the system. That's what partly makes it so addicting for these kids.

20:48.87
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

20:50.84
Pro
First of all, it's social, they're talking, they're playing with their friends these days in most cases, but they're becoming masters mostly on their own.

20:53.13
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

20:56.49
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm-hmm.

20:57.43
Pro
Now, they don't forget though, they're probably looking up YouTube videos.

20:58.37
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Good point.

21:01.16
Pro
That's what they weren't doing 20 years ago when kids were playing video games, right?

21:02.92
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right, right.

21:04.57
Pro
they're So what they're watching, they're watching somebody else do it, who's also kind of been through more mistakes than them, right?

21:09.63
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm-hmm.

21:10.44
Pro
So it doesn't, the certification stuff is just the the extra benefit that ah industry will use, right? And let's face it, education is an industry as well, right? It's to say, here's our value, it's on paper, we've stamped it, and we've kind of given you this certification, but you don't need that if you have the skill in an industry that doesn't require the certification.

21:30.49
Pro
You're actually lucky in some cases if you're in an industry that doesn't require the certification, but ah but at least it is worth noting that when credentials become important, and they are in a lot of industries,

21:30.49
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Exactly. my

21:41.23
Pro
it is certainly nice to have one. And if you don't have one in your industry, you should try to find out a way maybe where you can get it validated so that you can show and prove later and say, yo, I did this, I did put in this work. Don't try to pretend like I didn't, you know, so it's it's catch 22 sometimes about like, needing the certification because it props up the accreditation board sometimes and that that kind of appear in different industries when maybe it didn't need to be there. But then there's other times where you're like, man, I wish there was some accreditation board who'd come in and sanctify all this work that I'm doing so that other people could say, oh, it isn't just me telling you I did this like somebody else is the witness, right?

22:18.21
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
i Yeah, i I think this is I love this conversation and pointing out the different types of education that's out there.

22:26.13
Pro
Sure.

22:26.42
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
um I just want to make sure people understand because I There's suit way too many people out there and and especially our youth and some of these older adults who went through this and they've already made life choices because of it.

22:39.98
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
They think they're stupid because they don't fit into our quote unquote education system, which quite frankly, it's only made for one type of learner.

22:41.53
Pro
Mm hmm. Right. That's right. Yeah.

22:48.61
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
and And then they end up floating through life and just working at a gas station or working at Walmart or working something else that's minimum wage that's way beneath their intelligence because they think they have to.

23:00.07
Pro
Hmm.

23:00.44
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And I want you all to know you don't have to. You can learn whatever you want. You just have to might be creative in the way you learn, depending on what it is, but you can.

23:08.91
Pro
Yeah, it's an important point.

23:09.17
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Now let's talk about the rap industry. You said a few things to me that really prompted much of this conversation. house How does someone get their rap music out and successful?

23:19.04
Pro
Wow.

23:21.46
Pro
Well, the getting it out part is the easy part. The successful is the hard part.

23:24.55
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

23:25.28
Pro
It's easier than ever to get your music out. When people say, you know, my material is out, it's available on all platforms. Literally anybody can have their music out on all platforms now.

23:34.44
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right.

23:35.22
Pro
If you go back to when I was talking about that record, the focus is back. I was signed to a record label called Blaze the World, who at the time had Caroline yeah EMI distribution. EMI was one of the biggest distributors in the world.

23:47.01
Pro
They lost their distribution, but what the gentleman had at that time, dating it back to 2004, 2006, is he had the ability to put the stuff on iTunes.

23:46.88
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Okay.

23:55.33
Pro
right And you had to go through a label at that point. So you had to have a label that was at iTunes. You couldn't just say, hey, I wish my stuff was on iTunes. Today, there's middlemen who've come and kind of filled in the void in the industry where there's many companies out there that anybody can just pay a fee and your stuff is instantly uploaded, right? So not everybody knows that, but that's how it works these days. So there's somebody who will take your money and will get it to all of the distribution channels that that need be out there. So your stuff's on Spotify and YouTube, blah, blah, blah, right? So that's the easy part. You can just pay for it.

24:26.71
Pro
um It's getting close to the point where it's very similar in terms of actually getting your stuff promoted, right? yeah There are then middlemen out there who will take your money to also promote your stuff. So there's over about 200,000 songs a day uploaded to Spotify.

24:42.62
Pro
We just do some basic probability, right?

24:42.60
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Wow.

24:45.09
Pro
If you have no budget, what is the probability that somebody is going to find your song by accident when you're competing against the top level songs that have massive campaign ah pushes behind them, right?

24:56.46
Pro
That are pushed out by major labels still, right? The Sony's of the world and the Universal's and they they're just, it's automatic. Those songs are going to rise to the cream because they're coming with a marketing budget.

25:07.32
Pro
Now they've also made it so that you can pay middlemen to do something similar, right? Whether it's the illegal kind of stuff or the quasi not ethical stuff where you're paying a bot to watch your video and make it look like someone's watching your video, which a lot of the shady overnight companies have done. And now there's a little bit more of a crackdown on that. And by the way, people in the industry can tell the difference immediately. There's all sorts of algorithms to know if you've gained the system and tried to make it look like you're more popular than you are, right?

25:36.87
Pro
um So there's that but if you have the right budget and you want to do it the correct way You could for about a hundred thousand dollars market a decent song that it let's just say is ah Let's use a an academic term grammatically correct, right? Like if it's if it's not awful and it's like it's like that essay if it's a C paper, right? And it's grammatically correct It may not it might be pretty blah, but you might get the C or maybe the B- You can take that equivalent of the musical song and with a hundred grand, your songs going to pretty much be a hit in whatever genre it is, meaning a hit on like Spotify and YouTube. It's going to have a lot of views, right? If you have the right marketing campaign, you can find even the wrong marketing campaign with that kind of money. Now, if you magnify that by times 10,

26:23.32
Pro
Well, you're gonna probably find yourself ah with the ability, again, a decent song, right? A decent song with a million dollar campaign, you're probably gonna crack major charts like Billboard and so forth. That's the amount of money that you're playing within, 100,000 to a million. So if you don't have that, it's more of a pipe dream ah for an artist to say, someone's gonna find and hear my song just because I'm good, right? So we're we're now in an era where anybody can get out,

26:50.31
Pro
But any good artist might not get discovered unless there's a lot of constant or repetition, planning, thoughtfulness, frugalness, right trial and error, making a lot of mistakes along the way, but it's not for the faint of heart and it's not for the people who have small budgets.

27:06.89
Pro
If you do have a small budget, you just got to be incredibly diligent and really think hard about what you're doing. And again, like we were talking about in education, find somebody else who's kind of done it and gone through it to save yourself a lot of the hassle. That's just to get heard, right? But that doesn't mean you're going to be good when you do a show or you're even going to get booked to do shows or the people are going to buy your material or buy your merch, right? Those are all different strategies and some people have one or two.

27:31.50
Pro
It's kind of like basketball. Some people can shoot, but some people can shoot and they can dribble the rock and they can play defense and they can pass.

27:36.10
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
and

27:38.04
Pro
Those people end up in the league, right?

27:37.60
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
many

27:40.66
Pro
The the rest of us were like playing on the weekends, right?

27:40.30
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, yeah.

27:43.78
Pro
So that kind of thing. So I hope that helps a little.

27:46.71
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
So what I hear is not just putting it out there, but the marketing of it.

27:53.82
Pro
Yeah.

27:54.77
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And so can, can a person become successful, um, without a lot of a big budget for marketing?

28:04.85
Pro
Yeah, but you got to do it a different way. And it does take longer.

28:06.80
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

28:07.85
Pro
um And you have to know, ah like any industry, right, you gotta know, what's your target.

28:08.04
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, yeah, it does.

28:12.56
Pro
I'll say my formula quickly, it's not for everybody. And it's kind of not traditional in terms of a few things. But I am, while I would love to have songs that have millions and millions of views, my typical songs might have a few thousand or maybe a couple hundred thousand views, right? And they don't come with large massive marketing campaigns, right? It's just not the lifestyle that I'm living and it's not really where my bread is buttered. I do mostly college shows. I do a lot of corporate stuff. I write for songs, movies, television, that kind of stuff as well. And I perform and I speak.

28:44.43
Pro
So for me, what's important is when I come to your school, that that person at that school is recommending me to somebody else to book me. right And so for all the artists out there that aren't aware, few you know if you wonder, hey, what's that artist getting paid to do that college show? They're probably getting paid very well, maybe 10 times more than they would to play in your local club. right So the average college that nobody knows about, nobody's even hearing you about doing the show. And you might have done a show for 100 or 1,000 or more.

29:13.58
Pro
could pay you 10 times more than the local club could pay. Because most times, the local clubs aren't paying you anything.

29:15.48
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Hmm.

29:17.62
Pro
But if you're lucky enough to get $3,000, $500 from a club, let's go crazy and say $1,000.

29:18.36
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

29:22.65
Pro
You're probably pretty good and have a local fan base that's large if you're getting up around $1,000. Colleges are going to pay you 10 times that just off the rip. And if you have something to say that's of interest in a college market, right if you're about something like we were talking about at the beginning,

29:38.33
Pro
those numbers can incrementally grow, if not exponentially after time. So for me, that's my world, which doesn't necessarily focus on millions and millions of views. Would I love to have millions and millions of views every time I put out a record?

29:51.42
Pro
Absolutely. But the kind of music that's conducive to doing what I just said sometimes isn't the kind of music that's conducive to millions and millions of views. You can be happy with

29:59.75
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Right, right.

30:01.30
Pro
tens or hundreds of thousands of views and be like, wow, I really did it with this one. You know what I'm saying? So I'm a little bit more of what's that?

30:06.30
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
But you're met you're actually making, but it sounds like you're actually making more money than 99% of them.

30:11.62
Pro
Yeah. it's more and it's and it's more And it's more the kind of stuff that you can look back at 15 years and can still be relevant, right? Because you're not trying to do what's too today.

30:18.22
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, yeah, good point, good point.

30:21.25
Pro
like I pay attention to what everything sounds like in every era, and I've been around for a long time.

30:21.61
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

30:25.51
Pro
it's like I never think my music is stuck out as, gee, that's like incredibly old, or gee, that's incredibly in the future. It's kind of right around the area without too, too much trend appeal. And if you do that,

30:36.69
Pro
You can have a long career. You might never be super, super, super big at any particular moment, but you can ride out a lot of you know waves and gaps and mountains and peaks kind of stuff.

30:46.78
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I want to reiterate something you said, um really kind of you've said a few times throughout this interview. Those big, big ways getting up there to the top of your game, being the number one person everybody sees, those are the outliers.

31:01.47
Pro
Yeah, right. Right.

31:02.34
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
that's that's It's not impossible, but it's barely possible. So set realistic expectations, I would like to add to that.

31:09.02
Pro
Yeah, and I think a realistic one and a lot of people will say, you know, I'm going to be the next Bill Gates, I'm going to be blah, blah, blah. Start with your city, you know, and you know, KRS was famous for saying this is like, you'd be the hottest dude in your block, be the hottest dude in your neighborhood, be the hottest dude in your town, then your city, then your state.

31:20.14
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Hmm. That's a bit of bias.

31:27.92
Pro
It's like being in the mix for your city is a realistic goal, I think, for a lot of artists and a lot of people don't know what that looks like and don't know how fruitful that can actually be.

31:39.39
Pro
There's plenty of artists who are just the biggest artist or one of them in their local town. And they've been that way for years and they're not household names, but they still have careers.

31:43.51
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm-hmm.

31:47.77
Pro
And by the way, they play overseas and get paid to do it regularly. Um, so absolutely.

31:51.22
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Uh, yeah, I could think of a local group I'm thinking of right now. They probably do better than most of these ones that try to go national.

31:58.04
Pro
absolutely

31:57.84
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And it's just like we teach in other areas of business and marketing.

31:58.65
Pro
Yeah.

32:02.05
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Find your focus and find your niche and stick with that because it's, it's I will say sometimes it's better to have a thousand genuine followers, genuine people people that genuinely follow you, go to your concerts, go to your events, go to your, whatever you're doing, then to have a million

32:03.13
Pro
Yep.

32:21.23
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And none of them are paying attention.

32:22.54
Pro
Oh my gosh, you hit it.

32:23.55
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
you The one with the million numbers, you have no power at all.

32:24.23
Pro
That's that. That is the math.

32:27.11
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
The one with 1,000 followers has power, because if they put something out to those followers, those followers are going to do something with that.

32:31.08
Pro
Yep.

32:33.60
Pro
That's right. The math is on your side.

32:34.43
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And and they'll get their friends to come.

32:35.30
Pro
If every time you put out something, that's right.

32:36.85
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
you know

32:37.88
Pro
They will, if they like you like that and you know, it's the concept of a super fan, right? It's like, if you can have a couple of super fans in each town, if you can have a couple people who, you know, as the artist that you could reach out to.

32:43.12
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Good point.

32:50.20
Pro
And if you said, Hey, I'm going to do a show. Uh, could you get 10 people to come to it? If you have those, you're usually set. And those are very, very hard to get and they're very slept on.

32:58.32
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
yeah

33:01.68
Pro
And sometimes people laugh at people like that. They go, ah, look at this. People call them like a stan, like an Eminem song, right? Like that super fan stan. Like that was the obsessive fan, right?

33:08.82
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

33:10.31
Pro
But people will laugh sometimes at your fans that'll like that.

33:09.80
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

33:12.99
Pro
And it's like, you got to respect those people. Those people sometimes like your music more than you do. And they know more about you than you might forget about yourself, right? And they're invaluable people.

33:24.39
Pro
And I see artists laugh about that kind of stuff all the time. And I'm like, give me five people like that. Like, to your analogy, give me five people over that, over the thousand who just kind of like you.

33:34.87
Pro
You give me five super fans, they're going to be with you for your life.

33:36.08
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

33:39.04
Pro
Those thousand people who like what you're doing right now, but can't be bothered to change their calendar around to come out and see you when you come to town.

33:39.20
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yep.

33:46.10
Pro
They're not paying your bills. Those five super fans,

33:47.69
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
No, the super fans will buy everything you sell them.

33:49.34
Pro
about everything you have and they'll change their date to be there and they'll tell other people about you. It's like they're on payroll. It's like, so you can't, you cannot find enough people like that.

33:56.35
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

33:59.08
Pro
You got to respect those fans. so

34:00.67
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I agree.

34:01.69
Pro
so

34:01.54
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Now, um, tell us for someone listening, what is. What is a big no-no? What should they give him some advice of what not to do in the industry?

34:12.23
Pro
Hmm. I think acting like you're bigger than you are. ah Nobody wants to root for the massive clear victor all the time, right? i've been and Let me use a rap battle analogy. I was in a battle in Portsmouth. It was called the Iron Mike battle. And, you know, I have a long battle record as a rapper, right?

34:34.11
Pro
And I went up to this on the sneak, went up with my crew of three other people. We went there, we're like, yo, lyrical, let's go make some money, right? Let's go up to this battle and go crush these people that have no idea you're even there, right?

34:46.93
Pro
And before they realized that it's too late. So we did this, right? We went up to this battle, it's called the Iron Mike battle in Portsmouth, um Portland, excuse me, Portland, Maine. Portland, Maine's a big city, right? Relatively big city in Maine, it's one of the few.

34:56.65
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Mm hmm.

34:59.36
Pro
We go up to Portland and the Iron Mike has, I believe at the time, 64 rappers in it.

35:03.79
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Wow.

35:05.51
Pro
okay And I called and said, yo, I'm going to come. i'm gonna be I was one of the last people to get in. Waited to the end, so they weren't promoting it. And at the time, it was and this was probably like 2007 or something like that.

35:17.44
Pro
It was like $1,000 or something like that, which is pretty big money back then, right? Go up and I i did the first, everybody did 64 rappers, right? That's 32 battles. you Think about how long this is going to be.

35:29.62
Pro
They're all battling each other.

35:29.16
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah.

35:30.61
Pro
The crowd's listening. And at what they did different in this battle is at the end of every round, they ranked the leaderboard. right In first place, we have lyrical. In place of all the lyrical crush that cat.

35:43.32
Pro
right They do it again the next round and they whittle it down, right? It just cuts the number goes from 64 to 32 to 16, right? It just keeps getting down until you get down to two people. So they did this and they kept saying in my name and I was doing really well, right?

35:56.75
Pro
All night. They're like, oh, by the time you're in your fourth battle,

35:57.76
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
ah we

36:01.35
Pro
People want the underdog to win, right? So when you come out like, yo, look at me, I'm crushing this dude. After a while, people just don't want you to win. It's just common sense. it's like It's a human nature.

36:10.74
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
then That is true, that is true

36:12.56
Pro
And it's the same thing if you're winning in life all the time. There's going to be someone salty on the sideline. It's like, look at this dude. You may not even think you're better than you are. They just you have a whiff of it, right? They have a whiff that you think that you're better than you are.

36:22.91
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
that is true.

36:24.17
Pro
And that'll humble you really quick because that person is the one nipping at your ankles and trying to take you down. you know just like but It doesn't have to be you know dramatic stuff, but they just might be like, you know, you're passing this sticker and they're like throwing it in the trash kind of thing. you're saying So acting like you're already there. And even when you are there, remembering not to act like you're already there, I think goes a long way. So that would be my answer because you don't want those people turning on you that were loving you just a few rounds earlier. You know what I'm saying?

36:51.64
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
You've got a valid point and that's probably, and I'm not even into rap at all. And that is the number one advice that I was thinking already in my head. So, because I think it's true. I think it's true across the board with in other industries too, not just in, um, in rapid entertainment, but I love that you said that. So tell the audience what you have coming up and how can people find you?

37:17.23
Pro
Cool, just had changed my mic rate there a little bit. um So I have an album actually that I've been working on for a long time. It's called Doctor Plored. And we originally were trying to get it out um at the end of 2024 and then we knew it turned into a 2025 project. So I don't want to date the project, but it's all produced by my man Jay Johnson. ah Jay Johnson has done a few of my singles. If you look up no, which I have a video for.

37:44.74
Pro
J. Johnson produced that and he's got a low five vibe. And so we've been working on well over a year, ah making this album 15 tracks, all produced by him. It's relatively low five. So look for it. Doc Deplort, that's my actual last name. um so it And it features J. Johnson. so Check that out. We'll be following that up with as you know as much performance as we can do um to support it live. But even if you can't come out and check it live, check it out wherever you can hear it and look for it. um And for the rest of, in terms of like, I know by the time people a lot of times check out a podcast, something's come and gone, but um check me out at ProfessorLyrical.com. That's my website.

38:25.89
Pro
Um, all my socials are pro lyrical or professor lyrical. I'm in a duo called pro quo as well. Uh, my old crew x cow are still putting up music as well. So, uh, short for x caliber.

38:36.61
Pro
Shout out to my man fee. Um, so those are the projects that I work on. So if you see any of those professor lyrical pro quo, x cow, that's all me. Continue to put out as much music as I can.

38:46.07
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
And all of that is on your website, right?

38:48.21
Pro
Yeah. It's all on professor lyrical dot.com and, uh, you know, bring me out to a college that you're at and I'll be there.

38:49.07
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
OK.

38:54.15
Pro
Right.

38:54.45
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I love that you do this at colleges. I think it's really cool. Well, Professor Lirikul, thank you so, so, so, so much for coming on today.

39:00.88
Pro
ah Thank you, team.

39:01.27
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
I always enjoy talking to you. And um i hope that I hope that the listeners really get a lot out of the only little bit of wisdom that you shared today because you have a lot more.

39:12.72
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
but

39:13.56
Pro
I appreciate it. we If we give them too if we give too much, we can't make the mind shift happen. You know what I mean? we got just just You don't want to flip it 360 or 180.

39:18.01
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Nah, yeah, yeah a good point, good point.

39:22.62
Pro
Just give them a little bit. Be like, hmm, hmm.

39:24.05
Fatima Bey The MindShifter
Yeah, it's true. Well, once again, thank you.

39:28.26
Pro
Thank you. Thanks for having me.