203. Hip Hop for the Future

“I'm trying to make sure we have artists, the next generation people who can get to the open mic for the first time and learn how to hold a microphone.” - Khafre Jay

In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Hip Hop for the Future” host Beth Barany interviews hip hop organizer Khafre Jay where they discuss the importance of hip hop as a culture within the San Francisco Bay Area and his plans for the future to get more community members involved.

From his business creating slogan clothing, to building local creative spaces to his beliefs on public health and the impact live music can have on an audience, this episode is sure to broaden your horizons on the entire hip hop culture.

ABOUT KHAFRE JAY

Hailing from Hunters Point, San Francisco—a city with the highest income inequality in the nation—Khafre Jay has dedicated his life to fighting for socioeconomic justice and empowering his community through Hip Hop organizing.

Now leading Hip Hop For The Future SPC, Khafre is pioneering the use of Hip Hop to reimagine public healthcare, aiming to increase Black life expectancy and bring transformative resources to marginalized populations.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hiphopforthefuturespc

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/khafrej/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khafrejay/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khafrejay/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theunapologeticblackguy

Album: https://music.apple.com/us/album/critical-race-hip-hop/1757033018

Website: http://www.hiphopforthefuture.org

• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade
• EDITORIAL SUPPORT by Iman Llompart

c. 2026 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

Transcript

BETH BARANY 0:02

Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I'm Beth Barany, an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, published writer. I'm also a writing teacher and creative entrepreneur trainer. This podcast loves to explore all things future, which is really about now. Little secret. It's really about now, but it's about what we can do now to make our futures better. And I am a positive, optimistic person overall, and I love talking with other people who are also looking towards building better futures for all of us. So I'm so, so, so excited to introduce to you, to today a local talent here in the San Francisco Bay area and educator. And yes, I love your hat. We're gonna have you talk about that too. Khafre Jay who runs a fabulous organization here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hip Hop For the Future. Welcome so much, Khafre. I'm really happy to have you here. You and I met on the street in my neighborhood the best way. Right? And I've been supporting, artists. Hip hop artists for a long time and I was so happy to be able to support you guys and, and bring you on to hip hop, um, to how to write the future. so can you introduce yourself for us?

Khafre Jay 1:13

Khafre Jay. I'm a Hip Hop organizer, angry black man from Hunters Point, San Francisco. a little, forgotten about spot on the southeast side. But yeah, I'm, I'm just a man who's been trying to save my culture, and empower my community for my entire adult life, and I've just been figuring out how that's it.

BETH BARANY 1:32

Yeah. Awesome. And for those of you listening, you wanna tell us what's on your hat?

Khafre Jay 1:36

this is, my make racist afraid again, hat, I have a clothing line called Critical Race Threads. and you know, I I, I don't really wear Nike signs or, you know, too many labels, but I, I feel like. only do I want to know who's my friend, first and foremost before I even waste my, my energy on them. But yeah, I also got some funny things to say. So people just know where I'm coming from. I can make people think. I have a shirt that says, dear police, I'm a white woman. And, as a man who got beat up twice at gunpoint by the SFPD before I was 17 in San Francisco, messages like that I think are important. especially if they're framed in a way that doesn't create too much defensiveness. So, yeah.

BETH BARANY 2:13

Yeah, and I think you had some either a T-shirt or was on your clipboard, something like, white women. White women come support us, or something like that. Like if you're a white woman. Yeah.

Khafre Jay 2:24

not gonna make it about White women have been a historical power node for America, for its movements, for its policy. So, that's why you always catch me out in some random white neighborhood where people don't really look like me, calling people in and calling people out. Of course.

BETH BARANY 2:39

Yeah, yeah, of course. And you do it with humor. With love with music. And, I, I love the name of your organization, hip Hop for the Future. Can you tell us a little bit why you chose that name?

Khafre Jay 2:52

Everything comes through people's experiences. And my experience as a hip hop cultured person from San Francisco is told through gentrification, you know what I'm saying? Much like hop to the Fillmore. It is happening right now in terms of hip hop culture. And for those who don't know, hip hop is not rap. It is not. hip hop is how I walk, talk, dress, paint, think, act, dance. It's something I can't take off. Like people know I'm talking hip hop, they know I look hip hop'cause I dress in our fashion style, we have an environment and the ecosystem hip hop is birthed from that necessitates certain entrepreneurial styles to access equity and capital. You know what I'm saying? So we have a whole culture. It has norms, it has rules you know, culture has never really been commodified, authentically. especially when black people who make up the majority of, you know, hip hop cultural norms and rules, we have no wealth to dictate how white media has ever represented, any facet of hip hop culture. And the most comm modifiable part of that is hip hop, rap music specifically, right? So, we've never dictated how blues looked on white media or how rock and roll did, or how disco did, or you know, how funk did or none of this. And I think people just think that hip hop is so on point, in representing young black culture. and culture in these hoods. And it just, it's, it's a farce to me. So when I see, black people go from 13% of the population in the eighties when I was born, to now about 5% of the population, but we make up 38.7% of the homeless in that gilded San Francisco city. And that's, that's erasure. It is. And so in spots that we wrapped that for 30 years in Oakland, they're doing karaoke seven nights a week now lights on. For a different community. now, it's a wrap. It's a wrap. It is not a smart business model, to bank on black culture in the Bay Area. It is just, it's not, it doesn't work anymore. So in order for us to have access to our culture, in its truest forms,'cause real talk, black people don't have any efficacy in any facet of culture in society except our culture. You know what I'm saying? So any, any efficacy in any aspect of society except with our culture. so I'm just fighting to, to preserve spaces for that. That costs money. money, you know, for black folks is like a revolutionary thing for us to amass enough money or a strategy to create math that sustains a stable platform. So I'm, I'm happy we've done 70 weekly rap writing contests in Berkeley, broaching some of the most serious topics, and we're really close to expanding a second weekly rap writing contest in San Francisco if I can get a little help and not go so grey doing it. and then San Jose needs some help too, so I'm really fighting to make sure we have hip hop for the future. I, I had my first show at Glen Park Rec Center, you know what I'm saying? at like a skateboard, kind of hip hop kind of community event. But they don't do that anymore. doesn't even really have kids, you know, let alone brown kids like me. so I have to be that, that leader that creates those spaces, and we've gotta make the math work. And for me, that's been standing in really affluent neighborhoods, looking for people that care like you, you know what I'm saying? That can share resources, our platforms for social capital, so we can get more resources'cause. Really, we just need places to shine. And that's what I do. I'm trying to make sure we have artists, the next generation people who can get to the open mic for the first time and learn how to hold a microphone, you know what I'm saying? And, and see these older folks show what it means to be a, a MC. You know, I'm trying to have a place where live graffiti artists can come and do live painting inside the cipher and break dancers can come and battle. You know what I'm saying? we need that. And if we don't have our grios and our, and our culture bearers, we have nothing.

BETH BARANY 6:23

Yeah, I, I love that you're creating this in, in person, in local spaces and, I, I just love that so much. I feel like as humans, we're actually. Genetically predisposed to learn together, learn groups, learn through song, learn through modeling our elders. So I really, really love that. I noticed in your mission statement recently that you're really focused in on health and wellness also. Can you say a a bit about that?

Khafre Jay 6:50

often we talk about the future, we talk about hope, but my public health focus comes from a lack of hope. Just to be quite honest with you. I was a hope. Activist, I did the largest environmental justice Eco summits at the Presidio Lawn with the Presidio Activators Council. you know, I used to do a lot of environmental work, political work too. I was, was really rooting for white folks. I, I was really rooting for him, in the last election, so disappointed, at the Dobbs decision, not just at the Dobbs decision, but at the tepid response to the Dobbs decision. You know what I'm saying? I, I think I, it was a week before I started hip hop for the future. I saw that that protest at the Supreme Court and, wasn't enough. It was, it was really disheartening to see that few people, and that few white women, you know, I, I was like, oh, no dos, oh, white women who have the strongest political power are gonna go crazy and we're gonna get some real change. And that woo. You know what I'm saying? And that moment, I just realized that it's gonna take a little while before I feel like organizing with other groups directly, you know, our, our are building strategies that rely on. A mass of American voters to have the best interests of black people at heart. I, you know, so out of that I decided to turn N Word as a lot of black organizers have. and you know, that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna talk to white folks. Of course not. You know,'cause I think that means I'm just gonna go towards individual grassroots means instead of organizing with big orgs that have, strategies that are rooted in collective empathy. I don't think we're there yet. so I decided to go to public health, you know, and Hunter's Point Black people are going through it. We got higher rates of cancer, not to mention the stress traumas. the lack of access to care. hip hop for me has always been the strongest organizing tool for my people. You know what I'm saying? Like. Black people might not want to go talk about colorectal cancer interviews, but if I get the rapper, yo-yo from the nineties, you know, who's big for people who are in that age group that need to get colon cancer tests right now? And I throw a phat hip hop show, at the film, at the African American Arts and Culture Complex with break dancers from P 39 DJs, graffiti artists doing live graffiti of food, barbers, braiders, people doing hair, clothes. With the Director of Freedom Ford, Francesca Gonzalez, who helped me create this idea of Drip fest dropping resources in place, then we can get a whole bunch of black folks there comfortable, calm, you know, appreciative. And then they confronted with access to healthcare. You know, we had, Dr. Hobb, he's a dentist with flossing for smiles, right? Flossing is kind of looking good, as you know. He was there taking care of people who hadn't talked to dentists recently. You know, Umoja Health with, Dr. Rhodes. She was there, you know, helping people get vaccinations, COVID checks, and colorectal cancer interviews, things like that. This stuff is not hard when we're doing it in the framework of people that have the cultural practices, and, you know, and, and the root of their strategy. So I, I just thought that would be really cool and, building around that, pretty soon I was doing, you know, hip hop therapy 1 0 1 for therapists. I want to integrate these methods authentically. you know, and, and hip hop in general, having spaces rooted in affirmation, like a cipher. And I know a lot of people they see hip hop in a frame of, of corporate media where in three companies own 90% of the means. But that's not what it looks like in community. You know what I'm saying? When somebody's rapping for the first time around all these vets and these vets are like, yeah, go. You gotta keep going. Don't worry. Just keep going, keep going. It's such a supportive place. and that right there is one of the most healing places. Most affirming places, that ecosystem that we're building of these artists coming together and these community members, it's, it's something that we don't really have. So I think that's essential. Public health is a cultural community zone. The middle, you know what I'm saying? The center of the community. I'm trying to build that around hip hop, and it's just public health is the way to go. It's the only thing that I have hoped for. It's my ability to bring health directly to people because I, I don't really have faith in everything else right now. I'll check back, I'll check back in the midterms we still have a country, so, yeah.

BETH BARANY 10:39

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I hear you. I hear The power of the young hip hop artists going up and holding the mic for the first time. The power of just coming together. I really see this is so beautiful, what you're doing, and can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, what that's like for you to create these events and I don't know anything that you're working on.

Khafre Jay 10:58

you know, I think the best way to talk about, I think the best way to talk about the power of live performance is that's best viewed through the work I've been doing with the San Francisco Pregnancy Village. away from my mother's house, Bayview, YMCA. which is in Hunter's Point, not Bayview. They're not the same. I hate how people put'em together. It sounds like gentrification to me. but yeah, you know, I was doing, drip Fest, and I got to connect with the people working on the SF Pregnancy Village. For listeners who don't know, how. Bad. The situation is for black people here in the United States. you know, all this stuff we're talking about currently with ice, like we've been dealing with this type of authoritarianism, this type of lack of access to, body autonomy, rights, and whatnot for so long. and black women die four, three to four times more giving birth in Bay Area hospitals and in the United States, just because of sheer apathy. when black women are dealing with things like preeclampsia and they say, I'm feeling pain, they're looked at as drug seeking more often instead of, Hey, this lady might have some horrible thing going on, or, or they're told to wait. They're told to sit down and be patient and they're forgotten about. that is the sheer. You know, root of that is that that callousness, that apathy, that black women's suffering gets historically in this country. and there's lots of orgs that want to help. lots of them. you know, but I want to help women. I really do. you know, when I taught hip hop a, I created this women's empowerment workshop, but I didn't want to ever teach that. And I didn't want to just create it and be like, here, teach this.'cause it has to, you know, good intentions, you know, feel me. but I think a lot of these organizations that want to help. not a lot of people like me in the decision making rooms, you know what I'm saying? So, when we get these, interventions out, they're not always the most successful. That's why DPH here walked up to me. They're like, yo, do you teach about hip hop therapy? Because they have the resources, they have the degrees, they have the, all that stuff. But what they don't have is the trust. That's historic. and so they needed help from somebody like me, you know what I'm saying? the pregnancy village, Melanie, she, is a nurse. she works, delivering babies, and she helps us to set up this stuff. She said she saw my website. She was like, yeah, is what we need. You don't deliver no babies. You know what I'm saying? I don't do prenatal care. I don't do lactation coaching. All right. I don't do anything like that, but what I do do is make black people very comfortable and I create spaces that are healing in and of themselves. and that kind of culture can be a catalyst to organize marginalized people around any services. It doesn't matter, you know, whether it's math, whether it's working with Parks Cal and getting kids rapping about the toxic Superfund site next to Hunter's Point where I grew up, which is why people are glowing over there, you know? but yeah, it is just been really cool to go there. And bring DJs and bring, you know, live graffiti artists like Laser one MCA or Buku one. And they're setting up big graffiti murals that say love on it. And little babies are painting and stuff like that. We're like, come on, kids start graffiti. And then DJ Lex, who's like this world class dj, historic in the Bay Area. He's bringing his turntables, letting kids scratch and things like that. And then we booked three or four artists to rap and perform. and they make the village cry. And sometimes the, you know, the, the village makes them cry too. I think a lot of times people don't know that rappers don't just wanna rap at CD dive bars, you know what I'm saying? our words are not confined to settings that people are used to. And for me, a lot of my work was been given op opportunities to artists to get in environments that they're not used to, where they can see the power of the words. and then you get the feedback from these women, these people who are just like going through, you know, some of the most serious, you know, moments of energy, time, emotion, and then seeing'em dancing, you know what I'm saying? And, and seeing'em, hear people rapping about pregnancy and, and beauty. I think it's one of the reasons why the village grows. It's one of the reasons why people come back happy. and yeah, I, I can add that to anything. So anybody need hip hop out there? You need a DJ for a birthday party. want somebody to graffiti your infant's room with math symbols or something like that. My job is just getting hip hop artists paid.'cause as long as we pay our storytellers, then our future will be bright. If we do not pay our storytellers, then we're gonna need supplemental. Mostly white LED NGOs, you know, nonprofits with their galas and their charcuterie boards. with whatever help they can have for black people that, you know, may or may not be impactful, you know what I'm saying? They're gonna hire some of us. I've gone to a few of those galas. It's really cool. You know what I'm saying? They got great wine and cheeses. but I, I don't, you know, I, I love what Planned Parenthood does. I think that there's so many black women that are rapping about those things that would. Creates so much more impact on outcomes and health. If they got a quarter of the marketing budget that Planned Parenthood had, it's just me. I think hip hop does that. So

BETH BARANY 15:34

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I, I'm sure we could keep going, but I'm gonna wrap it up here. I have a surprise question, which is not so surprise. Yeah. So, what, when you hear how to write the future, what do you think of, what does that make you think of?

Khafre Jay 15:49

think that makes me think first off is trying to like break off my chains, you know what I'm saying? I think trying to, trying to stop my impediments, you know, my preconceived notions. to let myself flow, just flow. I think in order to think of the future, really hard. We have so much baggage and bias that allows us to even think of the possibilities where technology might go, for example, you know what I'm saying? You look at Star Trek, you know, the next generation now, and you're like, wow, we didn't even think that we might have stuff floating in midair walking with this holograms. yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to be the Jules Vern of your time. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, I was just really focused on trying to be open, just clearheaded yeah,

BETH BARANY 16:27

I love it. I love it so much. So how can people find out about you? Where do they go? What's the first stop? They can just get all your awesome stuff, support you, bring you into their organization. Yeah. Where do they go?

Khafre Jay 16:39

as important as my community. and so if I could ever ask for any support for anything, it would be for my life's work right now, which is hip hop for the future.org. we are really, really looking for long-term monthly support. right now we have about 350 ish monthly supporters that have allowed us to rock in Berkeley for 70 weeks, providing this beautiful platform. We started people's careers. We built an ecosystem, hopefully soon to build an economy around it. But we're really close to getting enough monthly support to open up Flow Lounge San Francisco.'cause San Francisco used to be a historic place for, for rap, and that's gone. Almost completely. and so we really need that support. After that, we'll be doing the same in San Jose'cause tech has strangled people down there and all kids have, if they have hip hop, it's that corporate, gangster, misogynistic, violent place that breeds unsafe conditions. We need your help for that down there. If you need DJs for a birthday party, break dances. If you want team building, let me know if you want somebody to graffiti your business. atrium, with company mission stuff, galas. Let me know. hip hop should be in every strategy meeting. If it's not, and you're working with people. Even if you think it's not hood people, if you think, all those white CEOs, they love rapping too. Don't get it twisted. yeah. I just, I just want people to go hip hop for the future.org. You can always find me coffee j just type my name anywhere on everything. check out my blog on LinkedIn. 22,000 person following Unapologetic Black Newsletter. Listen to me on KPO oh San Francisco 89 5 every Sunday playing three hour block of local barrier hip hop. yeah, go to Critical Race Threads and dress like your mostly friendly neighborhood, black activists.

BETH BARANY 18:13

Oh, I love it. I love it. I could listen to you forever. All right. this is so awesome. Thank you so much for being a guest on How To Write the Future. I'm gonna wrap it up. that's it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper. Woo. That's a wrap. All right.

Khafre Jay 18:29

Right.