What Rap and Business Have in Common
What Rap and Business Have in Common
UC Berkeley students from the M.E.T. program (Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology) approached me recently to speak about my experience in business.
Though I am approaching my 50’s — I have always been in business. I am a long-time CEO with businesses in Montreal, New York and San Francisco. Currently, I am CEO for the Important.com company — working to improve public safety in smart cities and in automotive.
What Rap and Business Have in Common
Words are important in business and in life. I search for and find great and inspiring work with encouraging words for business all around the global markets, in rap.
Rap tends to push boundaries wherever it goes and it energizes and propels innovation. Parallels can be drawn between both the fields of Rap and business.
Here is the RAP piece I wrote and am performing for you at ReadWrite, and for the UC Berkeley students from the M.E.T. program.
First in Business Principles
In building a business — What are the first principles? Guess what? These are the same first principles you must use in Rap.
- Create value (have something interesting to say)
- Craft your message the most appropriate way
- Generate momentum
- Keep the bar high at all times
- Have the quest of excellence
- Face competition squarely
- Show grit and tenacity
- Keep going
Signing on to Sing Rap
Signing to Rap (rapping here) isn’t easy. Is signing on or building a Startup and running a business any different? No! In both fields, you will face yourself — you will face fear. Unless you conquer your fear — that fear will have a power and a stopping force.
When fear begins to build in you and you think you can’t continue on — what should you do? You you are in leadership in your company and you have fear or you sense there is fear in your employees — what can you do?
These are real question faced every single day in business whether you are an entrepreneur, building a startup, or you are part of a long time established business.
You Better Find Out How to Save Yourself from Fear
The video shown above goes deeper in detail and presents my first song ever as a conclusion. I maybe do better in business than in singing or rapping — but in business we must innovate, we must pivot, we must do what it takes to continue on and save our work.
I hope that this RAP is a text that will age well with business and especially with the UC Berkeley students. Please follow the Rap songs that help you grow as an Entrepreneur, those Rap pieces that make you a better Manager, or inspire you in your technology.
Look at all forms of creativity that have inspired you before — and revisit these at different points in your lifetime — you will find something new.
Remember that I am not a Rapper or a singer — I am a businessman that has been inspired by the words, impressions and expression in RAP songs.
HERE ARE THE WORDS TO THE RAP — FOR YOU TO FOLLOW ALONG
FEAR
———-
Tu peux pas | tu peux pas | tu peux pas
Feeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarr
When you’re down you’re down you’re down you’re down you’re down and we are all down to the ground.
We spy all
In spiral
Inspired
By all
Social
Downfall
Global
Last call
Feeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarr
When you’re down you’re down you’re down you’re down you’re down and we are all down to the ground.
Your inaction calls a mass reaction against the addition of your addiction to mind incarceration.
Still wondering why admiration isn’t your ration
An abomination you set already steadily in motion
Nonintervention with infinite duration brings our institution to implosion an invitation to a deception in inception
Bar fixation in troubled ocean bears no notion of rational direction in all your emotional obsessional commotion
Obstination to abstention drowns realization. A compass that encompass no destination
Your super Id goes, with a superego, who consciously hit fists, sink ships, viciously hid grit
An ego ideal KO not OK chaos created by an obnoxious cautious unconscious subconscious who thinks it has wit
Your bit of conscious subconsciously loses time when your Id times times you instantly quit (a tough thought)
You wear an unfit destiny paired with no real mental ability to understand this where it contradicts your reality constantly in conflicts
Permanently muted with no act it’s manic, you’re just a bluff muffed fluff wanna be tough no new thoughts (so soft)
Now nod your head nut, no not your nuts you nuts no you’re not dead hot
Electro-choc – Call the docs – Send the bocks
I’m the barman it’s your last call at the counter you can’t counter the encounter of the trawl here comes the 9-1-1 shot (Cheers)
Off docks and rims we all but soar gall when you swim in grim whims we crawl and bawl still you standstill and stall
Like cops, your worries freeze us all
Hear the breeze you block
Opt for the call, Gees
Or we’re cold corps
I’ll rest not
Feeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarr
Tu peux pas | tu peux pas | tu peux pas | tu peux pas Tu peux pas | tu peux pas | tu peux pas | tu peux pas
Oui tu peux quand tu veux faire mieux que ceux qui doute d’eux
Là d’être bredouille, de n’avoir ni miettes ni dépouilles dû à ceux tousseux qui se la coule douce en noeud
coulant les foules bafouillant et souillant tout ceux qui ont le feu
Cool j’atteste toutefois que les deux moins deux couilles détestent la houle des textes
denses penses pas adipeux dextres qui dansent extirpant la panse et les tripes des tripeux
Impuissant, ce monsieur se permet de s’exprimer sans cesse pour faire feu en fou furieux sur l’effroi froid
vrai faux fait qu’on cri mainte fois de rendre silencieux
(Based on Google Translation)
You can’t | you can’t | you can’t | you can not
Yes you can when you want to do better than those who doubt themselves
Tired to be empty-handed, to have neither crumbs nor spoils due to those coughing who take it easy,
putting crowds in noose, stammering and defiling those who have fire
Cool, however, I certify that two minus two balls hate swells of dense texts think not adipose dexterous
dancing rooting out the stomach and guts of the tripeux*
Powerless, this gentleman allows himself to constantly express himself to fire like a berserk on cold fright,
true false fact that we cry many times to silence.
* Tripeux: Quebec slang for people who live intensively and enjoy life
I appreciate the readership of ReadWrite and especially the UC Berkely business students.
You read
You read and you think
You read and you think that you think
But you have no idea of what I’m about to write
I write
I write and I think
I write and I think that you read
But I have no idea of what you think
So please write
That is why I write on ReadWrite
The Bast Blast
@BlastBast (on Twitter)
Image Credit: wendy wei; pexels; thank you!
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