afropunk exclusive: it’s bigger than hip hop: stic of dead prez launches new record label dedicated to healthy living

“We’re introducing health as the tenth element of hip hop and this is about our lives,” says Khnum “Stic” Ibomu, one-half of the internationally acclaimed hip hop duo Dead Prez and founder of RBG Fit Records, a new record label dedicated to healthy living.

By Joann Natalia Aquino*, AFROPUNK contributor

Let’s start with Dead Prez, whose music is known for its socially conscious, politically charged, social justice advocacy and community activism. What led you to that kind of awareness? I grew up in the South in Tallahassee, Florida, where I met my partner M-1, and the conditions there of poverty, street life, racism and feeling disconnected in a small town — a lot of those things shaped my mentality and my experiences. We saw crack coming to our neighborhoods and we experienced police brutality and things like that first-hand. Some of our first heroes were like the Black Panther Party — they were our big inspiration: how they cared for the community and how they stood up, the pride and the strength that we saw in them when we were looking around seeing our elders become crack addicts. The Black Panther Party was what it should be to us. We organized ourselves and our communities similar to the Panthers with canned food drive and things for the elders, and our music took on those ideas.

What transpired between 2000, when Dead Prez released its first album, and now, that motivated you to launch your new record label RBG Fit Records, which emphasizes healthy living?
So much happened. Before we were signed, M-1 and I were homeless for a year in New York City just trying to cross that professional artist threshold, trying to get a deal and get established. Eventually it panned out — we got signed and got a huge deal with Sony and Columbia; we toured the world and became fathers and business owners, and had a lot of experience globally. In that process, the street life was still a part of my lifestyle to a large degree, especially in terms of partying and drinking and smoking, and how I was eating and the stress I was carrying. I woke up one day with a gout in my leg and I was only in my early 20s — that was the shift that moved me from putting all the emphasis on the external social issues, but to also recognize how our diet, mental habits and things like that affect us internally. I was able to heal naturally by taking on a plant-based diet, my wife (Afya Ibomu, a holistic nutritionist) helped me do that, and that got me interested in martial arts, which I’ve been studying for ten years, because I wanted to be more active. Then I got into yoga and running, and became a long-distance running coach. I saw how my lifestyle changes affected my outlook, my happiness and my passion to want to help other people heal in different ways, so I created a genre of music called “fit hop” to bring that together. We started a label this year after I did a workout album called The Workout — and it’s the first fit hop record.

RBG Fit Records is dedicated to the fit hop genre and we’re introducing the tenth element of hip hop as holistic health and wellness. We’re getting it in the Smithsonian and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (located in Harlem, New York), and co-signed by many of the pioneers of hip hop to officially induct health as the tenth element. We’re also working on launching a 15-city “10th Element of Hip Hop Tour” in April. I’m doing that in partnership with the Hip Hop is Green Movement, Vegan Outreach and many other partners. (For more information on that tour, visit: http://poagp.com/10th-element-of-hip-hop-tour.)

What does RBG stand for in RBG Fit Records?
It has many meanings. Since Dead Prez’s time, we came in the game red, black, green— the liberation colors, and RBG as “Revolutionary But Gangsta” — it’s street music, but it’s revolutionary in scope. For the Fit Club and for the holistic health lifestyle, we express it as “Reaching Bigger Goals” or “Refine, Build and Grow.” So RBG moves and grows and lives as we gain consciousness.

What is the record label’s vision?
We have five principles that permeate all our classes, our workshops, the music, our merchandise, our apparel and the whole movement. Those five core principles are knowledge, nutrition, exercise, rest and consistency. So we just try to represent people of multicultural backgrounds embracing holistic health in a way that is relevant to what’s popping and that’s engaging for the everyday person.

You talked about the fit hop genre as the focus of RBG Fit Records. What is fit hop about?
Fit hop is holistic health and fitness themed hip hop featuring skillful lyricism, street smarts and always authentic. It’s not just fitness in terms of push-ups and abs, but it’s mind, body and spirit too — holistic fitness. With the label, we vow to make music strong enough for the streets, but wholesome enough for the whole family.

How do you find the artists that you work with and what do you look for?
We look at our label as like how a boxing camp would look at themselves, so we have people in training camp, but they don’t have a professional fight yet — they don’t have a release date yet. But we’re working on the jabs, the hooks, the cross; we’re working on the techniques, the expression, the articulation, the lifestyle. The key thing is you have to be really striving for a holistic lifestyle. You have to walk the talk. First and foremost, we look for skill in the craft. Then we look for you having some street in you — you got to be G. And you have to have had a real lifestyle transformation and have some heart, something people can genuinely connect with.

Coach Nym (from South Bronx, New York — now living in Miami, Florida) is a personal trainer and our debut artist. His single is called “Worth the Sacrifice,” about his own transformation. Then we have about five people in training camp, including producers, because we do that with beatmakers as well. We have a certain vision for our sound — we call it the champion sound of healthy living. We want the Rocky energy, but with the trap feel —​mixing up genres like that.

How do you weave the social justice work that you do through Dead Prez with the work that you are doing through RBG Fit Records promoting healthy living? How do they work together?
It’s all healing. To bring justice to our communities is a healing force. The other healing rituals and practices that we advocate through RBG Fit Club is another form of justice — it’s the kind of justice that we administer to ourselves and it’s not unrelated to politics, because many times the access that we lack to healthy, fresh food is political, or our lack of ownership of land and access to create gardens in the ‘hood and places that we live — those are political decisions that make us disenfranchised. Healthy living is not divorced from the political struggles that we have.

How has your inner work changed your music writing?
I feel like I’ve always been an instrument of my spirit, but maybe where my consciousness is at that time. Everything that I did as a young person with Dead Prez was sincere. But there’s always room to grow and change. Today I’m still a person who is learning every day and trying to be authentic to where my consciousness is at now. Some of the changes in my music have been that I don’t curse in the fit hop music and I don’t say “nigga” — those are personal things I decided to do, not because I feel like I’m above it, but because I want the music to be able to be played in spaces with young people, and spaces with monks, and spaces with different healers and people that I respect their disdain for profanity and the “n” word, and I’m sensitive to how words and energy are received in different places. I feel I can still be an effective communicator without saying certain things.

How is your work bigger than hip hop?
From the jump, we knew that what we came to do with our music is bigger than the songs — it’s the lifestyle, it’s the community, it’s the purpose, it’s the mission, the cause — those are bigger than the songs that we’re creating. And what we’re doing with the tenth element, that’s bigger than hip hop. When hip hop says, “I’m going to embrace health, just like how I embrace DJing, just like I embrace MCing,” that makes us see how big our culture really is and how important it is. Now more than ever, we need to acknowledge that hip hop embraces health and wellness. It was born from being a healthy alternative for the youth and it comes from that, and we don’t need to lose that. It’s our future.

Photo by: Tiffany Janay

Photo by Terra Coles

For more information about RBG Fit Records, visit http://www.rbgfitclub.com. For updates on Dead Prez and where they’re touring next, follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Fans-of-Dead-Prez-547448498650336/.

*Joann Natalia Aquino is a traveling freelance writer covering lifestyle including fashion, food, arts and entertainment, indigenous arts, and the tattoo culture. She can be reached at missaquino@gmail.com