BIGGER THAN HIP-HOP
BINJ Welcomes Akrobatik to its Board of Directors
BY CHRIS FARAONE
Before I got around to asking Akrobatik to join the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism board of directors last week, he couldn’t stop talking about the young artists and musicians he had recently met at the Cambridge Community Center. Their songs, he said, were some of the most promising tracks he’d heard all summer, in part thanks to the mentorship of locally-grown talent like Letia Larok, who worked closely with the youth all summer.
I made the ask: “Then you should write about it.” Akrobatik, known to some as Jared Bridgeman, has a background in journalism, and used to cover music for Performer magazine, among other outlets. As hip-hop fans already know, he has a longstanding reputation as an ace writer and enlightened soul, with rhymes directed at innumerable issues that impact Greater Boston. As such, a few days later, Akrobatik sent me a column on the Hip Hop Transformation class in Cambridge, which I ran in DigBoston just in time to spread the word about the program’s end-of-summer jam.
It is that instinct, to boost local ingenuity, which compelled us to ask Akrobatik to join BINJ as a board member (we’re still working on recruiting other members, and will announce the whole roster soon). A native of Dorchester who currently lives in East Boston, he is a markedly skilled communicator who has made a point of propping Massachusetts on national and worldwide stages. With a catalog of group and solo albums spanning nearly 15 years, released on some of hip-hop’s most applauded independent imprints, Akrobatik is a certifiable trendsetter with crossover renown. Considering the grassroots efforts through which BINJ is striving to connect with larger audiences, there’s no doubt that we have a lot to learn from our latest addition.
Among his multifaceted stripes, Akrobatik’s expertise spans from professional and college sports coverage — as many may recall, for years he rhymed the daily “Sports Rap-Up” segment on JAM’N 94.5 — to the academic side of art and culture. Last year he began teaching an annual class titled “Hip-Hop: History and Practice” with Professor Rachel Rubin at UMass Boston, while as a touring artist he has served as an ambassador for this region on multiple continents. It’s also worth noting that, as a rap artist, Akrobatik has earned the incredibly rare accolade of being one of the few artists outside of Public Enemy with whom Chuck D has collaborated. For an organization that was formed to fight the power and treat independent creatives with the respect they deserve, it’s hard to think of a more natural fit.
“I am looking forward to being part of a media environment that digs deeper to discover, and to expose the abundance of talent in the arts,” Akrobatik says. “Residents of the city should be held in as high regard as their talented counterparts from out of town, and their work should be covered at length. The thought that artists have to leave Boston to succeed must be squashed, and it starts with informing Bostonians about Bostonians.”
He continues: “I would also like to see equal coverage of neighborhoods. The Orient Heights housing projects are just as important as the ones in Roslindale or anyplace else, and they deserve just as much attention in the attempts to improve living conditions in Boston.”
