I’ve been a hiphop fan ever since my brother brought Eminem into our household back in the 90s, the lyrical skill, consistency in creativity and the untouchable flow all had me memorizing the MMLP from intro to outro. Sorry mama I had no Idea what the dude was saying at the time lol.

“This is another public service announcement brought to you in part………..by Slim Shady” MMLP intro

I was sold, from there on no other music could replace hip-hop, still today I clinch my knuckles whenever someone tries grabbing my AUX cable in attempts to play their house in my house, unbelievable!! To me music started with a purpose, to summarize it,  after being enrolled into a private school in grade 2 from a public school the previous year, my English language skills were non existent, so much so that I failed grade 2, I know you like really? yep, not so Genius you figure? lol just blame it on the public school system. from there something amazing happened, I managed to come in second in my grade 2 class with the second attempt. From there on it was the stratosphere and above… With hip-hop music as my official English tutor in the 90s I was bound for greatness, no other kid from there on was able to match my English skills, hands down, all hail hip-hop right?

With that being said, I only remember buying 3 music CDs from there on, the rest I would grab from my friends or just download from torrent sites. that was back in the early 2000; from there on I took like a 10 year break from buying music, well that’s up until this year when I copped Cassper Nyovest’s Tsholofelo album. at the time I bought it I wasn’t quite sure why I bought it, was in Balleritis? was he really that good or was I just caught up in the hype? truth is people dont buy music this days and that is due to one reason of which I will be dumping down in this article.

“They complain about the music but they never fucking buy it_I kinda get it though, we asking them to cop it_And they probably like, ‘Why? You waking up in a new Bugatti’ “ Talib Kweli

Okay put your lyrical mind aside and lets talk the golden circle, Ima break down intellectually a part of the reason why Cassper has managed to break boundaries and become the idol that he is today, because brother just popped up from nowhere, and took everybody  by storm, how did he do it?

“It’s evident that we way smarter than they thought”

Simon Sinek speaks on the golden circle, which is a circle that describes what fuels human motivation, to me this golden circle breaks down so vividly the reason why most people make it and why some don’t make it. It’s used mainly in product positioning, mission setting and for marketing purposes. This can however be used to explain a lot besides organisational matters, because we are Genius we are gonna use this to explain why some artists make it and why some don’t regardless of their talent levels.

This model is a universal model used mainly by different companies is trying to communicate their purpose to their customers, very few companies are able to answer the Why question which is what speaks to a consumer, as Simon Sinek puts it, its the reason some customers line up for hours whenever a new iphone comes out, or why people line up for hour whenever a  new nike sneaker comes out. If you look at most of your highly capitalsed and successful companies, they maneged to show to the world WHY they do what they doing. The below is apple’s mission statement which answers the WHY question.

“Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” Apple

“People don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY you do it” with this being the case, we all need to define specifically why is it that we do what we do in order to have a purpose and vision that everyone can identify with and share. This talks to the emotion, and if you think about it, humans are emotional beings, the WHY factor speaks to the emotional sensoring part of the brain (Limbic brain) that makes all decisions.

Because we are Genius we have adapted the Golden Circle to make it appropriate to explain why some rappers gain more success than others, this is so Genius it literally gives that spine chill effect.

“People don’t buy WHAT you do, people buy WHY you do it” Simon Sinek

From the very first track “I hope you bought it”, Cassper manages to communicate ever so effectively why he does what he does. My view is he has been able to break so many records due to his ability to speak on the WHY statements. The title of his album also gives a profound meaning to his hustle, “Tsholofelo” is a Tswana name which means “Hope” in English. The greatest thing you can ever do in promotion of your personal brand is to tell your story and give it meaning. Don’t tell me what you have, tell me what you are gonna do, people relate easily to you when you speak from the heart and you share with them your ambitions, your dreams, this in-turn makes you easily relatable.

“Leaving a system of safe coz Ima rap”

“But I got history to make though”

“Euphonik told me that rap don’t make money wanna prove him wrong, wonder what that’s gonna take from me”

“Im on the grind for gold-earth, the broke have no worth, welcome to the city of Joburg.”

“How is it my life if I live by your rules”

“Ntwana muff-town kyo kai mamela, phak’misa kasi let it grow climb the leddar, I just wanted to spit dope rhymes mamela”

“They say my kind dont fit in so I forced in, coz I believe if I dont quit I’ll get a portion”

“I’m tryna make enough to change my whole family member’s lives before I’m 6 feet under”

The above all focus on the why statements, there are so many why statements in the album that I cant cover all of them, just listen and you will see how powerful words are.

Simon Sinek goes on to explain how the brain is engineered in a way that it responds only to why statements.

The Neocortex brain is the higher level thinking brain, it understands language, figures and is rational. the Limbic brain on the other hand has no capability of understanding language or number analysis, its responsible for all of our emotions being trust, love, lust, hate, etc. This portion of the brain is mostly responsible for human behavior, all decision making is a result of this portion of the brain, and here’s the best part, it responds only to WHY statements. To summarize this, what it means is that, to reach out to people and make them be inline with your ambitions and all that you are communicating to them, you will have to directly aim for the Limbic brain which responds only to heart felt WHY statements.

What are your ambitions? Paulo Coelho once said “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”…. speak of your dreams and the world will follow…………

“I have a dream” Martin Luther King

 

 

Article by Kagiso Maloma

Golden Genius Hip-H0p Circle model adapted from Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle with reference made to his video on TED.

Comments

comments