The College World Reporter

There is a great generational divide when it comes to hip-hop music and the hip-hop culture that it has spawned.  Most people of my generation, if they are honest, may remember thinking when they were younger, "When I become an adult, I'm not going to judge the music and lifestyle of the younger generation as harshly as the older generation of my day has judged ours."  In regard to hip-hop, most of us have not kept that promise. 

While hip-hop music has been widely accepted, and has transcended race and to some extent age, and has grown to global proportions, still, we are divided along generational lines for the most part, with mostly young people and young adults who passionately embrace both hip-hop music and its culture, and on the other side are their parents and other older adults who are vehemently opposed to the music and the culture. 
 
Why is there this generational divide?  Perhaps more with hip-hop music than any other music genre in our history.  One reason is because of the stereotypes in the minds of those who feel that all hip-hop artists are vulgar, they all promote misogyny and masochism, they all use profanity loosely, and that stereotype projects the image of young men in doo rags, who wear their pants hanging down exposing their underwear, and young ladies wearing extremely tight fitting pants and low-cut blouses with body parts exposed.
 
After my interview with the leading expert on the hip-hop culture, I feel that we can explain the generational divide as the miseducation of a generation, because there are revelations in Mr. Patton's interview that shatter many of the stereotypes accepted by my generation.  Although some of the images previously mentioned do exist, they are the exception rather than the true representation of the majority of the hip-hop population and their culture.  What you are about to read is a very comprehensive and thought provoking and enlightening interview, that will lead most to a different opinion about hip-hop music and hip-hop culture than they currently have.
 
I encourage you to read the following interview in our feature article, How Hip-Hop Rocked the World, with Mr. Erin Patton and learn the true essence of what hip-hop really is, and what it is not.  Mr. Patton is an expert on consumer behavior, and is the foremost authority on hip-hop in America, and perhaps the world, and has written a book, Under the Influence: Tracing the Hip-Hop Generation's Impact on Brands, Sports, & Pop Culture, which is highly acclaimed and is used in 50 college and university campuses around the world, and is being taught in several courses.  Mr. Patton is the creator of the Seven Ciphers Segmentation Framework, which attracted flagship sponsors like MTV, Pepsi, and the Brookings Institution.  He was hand picked by Michael Jordan to launch his Nike brand.  Mr. Patton tells us how hip-hop rocked the world, and why it will continue to do so.

CWR:  To really appreciate our interview, I feel that it is necessary for our readers to understand your Seven Ciphers Segmentation Framework.  Can you give us an overview of the Seven Ciphers?

E.P. - Borne out of clinical observation when working at Nike and in particular the Jordan brand business was one that required to stay as close to the consumer and the market as possible, and just in general, I am a student of consumer behavior.  So that kind of observation is what I use to help me position a brand, market it more effectively, and incorporate one of the attitudinal, behavioral aspects of the urban market. 
 
And so, I would routinely intersect along the touch-points where the consumer was living, breathing, playing that was within the community; at the barber shop, just hanging out there, at retailers, urban specialty retailers, events, the mall, wherever the consumer was, playground, you name it, I would try to get there and stay there so that I could take as much insight as possible, and spend time talking to the consumers as well, so that I could in turn take those insights and make them actionable in a business sense, and bring that understanding and insight back into the brand and back into the product process, the design process, etc.  So that I could ensure that our product as well as our brand communications were as close to real time as possible in terms to the relevance that it had within the culture.  
 
In the process of that and at this time, as hip-hop music started to transcend race, and the lifestyle became one that was adopted within the mainstream, and as hip-hop's generation X started to mature, those who were 30 plus who came of age with hip-hop, and were beginning to mature, moving to a new phase in their lives; I observed there were some distinct clusters, and segments, within the urban market that were forming.  For those of us who are in it and of it, who are part of the culture, we recognize that it's not monolithic.  There are many inspirations, there are many behaviors exhibited within this particular market and culture. 
 
So I wanted to bring some appropriate dimensions to the urban market and to the population and to the audience so that marketers could fully understand, and have the right perspective when looking to reach the target.  There is a difference between reaching the consumer, and touching the consumer.  So I wanted to give brands the opportunity to actually touch the consumer, and those that were most effective to their brand, and yielded the best R.O.I. (return on investment). 
 
The Seven Ciphers was really borne out of that clinical observation and seeing how culture had moved and seeing how individuals within the culture had coalesced and formed around a mindset.  The other piece of the ciphers was, I no longer felt that a purely demographic approach was appropriate for this particular audience, as they were more or less transcending and coalescing again around a shared attitude or mindset, so it was more of a psychographic. 
 
At Nike, I learned a lot about psychographics; it was really about those who were passionate about sports, and shared that same will and desire to 'just do it' if you will.  It wasn't so much about how old you were, what color you were, you know at Nike we focused on athletes who were trying to enhance their performance and had that shared attitude and belief around sports.  In the same context, I saw a psychographic profile emerging within the urban culture that was less about race, you know, what color you were, or how old you were necessarily in some cases, but it was more about the attitude that you shared, the awareness, the lifestyle, those things that form some commonality. 
 
So, it was a psychographic instrument that I created to capture this new profile.  The term cipher, I chose, as it is a term relevant to hip-hop culture.  Webster's definition if you will, people understand a cipher is sort of a very complex mixture of units that need to be decoded, this sort of arbitrary thing happening, and to decode a cipher is really somewhat of a puzzle.  Within hip-hop culture the term cipher indicated a group of individuals who formed themselves typically in a circle, literally.  And one individual would rap, they would say a rap verse, and then the next person would say a rap verse, picking up off of what that previous person said, and so-on and so-on as it moved around this circular formation. 
 
So you could find that at a high school bathroom as we used to do a little bit as I wrote about in the book, or you could find that just in the community.  You find guys that would come together and not just rap verses.  In many cases they would share knowledge and information just about the world, you know spirituality, a lot of different things that were part of the culture at its pure essence. 
 
I chose that to be somewhat analogous because within the urban culture, the urban market, you had an expression of it within the inner city experience, if you will, with African Americans, acculturated Hispanics, primarily African Americans who were the innovators, the inner city was sort of their laboratory where they were constantly creating the newest 'software' if you will.  I call them the software developers; this is the core urban cipher, where they are constantly creating language and innovating around brands, creating distinct preferences with brands, adopting brands and making them relevant in the mainstream. 
 
So I call them the software developers in the sense that they develop culture, and the killer app for them, so to speak is again, that newest dance, or style, or colors, or whatever it is within the culture that they are continuously kind of creating that will then eventually run on the  "mainframe" of society's pop culture.  But then, once you had the culture move into a tertiary market, I call it tertiary urban being the second cipher. 
 
In the southern regions, in places like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, these were areas that were continuing to grow in influence, and were having such a significant impact on culture as well, particularly through the music.  So you had artists like Lil Jon in Atlanta, of course you can go back to OutKast and others, and then eventually T.I., and Lil Wayne, and that whole explosion really was the result of a different interpretation of urban culture, that was taking place in the southern region. 
 
When I worked at Nike most of our focus was on that core urban segment that I just mentioned, those early adopters who were in Baltimore, or Washington, D.C., or New York.  That's really where we tried to target most of our marketing and product efforts, because we knew if the product caught on with them, they would eventually influence the masses, including these folks in the southern region who sort of looked up to them as the aspirational expression of hip-hop and urban culture. 

But that started to change a little bit in the late 90s and 2000s as the tertiary urban areas within the country started to have a stronger influence on hip-hop culture and in turn, popular culture.  That also represented a whole opportunity for marketers relative to HBCUs, historical Black colleges, and in that part of the country that created a real strong base, and a population, and an audience that they can reach out to.
 
I won't go through each of them, but the point being, there are distinct segments that all have critical mass within them.  So each of these seven ciphers have critical mass within them.  So, as a marketer if I am looking to reach the urban market, I can then focus on one or maybe two of these segments as opposed to saying, we want to reach the urban market, what do we do, how do we reach them?  Should we just go out and partner up with Snoop Dogg to do it, or some of these things that marketers do?  So this was a broader, strategic framework that we could put around the urban market to help companies better align themselves with this growing, emerging population.

CWR:  Hip-hop music has transcended race, and the lifestyle has been adopted within the mainstream.  Is this good or bad, since there are those who would say there are both good and bad elements of the hip-hop culture?

E.P. - I think, one of the things we understand about culture is that, as culture becomes created there is a higher expression of it and there is a lower expression of it without question.  By and large, the culture of hip-hop music and the lifestyle of hip-hop music, at its purest expression, has been a vehicle to connect cultures, not just here in the U.S. but around the world. 

It has been a vehicle for self-expression, to provide individuals with the means to uniquely express themselves.  It's provided a vehicle for entrepreneurship, for individuals to be able to channel their creativity and their influence and create enterprise around it. Invariably, just as with American pop culture, there will be remnants of the culture creation that appeal to a lower expression. 
 
Just as in American cinema; there are great movies that we could say have contributed greatly to American society in a positive sense.  Then we could also reference movies that proliferate violence and misogyny and racial stereotypes and everything in between. So without validating those instances or those offenses, if you will to culture, as it is uniquely striving to maintain a higher expression, what I see is a necessary balance within the culture to ensure that young people who are receiving these messages, just as they are on a daily basis forced to reconcile negative messages from positive messages that are coming at them through mass media, beyond just hip-hop music, but relative to American popular culture. 
 
Hip-hop is not unique in that sense in terms of language, or graphic images, or violence, or any of these things.  In fact, many of these same individuals that we are alluding to now, unfortunately were forced to digest and absorb and consume a lot of those same messages and images; being gangsters, and things that came to them as young people that they have attempted to reconcile, but they have glorified in some ways because they also recognized that it was entertainment.  Just as they were sitting there watching the movie about Scarface and etc., etc., and the violence and everything that came along with that, and they saw that it was entertainment.  And so they looked at their unique situation in their life and they saw some parallels clearly, with the struggle and the desire to have and achieve, and did glorify some of that.  
 
With that being the case, individuals have a responsibility, parents have a responsibility to educate their kids as to which aspects within our culture overall, not just hip-hop, but which aspects of our culture, are suitable for consumption. 
 
As you indicated, within the suburbs, and we know that the majority of hip-hop music is consumed by Caucasians in the suburban areas, and so that suburban cipher that I talked about, that's sort of the Eminem cipher if you will.  Those are individuals in the suburbs who, you know they look to hip-hop not so much for it being a way of their own life, but it gives them a window into an authentic life that they identify with.  They are taught a certain way, a suburban kid is taught a certain way to believe about race and about African Americans or Black Americans if you will.  And so through hip-hop music they gained a window into that culture and they started to challenge some of the things that they were taught. "Hey, these guys aren't that bad.  They have a life that is authentic and real."  So they started to look at their suburban existence and say, "Is this really a real existence? Is there any real substance in my lifestyle?"  And so they gravitated toward these individuals because of their will, because of their determination, because of their creativity. 
 
You have to remember that this generation is comprised of individuals who, against the backdrop of the South Bronx in the late 70s in dilapidated buildings and housing projects, and everything that we know came with the Black American experience in the late 70s and early 80s and into the 90s.  These individuals figured a way out, and made a way out of no way, and used their creativity and their ingenuity, and their stories; good, bad, and indifferent, to be able to do so, and use will and determination to redefine the American dream. 
 
With that certainly comes some positive expression as a culture, and some negative expression.  And I believe that hip-hop at its purest form, again was a vehicle for self-expression, consciousness, awareness, and groups like Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One; you know I got a lot of my information about Black history, quite frankly through a lot of that hip-hop music, that educated and informed us about things that our government was doing or shouldn't have done. 
 
A lot of things, you know, Public Enemy talked about J. Edgar Hoover, and some of the things that that office, the FBI did, to some of our Black leaders.  That was stuff I didn't get in high school.  But I got it when I listened to Public Enemy.  KRS-One talked about being a vegetarian, not eating meat, things like that.  So hip-hop in its purest form is, you know, we can't just reduce it to the negative expression, we've got to look at the full context without explaining away any of the behavior that is certainly detrimental to our young people.
 
CWR:  If I understand you correctly, it sounds as if you are saying that the hip-hop movement, the hip-hop culture, is reminiscent to what occurred in the late 60s, the early 70s.  Back then there was the peace movement, flower children or hippies; great focus on individualism and freedom of expression.  Many, many young people were anti-establishment, not just for the sake of being against those in power, but because there was the Vietnam War, the draft, and other things youth of the day was opposed to.  So, is the hip-hop movement similar to the peace movement of the 60s and 70s in regard to seeking individualism and self-expression?
 
E.P. - I think to some degree this generation felt the need to have a voice, and didn't see themselves portrayed accurately, certainly, but sometimes at all through mainstream media, magazines, TV, film.  When they went to shop for clothes, they didn't see anyone that looked like them, the clothes didn't fit the way they liked.  So they went out and created their own brands. If the designer of a clothing brand didn't respect or support them, they said, we'll go out and create it ourselves.  If Tommy Hilfiger doesn't want us to wear Tommy Hilfiger, OK, we'll go out and create Sean Jean, and Rocawear. 
 
So in many respects this generation was driven by a desire to have a voice, and also a desire to channel their creativity and their influence, and knowing that they could make a decided mark on American pop culture and history, and changing the course of history.  And with that, yes, some rebellion, as this generation came out of the civil rights movement and what our parents and the generation previously had  endured, to give us and create opportunities for progression and advancement, and we took them. The notion of breaking the glass ceiling, we took that, and we ran with that too. 
 
The other thing that I should point out is, you know when I speak of the hip-hop generation, I'm not just talking about the rappers that are part of this generation, I allude to them because on a macro level we can see their impact and their story, we hear about it or we know it through their music or their videos or whatever the case may be.  But, the hip-hop generation is a much broader population of individuals, who, came of age with this music, who are influenced by this music, but more importantly they had a sheer determination and a drive, to take, the sacrifice that was laid before them, and the opportunities that was in turn presented, as a stepping stone. 
 
So the previous challenges and problems and strife, became stepping stones for many of us.  And so we chose college.  The first in our families to go to college in many cases.  We chose programs like Inroads as I did, which took inner city kids and showed us how to put on a business suit and sit down and talk to folks in an interview.  And we took that training and we took that desire, but we also took the culture, and we moved into corporate America. The notion of breaking the glass ceiling, we believed that we could do that, and we saw folks ahead of us do it in many cases.  So we knew that we had a place, and we could start to see ourselves having success. 
 
In my story, I took that understanding into corporate America into the advertising and marketing world, and gave them a sense for who this hip-hop audience was, and who we were and what we thought and what we liked and how we dressed and how we talked, and helped translate that business opportunity. 
 
But, along the way, you know we got educated.  We became responsible.  We used our influence to create business and enterprise and everything else.  And now we are responsible parents, fathers, husbands, involved in the community, etc., in large part because of what hip-hop on a macro level was affirming for us along the way.  They were showing us the good life, the nice car, the vacations, you know, the things that came along with success.  That helped us to continue to have some aspirations even as we were moving through careers, you know corporate careers, or our own business or whatever, and having that will and that determination again to succeed at all odds. 
 
So it's important to understand that, the word hip-hop, in and of itself has many meanings.  For some it can be polarizing, but when I say hip-hop generation, you know I'm really talking about this generation that came of age in the late 80s early 90s, and took all of that experience, all of the struggle, in many cases coming from the inner city, and redefined the American dream and achieved great success.  And at the same time, influenced and built brands, and changed the course of products and brands, and transformed industries like the sneaker culture, the automotive culture.  We just took our creativity, and we applied it against industry, and we applied it against pop culture as we moved forward.  So, in that sense, this generation has in essence helped to establish modeling consumer culture and popular culture as well, and at the same time influenced the social conversation and the political piece, as I mentioned earlier.

So, I just wanted to be clear in the sense that the hip-hop generation isn't just about 50 Cent and about Snoop Dogg, and about the individuals who clearly have made a significant imprint on the music and on the culture, but we are talking about a population of very well intended people that represent this generation.  Many of them are students at HBCUs who have gone on to do great things as well.  So I just wanted to clarify that a little bit.
 
So it's not just, so I guess in essence it's not just the kids walking down the street with their jeans hanging by their ankles.  You know we just have to really put the right dimension, these are people who are wearing suits by day, and on the weekend you know you will see them in some jeans maybe, and some Timberland boots with their kids at the mall.  But they still represent this culture and this generation, but are also doing so with some dignity and some sophistication as well.
 
CWR:  One of the things we hope to accomplish with this interview is to present an accurate image of the hip-hop generation.  Because many of us, and that includes me, have the image in our mind that you just mentioned, of the slovenly dressed young man with his underwear exposed and his pants looking like they are about to fall off.  No doubt our student readers were already aware of the true nature of the image of most of those in the hip-hop generation you just described.  Your comments have given me, and hopefully many of our readers from my generation an enlightened understanding of the diversity within the culture, and that the stereotype most often presented is not representative of the majority of the hip-hop generation. I thank you for those comments, and the clarity that results from them.
 
In your book, speaking of the hip-hop generation, you make reference to tricked-out cars, the technology they use, the brands they wear, the beverages they drink, the language they speak, these are all components of the hip-hop culture.  So, can you provide a basic definition of what hip-hop culture is?
 
E.P. - I would probably choose to paraphrase KRS-One, who is the philosopher of hip-hop, and he said that it's an attitude, hip-hop is an attitude, it's an awareness, it's a way to view the world.  And so I think at its most fundamental level, it's a mirror.  A mirror that's a reflection of an individual, and who they are, who they want to be, who they are striving to be, and also a reflection of society, and what's going on in broader society, and what's going on in the world. And so this becomes a way for an individual to project themselves into a daily experience and a daily existence, that in many cases affirms and validates who they are, but more importantly helps them to have an image in terms of who they want to be, and to have some aspirations for who they can be. And at its fundamental level, that's what hip-hop allowed us to do, it gave us a window, it gave us a way to reflect and project our unique experience onto the world. 
 
As Mos Def, who is another conscious rap artist, said in one of his songs, he said you know people are always coming up to me and asking me where is hip-hop going?  Is it gonna die?  What is hip-hop gonna become?  And he said you know we act as if hip-hop is this, you know, kind of creature, and I'm paraphrasing, this kind of creature that just lives up in the mountains somewhere, and comes down every now and then to show itself, right.  And he said no, he said hip-hop is going wherever we are going.  You know, if we are going in a positive direction, hip-hop's going in a positive direction.  If we are going in a negative direction, hip-hop is going in a negative direction.  It's very similar to our own search and quest for spirituality.  If we have a divine source that we are connected with, from within, not something  that's abstract, that's totally detached from us.  But if we very much have that type of relationship with the divine source and the divine power, guess what!  That's gonna show up wherever you go, so when people see you they're gonna see that. They're gonna see something divine within you.  And this music and this culture is very much the same way. 
 
If it's internalized, in purely a positive sense, then when people see you as an individual that represents this generation, they're gonna see that positive expression of it.  Just as I do when I go around some of my friends from college, or when we hook up and we're in our hip-hop moment.  When we are playing some of the classic hip-hop music, or just when we are showing up to places and we've got a little bit of swagger and we've got a little bit of style in the way we're dressing, or whatever we're doing, you know, we're taking hip-hop in a positive direction. 
 
Just the other night here in Dallas, I went to visit with Common, he was here on tour.  Common is a hip-hop artist from Chicago, who is a very conscious hip-hop artist.  He was on CNN when they had the recent beating death of the kid in Chicago, and he spoke very eloquently.  He was a voice for us, and that's an example. 
 
When he went on CNN he took hip-hop in a positive direction.  He talked about the need for healing, but he also talked about the need for after school programs.  He talked about the need in a city like that to have the leadership come together and give these young people something to do after school, so that they have activities, so that they have things they can involve themselves in.  So they don't in turn have to, have as much concern over violence, or joining a gang, and some of these other things.  And that's the hip-hop perspective.  Let's not just blame, the victim in a sense; let's see the need for personal responsibility and accountability, but at the same time let's not forget that there is a role that our country has, there is a role that our government has, there is a role that our leadership has, to ensure that we are giving everyone every opportunity to live to their fullest potential.
 
And so he took, and brought hip-hop in a positive sense because that's very much what our experience was, and what the music communicated.  So, in that context, you know hip-hop is really about the individual at the granular level.  It's about a collection of individuals who have formed this global population.  But each of those individuals within that generation has the responsibility to exhibit the core values of the culture; creativity, ingenuity, empowerment, the kind of, the essence of the culture, self-determination, these are all positive things. So each individual has to carry and exhibit those qualities wherever they go. 
 
Certainly the artists should be doing the same thing, but there are gonna be those who don't.  There are gonna be those who take the music and the culture, and because someone gives them a microphone and a studio, they'll walk in there and they'll talk about girls, and clothes, and cars, and buffoonery.  There are those who will do that, and there are companies who will allow them to do that.  Because they're gonna profit off of that. 
 
The radio industry is going to allow certain things to be, certain songs to be played over, and over, and over, and over again, to the point where it becomes ingrained in the minds of young people because there is profit motive there.  The same for TV, and cable, and everything else, and record labels.  And so there is a complex system that has been created that will allow some of that negative expression to come through, because on some level they understand at the end of the day, just as broader U.S. and American culture has shown, we hear that all the time; sex sells, violence sells, all these things.  The gatekeepers for a lot of these media platforms understand that.  So they have a vested interest in allowing some of that negative expression to come through. 
 
But I believe it's up to the individual, I believe in personal responsibility, I believe as parents it does not matter to me, what or who is saying what in a song, or in a video, as a parent, I'm the program director, in my house.  It doesn't matter to me who the program director is, or whatever radio station, or whatever TV station; I'm the program director for my two sons.  So, I determine what they're gonna hear and what they're not gonna hear, and when they hear something that they're not supposed to hear, because that's gonna happen, then I'm there to help them understand it, put it into perspective, and more importantly, reconcile that against what our values are.  And I think that's where we as individuals really have to operate as it relates to this culture, and some of the negative by-products of it.
 
CWR:  Looking back during my lifetime, I don't know of any music genre that has had the impact that hip-hop has.  Possibly, the Beatles and Beatlemania and all of the British groups of that period, and the Motown Sound of the 70s.  When you look at that, how did this all transpire?  How did hip-hop music evolve, and how was it transformed into a culture that transcends racial, cultural, and gender boundaries, and has even taken on a global context?
 
E.P. - Great question. Yes, that is a great question.  I think one of the things that is not understood clearly about this audience, is the creativity.  You're talking about one of the most creative populations on the planet.  When you marry creativity with ingenuity and dire circumstances, you get this end result.  Because you have a population that's constantly creating, very creative.  Coming up with something new, a new way to talk, a new way to dress, a new way to match things, a new way to have social experiences, and the desire to constantly reinvent.  That's the other very important piece. 
 
So you have creativity and ingenuity coupled with dire circumstances that created this tremendous opportunity, and a platform.  And so once that platform was created, they all were coming behind it.  They all were coming behind it, because they wanted to then demonstrate their own unique self-expression.  So you have different artists within hip-hop music who wanted to bring their own unique style and flavor.  You remember Humpty the Humpty Dance, you know you had Kid 'n Play.  You know I talked about some of the social conscious rappers, you had Kwame that wore the polka dots. 
 
You just had so much creativity, it was like a canvas.  It was like someone said OK here's a canvas, now go ahead and create.  And so if you give that kind of canvas to an artist, and I use artist in the sense of this population, these individuals.  If you tell them, you have a canvas now go and create, that's exactly what they did through the music.  Then they were given visual mediums to convey that; video, magazines, now the magazines wanted to see what they were wearing where they were going.  And so brands then understood that, oh!  LL Cool J likes Kangol hats; OK great.  Run DMC wears Adidas sneakers.  They started to understand that these individuals had that type of visibility, so they became vehicles and a conduit for the brands to reach that desirable consumer, and those individuals within the music knew it as well.

In places like Tokyo, they have always imported western culture.  They've always been fascinated by our culture.  Hip-hop music became an avenue for them, and the younger populations over in Tokyo to express themselves as well.  The sneaker culture.  When I worked at Nike, when we released Air Jordans, they would fly over from Tokyo, and buy as many Air Jordans as they can, and take them back to Tokyo.  And they would eventually be on eBay, so it was just an amazing experience, but the music became the way that everybody connected with it identified with it. 
 
So now, so on top of the creativity, the ingenuity, dire circumstance, self-expression, let me show you how I'm distinctly different.  Because within urban and hip-hop culture, and I'll say Black American culture, we like to be different.  At the same time we want to know what the masses are doing, because it lets us know what's relevant culturally.  But at the same time on a micro level, I want to be a little bit different than you.  I want to wear my sneakers and my clothes or my suit, whatever it is, my car, I want to have a different flavor about what I do.  So, you then had this dimension that was occurring, as I was suggesting, at the same time, where you were getting unique, self-expression, coming in a multitude of ways.  And so that helped the culture to proliferate, even more. 
 
It's like as if you're creating software, and when I say these were software developers, that's exactly what I mean.  And their laboratory is the inner city at that time, so they're constantly creating new software.  So just imagine that you're Apple, Apple's doing it, you know look at their App Store, right.  I have an iPhone.  My kids love my iPhone because there's a million different applications that come with that phone.  If it's games or whatever, it's all this software.  Apple said here is the platform, now you guys go out and create as much software and applications as possible, right.  And the same thing happened within urban culture and hip-hop culture.  You had the platforms, meaning American consumer culture, popular culture, you know, companies; record companies, media companies, all these people with platforms.  And they said OK go ahead and create.  And so once you create the software, the new music, the new dance, the new style, whatever, the new songs, we're gonna run it on this platform for everybody to access.  So you had all those things happening, and then the media proliferation allowed it to then project even further.  So it wasn't just about what we got from being out with our friends, you know at the mall, or at the basketball court, or listening to the music on our Walkman, so we had those means to identify with the culture. 
 
But then MTV, came into the picture.  And once cable television and MTV came into the picture, then what?  Now, if you're in Iowa, you know, not Brooklyn, NY, not uptown; but if you're in Iowa, now you can turn on your television on Friday nights, and watch Yo! MTV Raps.  And if you're a suburban kid living in Iowa or wherever that is, you now have a means to instantly access, that culture and that lifestyle.  And now you can see, oh! that's what they're wearing.  "Hey mom, dad, I want to go to the mall and get those Nike sneakers."  "Johnny, why do you want a doo rag on your hair." You know, because he saw it in that video. 
 
So then media helped to proliferate the culture into the suburbs.  And that 's one of the reasons why, I say a lot in lectures, for the suburban parents who are wondering how in the world, their kid has an image and a poster of 50 Cent on their wall.  It's because they've been able to access the culture through the proliferation of media, and as a result they have gotten a glimpse into a world that they didn't know existed.  Or they knew existed, but they didn't know how it functioned, they didn't know the rules of it, they didn't know the codes, if you will, they didn't know the way  that they could adapt and adopt it immediately into their own experience.  And one other thing I should say about this piece, while I'm here, the suburban piece, this suburban cipher that I talk about.  But there is also the alternative urban cipher, which is also suburban kids, but it's the fusion of hip-hop and skate culture. 
 
So there's a whole population within the suburbs that don't necessarily want to replicate the lifestyles I just indicated, with the kid wanting to run out to the mall and buy whatever sneakers he saw the rapper wear or whatever.  There is a more simplistic, expression of the alternative urban cipher, which are the skate kids who have a little bit of hip-hop flair, but they don't wanna overly commercialize themselves.  So they don't see themselves as that kind of canvas, to let brands just kind of announce themselves to the world, if you will.  And so, that's important to just talk about the dimension within the suburbs. 
 
And then, the other cipher I did want to mention to you, and this does speak to your question in terms of, in conclusion, answering your question about how this culture permeated and proliferated the way that it did.  Because you then had, and have these different segments who have their own unique experience around the culture, who keep it alive in this very unique way.  So there are remnants of hip-hop culture within each of these ciphers and each of these segments, that unite them, and at the same time there are nuances within each of these ciphers and segments that make them unique, and that helps the culture to continue. 
 
There is the organic urban cipher, you know and I talked about this cipher in the sense that they are products of hip-hop's Generation X as well.  There is the contemporary urban cipher.  These are Gen Xs 30 up, who realized their aspirations, they once talked and dreamed about the fancy cars and fancy clothes and all these things, now they actually have the means to attain them.  And so they're overtly commercial in a way.  Think about a guy like P. Diddy, you know, it's like you're glamorous and all these different things.  But the organic urban cipher is essentially the same, age range, 30 and up.  But they're anti-commercial, they want the purest expression of hip-hop.  Artists like Jill Scott,  India.Arie, Musiq Soulchild, some of these folks, the whole neo soul music movement; these are individuals do who constantly seek that highest expression of hip-hop.  There is a heavy HBCU population within this organic urban cipher as well.  So each of these segments, keeps the culture moving and growing and morphing into something new. 
 
The last piece that I'll add in terms of how and why it got here, in addition to everything I've just said is, the notion of reinvention.  And that is another one of those key words, and I've thrown out a couple in the course of this discussion.  Reinvention is vital to urban culture and to hip-hop culture, it's about constantly reinventing oneself.  And that's what the best artists have done.  You know someone like Diddy, you know, he was Puffy, he was Puff Daddy, then he was Puffy, then he was Diddy, and all these different things, it's because reinvention is necessary for survival.  If you're a kid in the inner city, you know, you've gotta reinvent yourself.  You've gotta constantly be able to find a unique way to project who you are.  And in music and in hip-hop culture, reinvention has been critical, just as it is for this population to constantly find new ways to reinvent themselves.  But also, to reinvent brands, and to reinvent products.  Think about the Outkast song, Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture.  You know, bringing brands back into relevance. 
 
Right now the Gatorade brand is reinventing itself as G, you see these commercials with just G on it.  And that's out of hip-hop, so hip-hop helped reinvent the Gatorade brand, because G, is a term that's taken out of hip-hop.  So whether or not the core Gatorade drinker understands, they see G and they think, oh! G, Gatorade, right.  But no, G means, to us we know what a G is, right.  A G is, you know that's like, that's swagger, you know someone says he's a G, that's validation, right.  So, the creatives behind that campaign recognized that duality, and the lexicon.  And that's the other thing that hip-hop culture has done in terms of how it got to this point commercially.  It's allowed brands to reinvent themselves, to become relevant, to become meaningful.  And at the same time allowed language to be used in very creative ways, as Gatorade did.  By taking a word, that instantly stamps it as something that's official.  So when they're saying, that's G, they're telling us that that's something that's official, within the culture.  Like, forget the other makers of drinks, you know, that's G, that's something that's official. 
 
So the impact of this music and this culture is one that has also impacted Madison Avenue as I write about in the book.  In terms of how advertisers have used the culture for positioning and making brands relevant.  So, this culture at the same time, and these individuals within the culture certainly saw opportunities to take their influence and carry it to Madison Avenue and to film.  And so as we are talking about the proliferation of it, and the question you just posed, how it got to this point and so forth, it wasn't just the music you know, it was the films.  I have a little chapter, hip-hop Madison and Vine in the book, that talks about how hip-hop influenced Madison Avenue through commercials, and then film through the movies, through an entire genre of movies.  Individuals like Ice Cube, you know, who started in hip-hop music, became a great filmmaker.  John Singleton, of course Spike Lee, all of the individuals who took some piece of this culture and put it on the big screen.  And so you then had all of these various platforms again as I was talking about with these individuals who were so creative and looking to constantly create; look at all these available platforms that came available to them, and they fully maximized it.
 
CWR:  I would like to go back to your comments about reinvention, which really leads into another question that I was going to ask.  You know there have been many different music genres through the ages, from  bee bop to R&B, to disco to soul, to rap to hip-hop.  Many people thought that hip-hop was just going to be a passing fad that would become passé.  You mentioned the comment that Mos Def made about the question he was asked about where hip-hop was going.  But going back to your statements about reinvention, is that probably the single most important factor in the sustained success of hip-hop and its longevity as a popular music form?
 
E.P. - I think that, that desire to, to reinvent, is crucial toward the long-term survival of the culture in a sense.  And just survival instincts, again, think about the backdrop of where hip-hop originated.  In this population, being from, myself included, I grew up in an inner city environment in Pittsburgh, a very tough neighborhood.  A very tough part of town.  Three boys, so things were very difficult for us, and our story is very similar to that of many others.  But as a result of that, there was the, just the survival instinct.   And when you come from that type of environment, there is an instinct to find a way to survive.  And that became part of the hallmark for this generation, by any means necessary.  We knew that we had to figure out a way to survive, to make it.  We again benefited from the generation before us, and our parents, and their parents who had the will to overcome, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but stood in the face of it, and conquered it.

So we believed that, we took that, we were fortunate to have that come before us.  And to have the Civil Rights Movement come before us.  Because we knew if they did it we could do it.  We knew that the struggles of our parents, and their parents, and their parents, created this opportunity for us, and we wanted to take advantage of it.  Once that door was cracked open, we were flinging it open all the way.  And we knew that we then had the opportunity to find success, because of those that came before us.  So I always take time to acknowledge the sacrifices of those who came before us, because if not for them, none of this would have been possible. 
 
On some level it would have existed, but clearly, if not for a John Johnson, what he did with Ebony.  People like Tom Burrell, Burrell Advertising early on that I talk about in the book, and the list goes on.  There are many, many, many others, you know, who paved the way.  And I'm just talking in a media sense now, but that's a big part of what allowed this culture to continue to live.  Because we then had magazines, and people like Quincy Jones with Vibe Magazine.  People like Carol H. Williams on the advertising side.  All of the people that kind of came ahead of us and paved the way; gave us a sense that anything was possible.  That we could achieve our goals.  That's just the essence of music, to continue to innovate. 
 
When I was at Nike, we had a famous, not a famous, but we had a kind of tagline, or something that we used, and it was "innovate or die" when it came to designing a new product.  It was like "innovate or die."  And with the hip-hop generation it's much the same, we gotta continue to innovate, we gotta keep innovating, we gotta keep reinventing.  And that's why when people say is hip-hop dead, is it gonna die; you know I don't believe it has or it will.  Hip-hop as it once existed, is no longer existing purely in that sense.  The hip-hop that we came of age with, and I'm speaking of Gen Xers now, who were in high school in the late 80s, into college.  Hip-hop as we knew it, with a lot of the social consciousness that I talked about, the political awareness that I talked about, some of those things; and just the positive expression of it.  It's not existing purely in that sense, but it continues to reinvent itself and morph into something else, and I believe it will soon find it's way back to a place of positivity and expression of political awareness, social awareness.  It just becomes a sign of the times. 
 
And there are even artists as we speak who are attempting to write music about some of these things that I'm talking about.  But it's tough to break through that paradigm in media, and radio and TV, when they are accustomed to a certain; it's like when they are running Microsoft 6.0, but you know you've got Microsoft 10.0, they are gonna run 6.0 for as long as they can.  And that's the same thing that's happening in the culture.  It's not as if there aren't positive  hip-hop artists, we've gotta find a way to allow those young folks who have a desire to channel the culture in a positive way as artists and individuals, we've gotta let their stories be heard, we've gotta give them a means to express themselves, and in this new digital era, that's going to happen.  Because those same platforms and the same proliferations that I alluded to that occurred when hip-hop was coming of age, it's happening again, with wireless, and social networking, and all these platforms, the blogs, all these channels, you can broadcast yourself, you can do all these different things. 
 
So now these same individuals are gonna have an opportunity to do the same.  So we've gotta tell those stories and create those platforms for the full-range of expression within the culture to be seen and heard.  And one such story that I love to share, and one of the highlights of this whole experience for me in writing the book was a trip and a visit I made to Brooklyn, NY.  And there is a program called Behind the Book, it's a non-profit, and they essentially bring authors into inner city schools and allow the students to meet the author.  But more importantly, they make the book part of the curriculum.  It was Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School, in the heart of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with housing projects around it.  So they read my book, and I went in and talked to them about it, and that was a day that was really transcending for me, just talking about where they were located and what that means, for these students,  and I was amazed. 
 
First of all the course that adopted my text was one that was examining the role of advertising and the psychological impact of messages on young peoples minds.  So they were having discussions about this very thing; the "N" word, and is there too much violence in the music, and how to portray women in the music.  And these young people were intelligently, stating their opinion; the young ladies would say, "He's not talking about me when he uses that 'B' word. You know I know who I am."  You have these statements and affirmations coming from young people that were very rewarding. 
 
And then I spent some time in the school and I went to different classrooms.  Now typically most of the authors, they come, they read the book, they talk to the kids and they leave.  But I love connecting with our young people, and our students, so I stayed around.  The principal was, "Are you sure?"  I was like "Yeah, I'm good."  So I was drifting from classroom to classroom, and in one classroom, I went in there, well I could hear it, it was like some beating on the desk, and like a little bit of rapping.  You know kind of the stuff I did in high school I write about in the book.  We would sneak in the bathroom and do our little rap, battles or whatever.  So I went in the room and there was a teacher in there.  And I'm like, this teacher is allowing this to happen.  I walked in and he said, I'm teaching the kids, how to compose a 16 bar hip-hop song.  So they understand that these young kids, especially the guys, have a desire to do music, to write music, so they said OK, let's create a class in a classroom environment where they are able to do so.  To write a song, to learn how to structure a 16 bar song, etc.  So I said well that's very neat.  So then I said what are they writing about.  And he said they are writing about the strife in Sudan.  And I said ohhh, OK!  Now I get it.  So they were constructing a song about the strife in Sudan.  I thought that in and of itself was an amazing way to take their interest, their passion, and connect it with something that was not just educational, but at the same time, their sense of awareness around a key issue in the world. 
 
I walked into another classroom and the students were working on MAC machines, MAC computers, and they were actually creating motion video.  They were creating their own videos.   In another classroom they had actually designed some products, some apparel, and talked about their creativity, their ability to know what's nice in terms of clothing and apparel.  But they were designing apparel.  And I said OK that's neat.  And the teacher said yeah, we are doing it for a group of homeless women here in Brooklyn.  And I said that to say, every now and then, we just have to touch down with our young people to get a real true sense of the hope and possibilities that exist.  And certainly there are different challenges, and in this case, again we are in the heart of Brooklyn, in poverty.  But, the hope that I felt at BCAM, that day, stays with me to this day.  Because I know that, the one thing that hip-hop has shown, it is that desire, and that will.  And our young people have it.  That have this persistence, they have that desire, they want to make a difference, they want to make a change, and they want to be understood.  And they want us to understand that everything that they fear here is not gonna constitute who they become.  And that they have the ability within themselves to, to make decisions and to have thoughts that translate into an experience, in a physical sense, that is a positive one.
 
And I told those young people when I speak, I told you yesterday, don't look at yourself as a product of your environment, but look at yourself as a product of your imagination.  And so the things that you can imagine for yourself, the things that you can think of, the thoughts that you can place in your mind about who you are and who you want to become.  And start to imagine a life for yourself consistent with your dreams and your passion and purpose.  And eventually you will open your eyes and you'll see those very things happening.  Because you're a creator, you create just by virtue of your thoughts.  I've seen it in my own life.  And hip-hop has helped that, because it has given me additional content for my dreams.  It's given me additional hope for my dreams.  And it's given me additional hope, and belief that, we can go out here, and we can change the course of history.  And we can use our unique experience to create a significant change.  So that 's what it's done, and I believe that that's what it will continue to do, particularly as this next generation figures its way, and makes its way as well.
 
CWR:  Just one final question.  What lessons can be learned from the dynamic proliferation of the hip-hop culture by readers of our magazine, who want to become entrepreneurs, or successful businessmen and women, like some of the people they have seen emerge from the hip-hop culture that they want to emulate?
 
E.P. - I will take the liberty to, paraphrase, or use, some lyrics from a song that is very dear to me right now, and something that I've used in my lectures, and it's from Jay-Z and his newest CD called The Blueprint 3, and he has a song on there with the artist Pharrel.  And the bridge in the song says, "The motivation for me, is them telling me what I could not be."  He says, "The motivation for me, is them telling me what I could not be, oh well!"  And he says "If you conceive it, then you can achieve it."  Then he says, "I'm on a mission, no matter what the condition."  Then he repeats "The motivation for me, is them telling me what I could not be, oh well!"  Here I am, is what he's saying.  So the fuel, as he says, the fuel for me, is just that, as Jay-Z says, in his opening lyric, he says,  "I was so inspired by what my teacher said.  That I'd either be dead or be a reefer head.  I didn't think that was how adults should speak to kids."  And so, so that becomes the message for our young people.  Use the fuel. 
 
There are those who are banking that you won't succeed.  There are those who are believing that you won't have the fortitude, you won't have the desire, you won't have the ambition to become entrepreneurs, to start your own business, to become educated to the degree that you can start your own business.  Or that you can go and change the course of some of these failing companies who are failing because they lack creativity. they lack innovation, they lack the very thing that you possess.  So use that as the fuel for you to go out and change the course of history.  And the fact that you know someone is telling you what you can't do.  Right now someone is telling you what you can't do and what you can't be. So utilize that for the fuel. 
 
And actually what hip-hop music and hip-hop culture did; it was a group, and an audience, and a population, and people said you know what, as Jay-Z said.  And we know that from Malcolm X right, Malcolm X's teacher told him the same thing.  You're not going to be anything, why would you want to do that, why would you want to be that?  So he lived up to what they expected, initially.  You know, he went out and became a thug.  He went out and became involved in crime, and went to jail as a result.  And we know the transformation that he went through as a result.  But, the point is, don't live up to what people, expect for you.  Live up to the expectations that you set for yourself.  And use that as your fuel, the fact that people may not believe that you can be the person that you know you're gonna become. 

About Erin Patton:
As an expert on consumer behavior, Erin Patton has been hailed for "cracking the code on the urban market" with his breakthrough 7 Ciphers™ segmentation study that attracted flagship sponsors including MTV, Pepsi and The Brookings Institution. Gifted as a dynamic public speaker with extraordinary communication skills, Patton is highly sought out as a speaker at conferences, symposiums, universities and corporations. Patton is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He later earned his MBA from the SMU Cox School of Business in Dallas, where he currently serves on the faculty as an Adjunct Professor of Sports Marketing in the  Cox School of Business.  He has appeared as an expert on ESPN, CNN, VH1, and Fox News and been quoted in USA Today, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, Wall St. Journal and Fortune. In 2009, he released his first book, "Under The Influence: Tracing the Hip-Hop Generation's Impact on Brands, Sports & Pop Culture" to critical acclaim.

About The Mastermind Group (TMG)
The Mastermind Group is a market intelligence and brand marketing consulting firm. TMG has counseled an exclusive roster of Fortune 500 brands and pop culture icons, including Pepsi, Motorola, MTV, Mercedes-Benz, Federated Department Stores, Inc., Adidas and Coors Light, as well as global sports icons LeBron James and Venus and Serena Williams.  TMG also spearheaded NBA-star Stephon Marbury's award-winning Starbury brand launch that revolutionized the sneaker industry and earned launch of the year honors from Footwear News and Advertising Age in 2006.