Forget Street Smart — You Need To Be A Street Scholar

There’s a difference

By the time we were finishing our internship, most of my classmates were going through a tough time.

Among the comments most were giving was we needed to be street-smart.

I felt attacked.

I was born and brought up in Eastlands, Nairobi. You can’t survive in Eastlands if I’m to use the term, not street-smart.

But even with such a background, I was still struggling. How could one process struggle when all your life has been a highlight of success according to your close circles?

Change was necessary.

What I learnt was that one needed not to be street smart. One needs to be a street scholar. There’s a difference.

Learning beats titles

What one calls street smart is often misguided.

Arsonal Da Rebel, the battle rapper mentions how street knowledge is very valuable.

Street gangs need to survive. The members need each other to survive being ousted by other gangs. Gangs are spots for trading information and signals to other gangs that they are a united front.

My emphasis is on the information bit. You cannot rule any hood if you don’t have good info on what’s going on around you. Pablo Escobar had his little rascals delivering news to his henchmen. Word would get to him fast if anyone was planning a covert attack. He’d then advance to secure himself.

Escobar was the kingpin. He had a title. The name itself was the title. Pablo Emilio Gaviria Escobar. But his defining trait was not the title. It was not that he was street-smart.

It was that he was a street scholar.

Who, then is a scholar?

It’s one person who utilizes knowledge and adjusts his beliefs with every collected evidence.

You develop an idea or learn about one from someone. Then you execute it. If it doesn’t work, after several attempts at correcting it, you drop it and find another one. That’s the process of conjecture and refutation. It’s how knowledge grows.

A street scholar utilizes the knowledge from the territory he’s most familiar with and makes decisions based on what he’s heard. He also tries new concepts and executes strategies he thinks might work.

Usually, as someone with strong influence, Escobar’s actions would turn into self-fulfilled prophecies. If you have the money and the power, you’d only need to decree and see it happen. It signals your influence. But it’s not usually the best option. You have to factor in what others tell you as well.

In short, you have to be learning constantly.

Those who survive in the streets are constantly learning.

Those who eventually climb the ranks and maintain their position are constantly learning.

They are not street-smart.

They are street scholars.

The conversation I was having with my friends and colleagues satellites along these borders. They are some of the smartest people you’ll ever come across. After high school, they were coerced by family, friends, and sometimes even legacy to pursue certain university courses.

Even then, they were still successful. But after attaining their degree, they wondered why they were still struggling. The narrative we were given was we’d only struggle in high school, and that life would become easier after that.

Well, it took a turn for the worse. Life had a feast at each one of them, myself included. A culture shock of sorts. But one of us mentioned something we all agreed on. The need to change.

Awareness of life’s asymmetries does little. One has to act. It’s what most of us did.

It’s how one becomes a street scholar. Awareness and execution.

It also doesn’t matter at which point one starts this journey. Comparing yourself with others can sting. But most important is how you act once you’re familiar with your present state.

Thereafter, you begin to act like a scholar. A street scholar.

Hip-hop is filled with many such stories, but I’ll narrow it down to three.

Lil Wayne and J. Cole

In my book, I use hip-hop lines from legendary artists.

Lil Wayne and J. Cole are some of the people whose lines highlight the beginning of some of its chapters. But few people know how these rappers struggled to get to where they presently are in the hip-hop space.

J. Cole, for instance, had the idea of a dollar and a dream. That was his initial philosophy. And he acted on it.

He made mix tapes and sold them for a dollar just so he could realize his dream. Add to that fact was he was smart.

His wits took him to college on scholarship. But after graduating, he decided to take on rap seriously. Initially, he wanted to be an NBA player. Life was not having it. He was never shortlisted.

Picture seeing people who you know who are not nearly as good as you being given a chance while you’re left out. It seems unfair. Life, however, does not recognize fairness. It only happens and proceeds unbothered.

He had to change.

He doubled down on hip-hop and chased his dream relentlessly. For his generation, he’s now labelled one of the greats.

Lil Wayne’s story is not that different.

Born and raised in New Orleans, he had a musical background. The streets would only funnel this fire.

However, they were not always the safest of places.

As smart as he was, he leveraged between music, courtesy of Birdman, and education, having attended the University of Phoenix.

He survived a suicide attempt, thanks to a local police officer. After that incident, he rose to become a certified street scholar.

The mixtapes he would release are legendary. I remember listening to them when I was in my fourth year of medical school and wondering how people only get to listen to 1% of Lil Wayne.

He partnered with DJ Drama to release these mixtapes, which helped because DJ Drama was one of the mixtapes kings. If you wanted your mixtape to spread, he was the guy. It made sense to seek a superconnector for your music to sell.

J. Cole even had some of his songs pass through him, that is, DJ Drama. He even collaborated with Lil Wayne, to make the hit, Green Ranger. A song you’ll never hear being played on the radio.

Eventually, these two artists were elevated to hip-hop stardom through persistent learning. The evidence is in their collaborations.

They can collaborate with anyone, whether an R&B singer or some rappers I never have heard of. If they stuck to their original styles, they would have been superseded. Despite evolving, they have found a way to stay true to their styles by merging with the new and rapidly evolving branches of hip-hop.

That right there is the evidence of any street scholar. Learn. Adapt. Grow.

In Kenya, we have Khaligraph Jones

I had to represent our very own.

Not just because he is Kenyan but because I also grew up in Kayole. We then moved to Komarock, the same place where Khaligraph recorded his first song.

As one of the best rappers in the continent, Khaligraph was by all means brought up by the streets. By this definition, one is supposed to be street-smart. How, then, was it that he rose to the level he is at presently while so many did not?

Firstly, it could be that he loves music. He does love music. He spends hours in his studio recording song after song, most of which we’ll never get to hear. He shares this trait with Lil Wayne. As a matter of fact, here’s the latest one, which came out today.

The other was because he started to evolve when his friend nudged him to change from his complacent state. He would rap when he was with his friends but never challenged himself to consider rapping against other top-notch artists.

It all changed when he went to WAPI. WAPI was the stage that either made or killed you as a Kenyan rapper. One time, when one rapper beat every other contender, the MC asked if there was anyone in the crowd who wished to contest with the supposed winner.

His friend then nudged him to try it out. Persistently. He then rose and went to the stage.

That right there, is change. Being okay with the discomfort that change brings. It’s the hallmark of any scholar.

Imagine believing in an idea for most of your life only for someone else to refute it. This is how the world of academia works. Science and knowledge grow through bold steps, bold guesses, and bold refutations. Scholars have to accept or get left behind.

It’s what Khaligraph Jones did. He had to forget the rapper that lived inside his head and face the reality of the rapper on stage. It turned out that this rapper was dope.

Just so you know, he never lost a battle. He only lost because he never had a clique to cheer him up.

That too was a signal.

A scholar identifies signals from the noise. Charlie Munger often states how one needs to be familiar with worldly wisdom. One should then adjust their life’s strategies in concert with this wisdom rather than deny it.

Along the way, Khaligraph discovered how to create a massive crowd when he was on stage. Remember the first time he lost because he didn’t have the crowd? He had to know which songs would ignite the crowd and which ones would sound better on the radio.

To date, he divides his songs into these two categories. When called to perform, his catalogue includes bangers that will lift you from your seat.

As a regular attendee of Kenyan concerts, I can confidently tell you that there is no better performer than Khaligraph Jones. Sauti Sol comes to a close second. Nyashinski, another legendary rapper and street scholar, recently upped his performance game. But as it stands, no one brings as much energy as Papa Jones.

With a simple key defining principle, concert-worthy songs distinguished him not just as a hip-hop legend, but as an uberperformer.

Papa Jones is a street scholar.

As I close…

The idea of street smart might likely not change despite my polite rant.

It might not also be accepted as much because the very idea of a scholar contrasts with the free world we see outside academic institutions—the free and wild world of the streets.

I also have to accept it, or otherwise, I might not be practicing what I preach.

Street smarts, however, embody the engine of revolutionary knowledge — how it emerges and dominates. Street smarts run and dominate with the spirit of a scholar.

A street scholar evolves. It’s part of the message from the theory of Organismal Selection. Evolve or get annihilated.

If you don’t, then you weren’t street-smart in the first place.

You were only lucky.

PS: You can subscribe and join the 50+ other street scholars in the lightest newsletter you will ever find on the Internet.