Rhymefest, Kanye Collaborator, Runs for Office Inspired by James Baldwin

Rhymefest has transitioned from rapping on Chicago stoops in his youth with Kanye West to now campaigning on those same stoops for votes.

The Grammy- and Oscar-winning rapper, 47, tells PEOPLE he’s running for Chicago’s first-ever school board election while also releasing an inspiring new album.

“I rap and that’s my daytime thing, however I would always come back to Chicago,” he says. “I never moved out of my Great Grandma’s house. As a rapper, I’m always telling artists it is not our obligation to ‘make it out of the hood’. It is our duty to rebuild the community.”

Rhymefest, known for co-writing Kanye West’s early hits such as “Jesus Walks” and helping pen the Oscar-winning song “Glory” with Common and John Legend, would frequently go home to work with youth through his community service program.

“I would teach James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time. Young people would say, ‘What is that? Who wrote that?’ And I’m like, ‘You never heard of James Baldwin?’” he says, referring to the late award-winning Black novelist and civil rights activist. “I realized our schools are not giving culturally relevant curriculum. Our schools are not preparing our children for a modern economy and a modern world. That’s what inspired me.”

This realization motivated him to run for Chicago’s first-ever school board election. “In Chicago, the budget for our school board is 10 billion dollars a year. Historically, the mayor would choose who could manage that budget,” he explains. “There’s been a community effort, including myself and many teachers, for there to be an elected school board. Chicago’s the only major metropolitan city that has not had an elected school board. This is the first time.”

Besides his recent plunge into local politics, Rhymefest says James Baldwin, who would have turned 100 on August 2, has influenced his music. Now signed to Golden State Entertainment, a division of the Golden State Warriors, which is the only NBA team with a record label and film production company, Rhymefest recently released his latest album titled James & Nikki: A Conversation.

“I stopped caring what people think,” he says on what gave him the courage to put out a music project based on a deeply personal and political 1971 conversation between two Black activists. When he first watched the full two-hour program, “I saw a homosexual man, a bisexual woman, two artists, a teacher and a student, a husband and a wife. I saw alchemy happening. They were playing every role. It was everything.”

Afterwards, “I said this conversation has to be remade into a hip-hop album.” For the project, he partnered with female emcees on each song to bring “the spirit of Nikki” and he says he knows his audience. “I’m rapping to those who yearn to learn.”

In honor of Baldwin’s centennial birthday, on Aug. 2, Rhymefest spoke at The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and at Lincoln Center’s A Century of Baldwin celebration.

“James Baldwin would say things like, ‘When a Black person fights back, it’s the worst thing in the world. When a White person fights back it’s revolution. It’s America,’” says the rapper. “He risked his career to say that.”

As for Rhymefest’s career, much has changed since he and West first found fame writing and rhyming together. “Kanye and I hooked up as teenagers,” he says. “15, 16, and the connective tissue wasn’t the music. I fell in love with his mother,” he recalls of the late Donda West. “She was my mentor.”

When the pair would play her their new music, sometimes full of expletives and derogatory lyrics aimed at women, “She would say, ‘Rhymefest, did you really sell all those drugs and have sex with those women like that? I’m not judging, I’m just asking. Is that who you are?’”

His response: “I’d say, ‘No. I just want to get on the radio.’” And to that, he recalls her saying, “If you and my son ever make it and this is what you’re saying, you’re going to have to live as that. The best song you’ve never made is who you really are.”

He says her words resonated with them, inspiring both his and West’s more conscious, introspective approach to hip hop in those early years. One of his fondest memories is their collaboration on West’s 2004 hit “Jesus Walks”.

While writing, “I went to the Bible and Ye said, ‘What are you doing? No, we’re not taking any of that. The verse has to be our modern parable. What we’re going through. The sin. The chorus is the Lord. There wouldn’t be salvation without sin.’” Says Rhymefest, “I learned a valuable lesson in that moment.”

Though West has faced years of criticism for numerous controversies, when Rhymefest is asked about their relationship now he simply says “Family. Whenever family meets at the reunion it’s like yesterday. That’s what it is.” He adds, “Some of us fly, some of us walk the land. I’m walking the land right now. When I spread my wings to fly, I’ll go meet my brother there.”

Source: PEOPLE