Hip Hop is Green with Keith Tucker

[00:00:04] Jasmin Singer: So excited to talk to you. You have so many things going on and I want to get into all of them, but where do we start? First of all, can you tell us for anyone who's not familiar with it, what is Hip Hop is Green?

What is the overall goal of that work?

[00:00:22] Keith Tucker: Sure. Hip Hop is Green is basically the first plant based hip hop organization in history actually. We started about 15 years ago and our simple goal is to move hip hop culture in a green direction. towards environmentalism, sustainability, and plant based foods, and health and wellness overall.

[00:00:43] Jasmin Singer: I love that. So how is that rooted in hip hop culture? Sort of like eco mentality and things like that. I'm curious about the connection.

[00:00:52] Keith Tucker: Yeah, thank you for the question because that's the natural question that everybody asks me. How is hip hop connected to the environment? Well, there's a lot of people in hip hop that are vegans. I had a radio show back in 2007. Shout out to the Keith Tucker show. And, I was going to interview people in hip hop that were vegan.

And, I just started doing my research and found out there were so many people in hip hop that are vegan. and know about the connection between veganism, plant based foods, and the environment. But it's not really a topic that's been addressed too much in hip hop culture, you know? And so it's like a quietly kept secret that hasn't been shared with the world yet.

That's really my goal, to share this with the world and get young people that are involved in hip hop to participate in this new, what we call green age of hip hop.

[00:01:51] Jasmin Singer: A green age in hip hop. Tell me more about that because I love it.

[00:01:55] Keith Tucker: The green age of hip hop is basically, I would say, within the last 10 years. People in hip hop and basically BIPOC people, Black Indigenous People Of Color, many people are going towards a plant based diet and eating plant based foods and becoming organic farmers and involved in the environment and leaning towards these issues that we're talking about today.

I was an early adopter in this, and so I've seen the whole movement grow from hardly anybody knowing anything about being vegan to so many people in the Black community and Brown communities that are turning towards veganism. And the next step is taking that movement and moving it towards environmentalism and climate change and that.

So, I've noticed that we are in a new movement in hip hop. And to cap it off, in 2016, I was in New York. I had created what is called the 10th element of hip hop, and that is health and wellness, and in the proclamation that we signed, it's basically a climate change declaration for hip hop culture.

And so, on that day, April 21st, 2016, the day before Earth Day, we signed that document in New York at the Schaumburg with many other people that are in this green age of hip hop. That was like our first gathering together. It was pretty large. And, that day we birthed the 10th element of hip hop and officially signed health and wellness as part of hip hop culture.

[00:03:40] Jasmin Singer: Wow, that's so fabulous. Is that related to the six pillars?

[00:03:46] Keith Tucker: Well, the six pillars are inside of the 10th element of hip hop.

[00:03:51] Jasmin Singer: Okay, so tell me about that. I'm getting it all straight in my mind.

[00:03:55] Keith Tucker: So part of the 10th element of hip hop is basically those six pillars. So, you know, we have a plant based eating, organic gardening. We have fitness. We have sobriety and mental health. We also have animal rights and we also have food justice and environmental justice.

Okay, so those are our six pillars that I found that people have been doing work in and maybe we need to do more work in some of those. Like, there's not a lot of people in hip hop that are into animal rights yet. Right? So we need to do more work in that area. There's a lot of people in hip hop that are dealing with using drugs and alcohol and those substances, right?

So that's why I put sobriety and mental health as part of one of those six pillars. Because that is directly tied towards the health and wellness of our communities, right? And so these are really directed towards the hip hop generation and most of the issues that we have to deal with in the hip hop generation, as well as, hey, We have toxic food in our environment.

We have chemicals all over our food, just like everybody that's listening now knows. Right? And so it's really prevalent in Black and Brown communities, right? Cancer, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, all of these things that we're dealing with on a daily basis. So that's why plant based foods and veganism is the new way that we're eating in hip hop culture, right?

And we need to get back to our roots of growing food, putting our hands in the dirt. You know, that's where we come from. We just had got disconnected from that, you know, a couple of generations ago. Giving an example, my grandmother taught me how to garden from when I was a baby. So I grew up knowing how to do that.

But the kids nowadays, they don't even know what a hoe is, you know, and what it's used for. Never really got their hands in the dirt to grow something. You know, so we have to get back to that. So that's why organic gardening is so important in there. And then, you know, animal rights.

We take kids with our program, we take them out to visit animal sanctuaries, and they get to meet the animals and understand that these animals are just like us. They take care of their families and they're doing their thing, and... We've had kids that have gone to animal sanctuaries that said, I'm not going to eat meat anymore.

You know, so yeah, so these are things that I think that is so much needed now. The 10th element of hip hop, I believe is the most important element in hip hop culture in history. And I think it's going to be something that's going to change the world. And it's needed now more than ever because of the prevalence of... and I'm going to speak about rap music right now, the rap music that's out there now, that is not used as a force to uplift the community. So we need to have an alternative option and lifestyle that does that.

[00:06:58] Jasmin Singer: Okay, there are a bunch of things in that that I want to so called dig into, pardon the pun, but I'm proud of it. So tell me about why you think Animal rights is an important part of the ethos, even though I know a lot of people aren't connecting to that part of it. You mentioned that children might be.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

[00:07:20] Keith Tucker: Yeah. Just for us in hip hop and you know, blatently, I'm speaking on Black and Brown people, right? We're dealing with so many issues in our communities that animal rights is not even on the list. But it's so important. Animals disappear, we disappear. And we have to have compassion for other animals, compassion for people, and the values of that.

Those are things that we are missing in today's hip hop culture. We have to understand the connection between animals and the environment and how that's so important, especially animals in the sea, that we hardly ever interact with, unless you're going to the zoo or an aquarium. Nobody wants to see an animal like that.

So that's why animal rights is so important because billions and billions of animals are being slaughtered every year, and to be honest with you, it's almost like slavery, right? You know what I mean? Even worse.

So, there is a connection there, between what Black and Brown people have gone through. I really would love to highlight that in our communities. And so that's why we have that a part of the 10th element of hip hop.

[00:08:38] Jasmin Singer: You mentioned climate several times, so you have recently started to focus very much on climate. Tell me your thoughts on the crisis we're facing and what you see as solutions.

[00:08:51] Keith Tucker: Well, thank you for that question. And it is like, okay, I am an activist. That's what I've been doing for 30 years. I am a hip hop activist fighting for freedom, justice, equality, all of these things that the ancestors in the civil rights movement and the Black power movement and all of these ancestors that I stand on the shoulders of.

So that's what the direction I was going, but I found out through research and through plant based foods that our environment is dying. And our whole way of life and this whole planet is in jeopardy. And when I found that out, I figured that this is the most important issue that humans have ever addressed in the history of mankind.

It's bigger than civil rights and all of these things that we fought for before. Somebody has to speak out in hip hop culture about these issues. Right now, I believe I didn't check this morning, but the last time I checked, I believe we were at 435 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere.

Once we get to 450 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, that is the tipping point where we can't go back ever again. The environment is totally on a new course and that new course slides us into all different type of tipping points that are worse than any horror movie that you watch.

And people need to be outraged. They need to be scared. There needs to be more marches than when George Floyd was murdered. And that needs to happen every single day. But what's happening? People are focused on social media. People are focused on their cell phones. People are focused on maybe the political things that are going on. All of these things are inconsequential to our environment and the earth.

[00:10:59] Jasmin Singer: That's some scary stuff. I mean, I think a lot of people listening to this think about that often. I certainly do. And it can be really hard to stay focused and stay motivated, but this is your whole life. So how do you do it?

[00:11:13] Keith Tucker: I am so thankful for young people. Young people give me hope. And so we focus our program really our youth excellence program on young folks. So I've been working with young folks for the past 4 years on this program. We've graduated almost 200 youth from our program, and they are the ones who are going to come up with the solutions to get us out of this mess.

I don't have any faith in the older people of our generation to get us out of this mess, unfortunately, maybe there's some people in our generation that will join the movement and help educate the next generation, but that's their baton that they're going to have to move forward.

And so that's why I focus on 11 through 20 year olds. They're so smart. They're so innovative. They're so educated. They're really compassionate about these issues once they find out what's going on.

The school systems aren't teaching them what's going on with climate change. I mean, we have schools that pay us to come in and teach their kids about climate change. So, unfortunately that's not happening enough around the country, but you know, we're here and our goal is to do this in cities around the country.

[00:12:33] Jasmin Singer: So tell us about Cherry Street Farm and how that's connected to the Youth Excellence Project.

[00:12:38] Keith Tucker: Mm hmm. Cherry Street Farm is basically... I grew up on Cherry Street in Seattle, Washington in the central area, okay? And as I told you before, my grandmother taught me how to garden from when I was a baby. So this is actually my grandmother and my grandfather's land that was purchased back in the 60s that we own.

It was a vacant lot and I transformed that vacant lot into a farm where we teach kids how to grow food and then, on one day we teach them how to cook food. So it's like, those are the dual parts of the program. Cooking plant based food and growing plant based food. And so we had a traditional, garden there for a couple of years and then guess what?

The pandemic happened. And so I had to refocus all of our programs and one of the things I really refocused and that I'm very proud of is Cherry Street Farm because basically I tore down the whole farm all the way down to the soil and said, we're going to come up with something very innovative that we can do in dense urban populations.

We don't have a lot of land to grow food. So it doesn't matter how much food I grow on that little plot of land. It doesn't really make a big difference in the community because I don't have that much land, but fortunately, I, I looked into different modalities of growing aquaponics, hydroponics, things like that.

And I landed on hydroponics. And so I purchased a 45 foot hydroponic lab that we're growing food in. It is 2.5 acres of food that I can grow in the hydroponic lab on a really small footprint. 500 different varieties of different veggies that we can grow. We teach young people how to grow this food and we teach them the science, technology, engineering and math that goes along with this high tech growing system.

And then we also on the land, we built a kitchen so that we can walk right to the kitchen and show them how to cook plant based food. We're still building it, so it will be finished in the summer of 2024. And, rest in peace, shout out to my grandmother one more time because she is the person who got me into the kitchen and showed me how to cook food when I was a kid.

She cooked food in Seattle school districts and she cooked food for me and my family and it was the best food ever. And I wish I could still eat one of her oatmeal raisin cookies.

[00:15:10] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Did you leave one in the freezer, Grandma? Like in the back? That would be so lovely. Where would we be without our grandmothers, by the way? I honestly, I don't even want to know. It's such a beautiful relationship. And I love to hear that yours was so much of a part of your life and still is, I can relate to that.

So that's beautiful.

[00:15:30] Keith Tucker: And I want to say to my grandfather as well. My grandfather passed away when I was very young, but through DNA, you know... people always tell me that knew him, you're just like your grandfather. Oh my God! You know what I mean? And so I'm so happy that I was able to spend just the little time that I had with my grandfather, but he passed me something along that stays with me all of my life. So I appreciate that.

And my mother as well. Rest in peace to my mother. She just passed away a couple of years ago, but she was a big influence in my life because she always encouraged me in everything that I did. Showed me unconditional love, gave me my first book that really blew my mind about being an entrepreneur and just encouraged me and loved me all my life.

So the foundation that young people have is so important for who they're going to be in the future. I was just talking to a high school about that yesterday. So anyway.

[00:16:33] Jasmin Singer: I love that. That's beautiful. And honestly, I know we're going off on a tangent here, but I feel like it's an important one because it's so hard when people we love pass away. And yet one of the gifts in it is that we get to carry on the legacy of the good things they brought to the world.

And that is something that I hold so dear to my heart when I lose people. Like I also lost a parent and as I mentioned, my grandmother was such a big part of my life and I get to like, carry on what they believed in. Like the good parts and that is how we can create a better society. If we all just keep carrying on the good parts of the people who we loved.

So going back to the youth excellent project, because obviously in that project, I'm hearing what has been instilled in you from your ancestors and from your family. I'm hearing the passion there and the worldview of compassion, tell us a little bit more about it. Like the kids. Who gets involved, which kids, where do they come from?

[00:17:40] Keith Tucker: First of all, I never thought that I would ever be doing anything like this.

[00:17:46] Jasmin Singer: What did you think you would be doing? I'm curious, Keith.

[00:17:49] Keith Tucker: Yeah, I had no idea. I'm telling you, I had no idea because in the world that I lived in many, many, many decades ago, there wasn't any options for people to be entrepreneurs. It was just geared towards finding a job. Lawyer, doctor, whatever it is, but being an entrepreneur wasn't even on the list.

But something deep inside me wanted to have my own business and be free and all that stuff. And I'll be honest with you and all the listeners here, when I was living in the inner city, in Seattle, I got off track when I was a young person and got into drugs and street life and all of that mess that really got me off of my mission.

And thank the lord, I'm 31 years clean and sober now. So, that's really a big part of it, but I will tell you, being a mentor towards these kids is something that I've been training for all my life. I didn't know that I was being trained for this, all the experiences that I went through.

So, I know how to relate to these young people on so many levels. And so the kids that come into our program are from everywhere. So they're from different schools. They're from different backgrounds. They're from different ages. People in our community know about Hip Hop is Green. So when we say, hey, we're going to have a youth program coming up, kids sign up.

They get an internship with us and they actually get paid to learn about climate change too. So it's like their 1st job. And we take it seriously. Our HR person comes in and interviews them like they're interviewing for a job. They have to fill out an application. They have to be on time.

All of these things are a part of our program. So they can understand that this is how you operate in this type of environment. And we ask them questions and ask their opinion and have really frank, deep conversations with them about some of this very scary information that we're about to share with them.

You think what I told you was very scary. They're going all the way in. You know, really deep into this stuff, man. And so those are the conversations that we have with the kids and they come up with solutions as well, too. So, yeah, so that's how we recruit them and kind of what we do.

[00:20:15] Jasmin Singer: And when they first come into the program, how much do they know about the food system and what constitutes a healthy diet?

[00:20:21] Keith Tucker: Yeah. Most of them have never even thought about that. Right? They're thinking about how can I get food the cheapest? What tastes good? And that's about it. No reading of labels, no knowing about, you know, the nutritional content of food or, where my food comes from or anything like that. I mean, those are questions that they haven't really been exposed to, you know.

And so that's why it's so important for us to proliferate this program as far and wide as we can, because I know that young people aren't really into this. And I would say, if I had to give a percentage on it, I would really actually say, maybe 3 percent of the kids that we've come in contact with know about nutrition, plant based foods and all of that stuff.

[00:21:10] Jasmin Singer: Wow. But I mean, that's not just kids, right? Because more and more people seem very detached from food. They don't know where it comes from or what's healthy or what we do to animals to get the meat on our plate. People don't know how to cook either. Do you find that this is the case, not just with kids, but with grown ass people too?

[00:21:29] Keith Tucker: Yes, I do with grown ass people. Yep. It is definitely the case. Again, I'm an activist. There's a lot of mistrust I have with governments and with corporations. And when you look into the corporations that produce our food, I mean, it's not a conspiracy theory anymore of what they're doing with our food and where our food is going and how our food can be used as a weapon to destroy people.

So, you know, people need to really open up their minds. And if you're listening, you need to educate people on what's really going on with our food. So that's a whole separate issue, you know, the corporations and the lobbyist and the government and the FDA and all these different organizations that are making money off of keeping people sick.

[00:22:23] Jasmin Singer: So, what do the kids do while they're in the program? Tell us about some of the activities.

[00:22:29] Keith Tucker: We do an intake evaluation with the kids when they come in. So it's a pretty extensive intake evaluation because we want to see where they're at with all different kind of issues. So it'll talk about how many fast foods do they eat, what's their home life is like, how much exercise do they do? What are they into? What's your purpose in life? What is your purpose? Kids don't even think about that. So...

[00:22:53] Jasmin Singer: Well, what would they say to that? Like, what are some responses? Not to interrupt you, but I'm curious.

[00:22:58] Keith Tucker: I don't know.

[00:22:59] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

[00:23:00] Keith Tucker: You know, I mean, like, when I was a kid, if somebody asked me what my purpose is, that would have been my answer. I don't know. Who thinks about that? You know what I mean? Like in this generation with all these distractions that we have. Netflix, social media, you know, all of these video games, everything.

There's so many things to distract you from meditating on what your purpose is every single day. And so we talk about that to young people because that's one of the most important things that you could do in your life is find out what your purpose is. So we focus in on that in our intake survey and throughout the program as well, we focus in on that.

But so now that they've done their intake survey and they've learned about what Hip Hop is Green is, I give a thorough presentation on this organization because, hey, if you're going to be a part of our organization, you need to know who we are, what we do, what we're about.

And then we go into different films that we've selected that I've done research in that give this information and we start to screen these films, evaluate these films, have frank discussions on these films. And we have forms that they fill out about the film. And then whatever the topic is on the film, say say we watch a film on the oceans.

After we watch that film, then we're going to pair that film with somebody who's an oceanographer, and we're going to go visit them and talk to them about the work that they do and expose young people to these exact people that are doing the work that we saw in the film. Okay, and then on top of that, we're partnering with the University of Washington, and we show kids how they can get in the University of Washington to be that.

So it's a whole flow chart all the way to the doorstep of whatever you want to do with your life and your purpose. We have it all laid out for them.

[00:24:57] Jasmin Singer: That's really frigging cool, Keith. I'm curious what you want these kids to bring back to their communities once they're finished with the program.

[00:25:08] Keith Tucker: Yeah. So I want them to be young activists in their communities and create programs in their communities that have a social context to it with the environment as the main point. Some kids that have graduated our program, we have kids in college now, that have graduated our program and we changed their life and now they want to start chapters of Hip Hop is Green on their college campus. And I'm 100 percent down with that. Real soon, we're going to be on college campuses with our interns and doing our program and exposing more young people to Hip Hop is Green.

So that's amazing. But I would like young people to come up with their own things past Hip Hop is Green, whatever it is. That's really what I want is them to come up with their own creative concepts, ideas, inventions. If they're going into politics, make sure that you're running and you're doing things and you're having the environment as your number one platform. So this is what I hope to have happen.

[00:26:15] Jasmin Singer: And you mentioned earlier when we started talking that there is this disconnect between animal agriculture and environmentalism. When you say I hope that they make the environment central to their work, of course I do too, and I really friggin hope that more people are understanding the connection between animal agriculture and the environment.

[00:26:39] Keith Tucker: Yeah. You know what? All we can do is plant seeds and water those seeds and watch them grow. And I've seen us plant seeds in young people's minds and see it growing now. So I know it works. Now, what fruit is going to come from those trees? We don't know yet, but we know that those seeds have been planted and those trees are growing.

And that's the most important thing. That's our job is to make sure those trees grow into a forest.

[00:27:13] Jasmin Singer: Really well said, really beautiful. When you first started this work, did you imagine that veganism would take such hold in the Black community?

[00:27:22] Keith Tucker: Never. I, myself, did not know anything about veganism. I was a total meat eater and all of that stuff. Like I said, I had my radio show and I was like, Hey, it keeps popping up that some of my friends in hip hop, are vegan, you know, and I'm like, wow, 'cause I had an event I was doing with Public Enemy, and they were coming to Seattle and we were serving food and most of them said, Hey, you know, I'm a vegetarian or you know, I don't eat animals.

And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't even know that. And then I had a friend that is really a legend in hip hop. His name is KRS One, and he's a vegetarian too. And by the way, KRS One did the first ever environmental animal rights song in hip hop. It's called Beef. He made that in 1990, talking about the animal agriculture, whole factory farm system.

[00:28:17] Jasmin Singer: Wow. I have to look that up!

[00:28:19] Keith Tucker: Google it. It's called Beef by KRS One. 1990. And so, anyway, he's a vegetarian, and then my good friends Stick and M1 of Dead Prez came to town, and they took me to a Jamaican vegan spot. All of that stuff was rolling around in my head. And I'm like, this is crazy, man, like nobody knows about this.

And I want to be the first person to highlight that. And so I was like, OK, I'm going to do a radio show on hip hop veganism. Long story short, that turned into me saying, well, if I'm going to do this radio show, I don't want to be eating meat myself while I'm doing this radio show. It just doesn't sound right to me.

So maybe I'll go vegan myself and see, you know, what happens. I'll put a countdown clock on the radio show website, you know, all this stuff. They can watch my progress and all that stuff. Now, it's crazy because I always follow my heart. So, my heart told me, Keith, this isn't a radio show.

This is actually a documentary film. And so, at that point I said, and this is crazy, I actually quit radio and started working on this documentary film where people would see me lose weight going vegan. And so I started filming that and all that stuff. And we were into creating our business plan.

We were shooting the film. I think I shot maybe hundreds of hours of footage for this film, right? And then I was like, well, how am I going to promote it? You know, I want to promote it different, you know, and I was like, maybe what I'll do is I'll do events. And I'll bring vegan food to the event and then I'll bring hip hoppers that are vegan and they'll perform and share their story.

This is great!

[00:30:07] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

[00:30:08] Keith Tucker: So we ended up while we're filming the film, doing one of these, what I called at the time, hip hop green dinners. And we did one of these hip hop green dinners with like about 150 kids. And it was the most special feeling I ever had in hip hop before. And the environment, the, what I call it is the epiphany moment.

The epiphany moment is when your life changes forever. And you change your mind about something. These kids never had a vegan meal before. And I was nervous too, because I was like, okay, what if we serve them this vegan meal? And one kid says, Oh, this is nasty. And then the nasty goes all around the whole room and everybody runs out.

That was, that was in my mind. Right. The opposite happened. The kids tried the food. They loved the food. They were asking about, what is this? Why do I feel so good? I feel different eating the food. You know what I mean? And so they all were having this epiphany moment. And it was a perfect entry into Plant based foods and veganism because now they weren't thinking about it the same way as when they walked in and when the people were sharing their stories about health and wellness, and we were talking about cancer, diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

They could understand about that. And so. I quit doing the film and started concentrating on the dinners because I was like, you know what, if I do a film and put all this money and energy into the film, what do I want to accomplish with the film? What's my goal? My goal is to get young people eating food and trying the food.

So why don't I just go to that and get them eating and trying the food? So, turns out that was the right decision for me. Because we ended up doing hip hop green dinners all over the country. We did the first ever plant based hip hop tour in history. And as I was going around to different cities, I would find more people in hip hop that wanted to be involved with us.

Hey Keith, I'm an organic gardener. Hey Keith, I'm a vegan and I'm a hip hopper. Hey Keith, how can I be a part of this? This is great.

Everywhere we went around the country, that was happening. And so I connected with all those people and made business alliances with them.

And over the years, we've done hundreds of events. We've served over 40, 000 free meals to youth and families. Before COVID, we had about eight chapters of Hip Hop is Green in different cities all around the country. So, it's been, I think one of the best decisions that I've ever made. And I don't know what I'm going to do with that footage that I shot!

[00:33:06] Jasmin Singer: Well, I mean, we need to turn it into a documentary, Keith. Like, that sounds like gold that you're sitting on there, like what you're doing is extraordinary and I really hope that someone like your fairy godmother or maybe your fairy god grandmother comes, comes in and they're like, Oh, I'm an editor looking for a project to do.

Let's turn this into something because what an extraordinary story. Do the Hip Hop is Green dinners continue?

[00:33:36] Keith Tucker: Yes, yes, yes. We were, right before COVID, I was really going to take this thing in a whole nother direction. We were going to produce our first Hip Hop is Green expo, and I had it all booked. I had raised about 50 grand. I had people coming in from all over the country and we were talking about the 10th, I mean, everything right.

And then three days before our event COVID hit.

[00:34:03] Jasmin Singer: Oh, my gosh, what timing.

[00:34:06] Keith Tucker: Yeah, we were the largest event and the first event that had to cancel because I had 10 different schools that were bringing kids to the event. And can you imagine that, you know, when COVID first happened? So we had to cancel everything because of safety concerns.

So, while we were in the pandemic and all of that stuff, I made a promise that I would come up with something and redo that event. And luckily it has happened. In late 2024 this year, we're producing another event that's going to be even bigger than the Hip Hop is Green expo that we were doing.

And we're going to start doing the Hip Hop is Green dinners as well too, because everything that I've been telling you about our Cherry Street Farm program, our youth excellence program. It's like a cake, right? You've got a foundation, you know, and that foundation is our youth excellence program. And then the next layer is Cherry Street Farm.

And then the next layer is our events and then the next layer. Right? So we have a whole model that we've created here in Seattle over the last 4 years. I'm going to take that model all around to inner cities all around the nation. And the way that we're going to come into the city and welcome everybody into what we're doing is do a Hip Hop is Green dinner for the community.

[00:35:30] Jasmin Singer: Oh, I love this. How can people support your efforts? Like, what do you need?

[00:35:34] Keith Tucker: Well, money is the most important thing for us. It's a really great tool. Give an example, Hip Hop is Green, Cherry Street Farm project probably is around a million dollars for us to do that. And the thing about Cherry Street Farm too, is we own the land that the farm is on. So whatever city that I go to, I want to own the land because that's an issue with Black and Brown people of land ownership. Right? So, you know, that's our model that we're sticking to. So, we have a really good grant writer team that we have, we've raised a lot of money. I think over the last year, we raised about 1.2 Million dollars for our organization.

My goal is to raise 10 to 20 million dollars within the next 3 years for what we're doing. There's not many BIPOC organizations doing what I do at the level that I'm doing it on, but there's a lot of different white organizations that have 200, 300, 400 million dollars to do whatever they want to do.

You know, and so, when you look at that landscape, it's a lot of work that we have to do, to bring our voices to climate change to plant based eating and all of our innovation and all of our expertise. And I'm talking about native people too, and all of these people that have that amazing creativity and innovation and ancestral expertise to this. Because everybody on this planet needs to be involved in environmentalism and climate change, not just white folks.

[00:37:12] Jasmin Singer: Yes! So as we start to wrap up, except I do hope you'll stick with me for our bonus segment so I could ask you a few more personal questions, but aside from that, as we start to wrap up, it's the beginning of the year. We're looking ahead. What do you want to accomplish this year? If we're talking in the end of December and looking back at this year, what is it that you want to feel proud of?

[00:37:37] Keith Tucker: So, we are on a program right now that I'm so proud of and we're going to build this out to o. We are planting 10, 000 trees as part of Hip Hop is Green and the young people are planting these trees. Let me look on my board. I think we planted let me see here, 2, 478 trees so far. Yes, and so we're partnering with the Washington State Parks Department.

We're partnering with the Department of Natural Resources. We're partnering with the Seattle Parks Department. We've got a lot of different state agencies that are partnering with us. Shout out to all of them. Thank you so much for your support and your continued support. But the most important thing is these kids planting these trees and reaching that goal.

And I don't know if we're going to reach it this year. But whenever we reach it. It's going to happen. So that's 1 of the things I'm proud of. Another thing is we need to build our team. I'm looking for people that want to be a part of our team. I'm going to train two new teachers this year. So we're looking to hire 2 new teachers for our youth excellence program.

We will have paid training for you. All of that stuff. It's a part time job. Really cool working with the kids, you know, et cetera. And we're also looking to hire a fund developer so that we can develop our individual donors. Most of our money comes from sponsors and grants, but we need money coming in from individual donors.

So if people would like to become an individual donor, go to our website, click donate, and you know, you can donate 20 bucks a month every month, and that helps support all of our programs.

[00:39:19] Jasmin Singer: And what is the website?

[00:39:20] Keith Tucker: It's hiphopisgreen.com.

[00:39:23] Jasmin Singer: And how can people follow you on social media as well?

[00:39:26] Keith Tucker: We are Hip Hop is Green everywhere. So, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, everywhere. We are Hip Hop is Green everywhere.

[00:39:34] Jasmin Singer: By the way, who designed your logo? Because I might wind up getting it tattooed.

[00:39:41] Keith Tucker: There's a guy that I met through the entertainment industry. Shout out to Justin. Justin Hampton. he designed all of the different grunge rock posters here in Seattle. So he has a connection to the music industry here in Seattle and some of his art is just amazing.

[00:40:03] Jasmin Singer: It's so cool. Yeah, I love it.

[00:40:05] Keith Tucker: So he's designed some unique logo. He designed this logo here, which is our newest logo. It's the 10th element of hip hop logo here as well.

So that's my guy.

[00:40:16] Jasmin Singer: Well, Keith, I can't thank you enough. I'm so damn inspired by this work that you're doing. And I am so grateful that you've given your time to Our Hen House listeners today.

And I hope you stick on with me for a few more minutes here. But thank you so much for joining us on Our Hen House and for all you're doing. I hope you get some supporters out of this interview. I think you will.

[00:40:36] Keith Tucker: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.