As we announced a few weeks ago, Rhymefest has embarked on his own Motorcycle Diaries. Rather than stay at hotels while on the road with Rakim, Rhymefest is crashing at the homes of various fans throughout the duration of the tour. He’s keeping track of his experiences with our camera, and will be putting together a documentary with us, which will be packaged with the release of his new LP, El Che. I talked to Rhymefest on Friday, as he phoned in from California to give us an update on his travels. He told me,
“This has been an experience. I’ve been on seven or eight tours. This has been the most adventurous and the most life-changing. I’m looking at people and the way they’re looking at me is like I’m changing their life. It’s like they would have never had the chance to hang out with an NBA player or a professional artist, somebody they see on TV or admire their music. I was in the car with a guy I’m staying with today, and he was like, ‘oh my g-d, I have Rhymefest in my car listening to my music.’ And he was just talking to himself, and you could hear that he was utterly shocked, and that I was just a regular dude… We’re bringing humanity back to artists, and I realized that this is like my way to heaven… But more than me, I want to make sure my hosts have a great time and that they learn about what Hip Hop can be. We’re changing Hip Hop person to person, this is activism work we’re doing. If this is successful and we can blow this out of the water, maybe one day Kanye can stay at a regular person’s house, Jay-Z can stay at a regular person’s house. I’ve been getting calls and emails from everybody from Phonte to Killer Mike to Kanye saying, ‘man, be safe. Wow, You’re doing amazing brave things.’ I know that they’re watching. What we have to do is make it work and show our people that they don’t have to be scared of other people, people don’t have to be scared to travel anywhere they want to go, they don’t have to be afraid of music.”
You can read about all of Rhymefest’s travels here.