Source: iOne Digital Creative Services
Hip-hop is a powerful vehicle, for years standing as the highest-selling musical genre in the world. Many remember how the music introduced them to certain words, people, or ideas. Other super fans have expanded their vocabulary by listening to Outkast and Eminem; discovered Black leaders through the music of Common and KRS-One; or learned about nontraditional religious and spiritual paths via the lyrics of Wu-Tang Clan. Multi-hyphenate creator and technologist Damola Idowu aka Damola Da Great Deity Dah is using hip-hop to introduce Pittsburgh students to technology, science, math, and entrepreneurship.
Damola’s relationship with hip-hop began in the late 1980s when he was a teenager listening to artists like Rakim, Kool G Rap, Sweet Tee, and Salt-N-Pepa. As much as he built his hip-hop identity and tastes from watching the greats, he also envisioned an academic path after listening to the God MC, aka Rakim. He quotes the great’s lyrics in everyday conversation. In this case, from “Follow the Leader.”
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“Rakim said, ‘What could you say as the Earth gets further and further away? / Planets as small as balls of clay / Astray into the Milky Way, world’s out of sight / Far as the eye can see, not even a satellite,’” he remembers, rapping with the same delight that he had as a teenager. “He was putting so much science in the rhymes it made me want to be an engineer.”
Damola and Wole (center) with students following a workshop at Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. | Courtesy of Toyz Electronics, Inc.
So, Damola did just that. He began to attend engineering camps and enrolled at Syracuse University at age 15, before transferring to Howard University, where he joined the Washington D.C. Chamber of Commerce and got involved in engineering and tech startup spaces.
Around that same time, he had a self-described spiritual awakening and adopted the persona of Da Great Deity Dah, a rapper who integrates science, Black-centered ideologies, and spirituality into his lyrics, in the tradition of the MCs that Damola looked up to.
He released his first album Life Or Death in 1996 and continued to build a successful rap career, selling his albums around the world and even writing a song for Run-DMC. But he always saw larger potential for the character he had created. He launched a comic book, clothing line, and merchandising around Da Great Deity Dah. He also founded a magazine about hip-hop culture and entrepreneurship.
Damola aka Da Great Deity Dah. | Courtesy of Toyz Electronics, Inc.
Damola’s many talents came in handy after his son revealed similar gifts. Wole Idowu’s engineering talents earned him meetings in Silicon Valley and recruitment by top colleges, but shortly after enrolling at Carnegie Mellon University at age 15, he ran into academic difficulties.
“It was hard for him to contextualize the numbers and the data without the cultural relevance,” Damola recalls. “The why—that is what was missing.”
Damola helped his son face his challenges by using video games and hackathons to help him personalize and visualize the concepts. He worked with Carnegie Mellon to help Wole build a student organization that coordinated hackathons on campus. Damola also recorded a hip-hop jazz album, Chronicles of the Electromagnetic Field General, with the school’s music department.
Wole graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2017 at 20 years old with a degree in electrical and computer engineering. If Damola’s son could find joy and get a stronger command of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) through these activities, he reasoned, other young people could, too.
Damola began by developing a curriculum, ToyzSTEAM. He and Wole worked with Carnegie Mellon’s start-up program to co-found Toyz Electronics, Inc. The company creates gadgets like smartwatches and custom USBs, but its crown jewel is Dah Varsity, a hip-hop and STEAM-powered Afro-futuristic metaverse that integrates Twitch, the live-streaming video service, as well as the architecture of Microsoft’s Minecraft.
Damola with the character he created, Da Great Deity Dah. | Source: Steven Lloyd
Dah Varsity Metaverse functions as a 3-D video game that features an AI model and marketplace for talent, introducing students to STEAM concepts through hip-hop. Through this concept of what Damola calls “Superhero Rap,” students create their ideal selves and the world that they want to live in.
“What is your nirvana, your ideal self, and what is the villain?” he asks. “The villain is the obstacles in the way of that happening. It could be self-defeating behavior; some of us are at war with ourselves. It could be an environment or a system that you have to overcome using your intellect. You must be smarter than the game. You must overcome the system.”
And just as Damola conceptualized the Da Great Deity Dah in his music and comic books, the video game begins with players creating their own superhero to navigate the digital world.
Next, they create their own avatars and choose the “STEAM powers” that they use to overcome obstacles. They can then create their own stories, merchandise, music, and podcasts, using STEAM concepts such as 3-D modeling, Python programming, and design technologies.
Idowu with Damola and CBS host Heather Abraham, May 2023. | Source: Maame Conduah
Damola integrates global cultures from his travels to 15 countries (Korea, Japan, China, Columbia, Germany, France, Spain, Canada, among others) into the game as well, allowing players to trek around the world.
“If you can’t visualize something, you’re not going to succeed at it. That is the missing piece,” Damola explains. “If you try to teach visual kids numbers, the numbers mean nothing to them. You must understand the context of how people learn.”
But along with learning academic concepts, students can also use the game for other real-world applications. Players can monetize their avatars, music, and merchandise with other users; they can also use their in-game creations to build portfolios to connect with mentors, free college programs, and jobs.
Dah Varsity already netted 11,000 downloads of their products. Toyz Electronics is working with Carnegie Mellon University’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship to host workshops, bring in younger students, and build a community of players to learn. Hundreds of students from the Swartz Center program have used their in-game portfolios to gain admission to colleges like the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, USC, Georgia Tech, University of Michigan, and others.
Damola was a finalist at the 2022 UPprize Social Innovation Challenge. | Source: Ya Momz House, Inc.
Dah Varsity extends its reach through ongoing afterschool programs, rec-to-tech programs, and workshops throughout the Pittsburgh area. The program has reached over 1,000 students from elementary to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State New Kingston, Manchester Academic Charter School and Nazareth Boys and Girls Club. Currently, approximately 400 people are on the platform in Pittsburgh.
This may not have been what Biggie meant when he said, ‘You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far,’ but the iconic lyric applies, nonetheless.
“What you see me doing is building a whole program using my rhyme book,” Damola says before quoting “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” by another artist he reveres.
“Big Daddy Kane was like, ‘I’ll have to open/A school of emceeing, for those who want to be in/My field in court then again on second thought/To have emcees coming out sounding so similar.’ If rap was a school, I’d be MVP. Open a rap school, teach them how to STEAM rap. That’s been the whole way.”
William E. Ketchum III is a reporter and editor dedicated to covering the intersection of music, culture, and society. His work has appeared in VIBE, Vulture, GQ, Complex, Billboard, Guardian, NPR, MTV, XXL and Ebony.
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