Design Thinking and Launching Your Idea with Iddris Sandu

WHOS ON YOUR MOUNT RUSHMORE OF INSPIRATION?

Iddris: Nipsey Hussle, Hov (Jay-Z), Diddy, DJ Cool Herc, Africa Bombata, KRS One, Grandmaster Flash. Hip Hop inspires me. I’m also inspired by David Hammons and Basquiat who are both artists. Last, but not least, Catherine Johnson, the mathematician from NASA who recently passed away. 

I would say Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Malcolm X. All these people inspire me every single day because they were philosophers and I think those are the best leaders. The best leaders in the community are the philosophers or the people that question the status quo and say, “We don’t do this because it’s wrong we do this because it stops our people from advancing. 

I’m also inspired by the people who create equations. I feel that my presence and the reason why God and the universe has me on this earth is to serve humanity, but before I can serve humanity I need to be able to serve my people first. I learned Ohms, Jules and about Charles Darwin. All of these people created equations, formulas, but how many of those people looked like me? How many people were black? 

WHY IS HIP HOP IMPORTANT TO YOUR WORK RIGHT NOW?

Iddris: Hip hop is really important to me because it’s enabled me to think the way that I think. I think about being a kid from Ghana who moved to America when he was 3 years old and settled in Compton, California. Compton gave us NWA, which gave us Eazy-E, Buddy, and Kendrick Lamar. Had it not been for hip hop, I wouldn’t be able to be me. I wouldn’t be able to be here right now. There was an LL Cool J interview that I saw and he was talking about how he was one of the first OGs in hip hop to own his masters. 

Back then it wasn’t a cool thing to talk about. He said, “Back then, you would talk about ownership and it wasn’t pleasurable. Now, everybody wants to be on ownership. We created hip hop as a culture. We don’t even know what hip hop is fully capable of. Hip hop isn’t just about writing rhymes or producing beats; hip hop is about technology; hip hop is about innovation. We just haven’t seen it yet because hip hop is a baby still. The founders didn’t even understand what they were doing, but that’s because we haven’t looked at it in an equation way. We haven’t looked at hip hop as a formula because if we did, we would understand that a formula solves problems. Hip hop is used as a form of meditation and healing.