Being Noah Tesfaye #3: The Hip-Hop State of the Union

*The first two installments of this blog have been relatively serious topics, so I decided to write about something more light-hearted this week.


My fellow Americans… Oh never mind. I don’t want to think about him anymore. He was one amazing president. I’m here to talk about one simple thing: the State of Hip-Hop. Whether that’s rap, or any other category of hip-hop, I want to talk about my favorites this year and share my thoughts on the music that has released in one of the best years we have ever seen for my favorite genre.

I usually like to do a top five with my friends every few months. As of today, November 18th, 2017, these are my top five favorite albums of the year:

  1. JAY-Z: 4:44
  2. Tyler, The Creator: Flower Boy
  3. BROCKHAMPTON: Saturation
  4. BROCKHAMPTON: Saturation 2
  5. Joey Bada$$: ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$

The first thing I would like to say before I explain everything about why this is my list thus far into the year is slots 1 & 2. The only reason why I put 4:44 above Flower Boy was because of what the album sentimentally means for me. The first time I listened to it was in my dorm at Columbia for a summer program, while my Russian roommate was watching YouTube videos. It was 12:01 AM and I started my trial for Tidal to listen to what Shawn had to say for the first time in four years. Those next two weeks with my friends were filled with analyzing the most random lyrics, contemplating how Beyoncé could forgive Jay, and more importantly, the Kanye beef. Other than those personal reasons, Tyler’s newest album would be at my number one spot with no hesitation.


Perhaps the one of the things I didn’t expect this year to find was that my favorite artist, Logic, failed to put out an incredible album. While I loved Everybody because I am a Logic fan, objectively, it was pretty lackluster. I wanted more in his message and I wanted the execution of his narrative to be flawless with how much this project was hyped up. I was disappointed to say the least.

That goes right to my criteria for listening to an album. The main component of an album I look for is narrative, and more importantly, an artist/character I can connect with. That’s why I loved 4:44. How much more personal could JAY-Z get than talking about the fact he admitted to an affair ON AN ALBUM?! He started the album right off with talking in third person, as if he wanted to “Kill JAY-Z.” Every single song on this album is produced to perfection, thanks to No I.D., and every single song tells a story. “The Story of OJ” shares a brief, yet punchy description of the African American struggle, and no matter what kind of black person you are, you are still a “nigga”(Side note: I don’t condone the usage of this word, but it deserves to be written here because it is a quote and reality that many black people, along with myself, face everyday). I don’t feel it necessary to break down the lyrics, as there’s Genius for that, but I do want to tell every single person should listen to 4:44 because it’s going to be a classic album one day.

I think this album also helps signal the shift in myself as a person. As I’ve been able to self-explore and learn more about who I am, I connect significantly more with those who have lived more and seen more in their lives. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I only like talking to adults, although I do prefer that at times, but I appreciate talking to people who have had profound experiences they can share. That’s why I LOVE BROCKHAMPTON. Thanks to my good friend Alexis for recommending them, but they exemplify this point. Each member has had different experiences and they do a tremendous job at eloquently sharing their stories. Kevin shares his experience about being gay. Ameer talks a lot about his life in the streets. Matt talks about abuse, and Dom shares his anxiety stories. Each one of them bring something unique to their albums and this ultimately leads to two, soon to be three, of my favorite albums of the year. If you want dive deep into this boyband/rap group/collective, I suggest listening to “FACE,” “FIGHT,” and “GOLD.” Each will give you a different vibe and a literal saturation of deep, emotional lyrics.

With the recent presidential election, I needed an album that could fire me up to know that this nation could be a place worth fighting to make better. No album energized me more to help find a cure for America than ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ (notice the spelling if you didn’t catch that;). I didn’t know what to expect from this album honestly. I didn’t know whether I would get an album of F Donald Trump, or a commercial album to help get Americans cope with the election. What you get is something worth so much more than I could have ever hoped. “TEMPTATION” is right up there as one of my favorite songs of the past five years with it’s infectious chorus and jazzy instrumental, and “BABYLON” could very well be the best rap song by Joey, and that’s including the Summer Knights and 1999. More than anything, this album is just fun to listen to and it give you a positive boost to your day in a fashion unlike anything I have ever listened to.

And now we come to perhaps the best album overall this year. I would be surprised if this album doesn’t win a Grammy, but knowing the people that nominate these albums, there is no way it stands a chance after all the antics this man has gotten into over the years. Flower Boy by Tyler, the Creator is the best album not for just its sonic brilliance, but for its ability to be the best album you can drive to. Period. I know that sounds ridiculous, but as someone who has just gotten his license, I do value the drivability (yes, I made this up) of an album to high regard now. The skits on this album help guide the listener on a journey of realization that Tyler, like anyone else, is really human. He is a man who has flaws, and can be angry, confused, and happy all at the same time. His features from Frank Ocean are placed at all the right moments in the album to soothe you. The soundstage created by this album is unlike anything I have heard in a rap album and every song feels as though you are in the studio with Tyler as he is recording. “See You Again,” the three minute masterpiece of this album, gathers synths and bumping 808s into the most harmonious melody of this project. “Boredom” brings the feature of Rex Orange County and Anna of the North into the catchiest chorus of the album, and its message is message is simple: “Find some time, find some time to do something.” I know I am not the only person who feels like Tyler wrote this album for just me. All these anecdotes, while seemingly personal, are all shared by people who struggle to find who we are, and when this album came out while I was in Ethiopia this past summer, I only came to appreciate life that much more.


Hip-hop is in a place that I have never been more proud to call myself a fan of. From the emergence of BROCKHAMPTON, to the return of Jigga, and the protest of Joey, hip-hop is now a genre I wholeheartedly can recommend to anyone, regardless of their music interests, because the messages of artists have never been so transparent for the masses to understand. I always get asked why I listen to so much rap music, and why I listen to so much explicit music. The answer I want to say is “No one ever liked Picasso until they came to appreciate him for what he created,” but I usually just say it’s my personal choice. I question America’s choice to not recognize hip-hop for so long as something we should appreciate. But there is a future for this, mainly thanks to the fact that hip-hop culture is now American culture. Today, SNL is going to be HOSTED, not a musical guest, by Chance the Rapper. Although the progress, I admit, is slow, rap music is the future of American culture, whether you like it or not. That’s why I admire people, like Gary Vaynerchuk, who never fears from embracing this culture. So if you have anytime to listen to any of these albums, especially if you don’t listen to rap that often, I encourage you to listen to any of these five albums in their entirety, in order. Maybe these projects can help open your mind to what this genre of music has to offer, and more importantly, why this genre deserves your ear for the years to come.

Being Noah Tesfaye #2: College and Affirmative Action—What Does it Mean?


I. The Introduction

By the title alone, I assume you are probably thinking that this is yet another piece by a black student arguing for affirmative action. And the truth is? You are right, sort of. As a first generation student, I sometimes struggle to understand the issues that plague the African American community. But the really honesty of the situation is that I’m a part of that group of American citizens, and I absolutely love it. Being a literal AFRICAN first, American second is something I am proud of and I wouldn’t change anything in the world about it.

As a person who will be applying in a year to universities, I cannot help but try to understand how colleges pick applicants and what they are looking for in order for me to get accepted. Last night, I stumbled across this New York Times article titled “What Colleges Want in an Applicant (Everything).” It pulled me in by its funny, albeit accurate description of the college applications process in the United States. It had an interesting argument for the fact that merit is no longer the only thing universities should think about in applicants, although it is a priority. The author, Eric Hoover, believes that schools are attempting to quantify all the skills and characteristics of applicants is impossible to do right for everyone. He shares that although some schools will attempt to evaluate accomplishments out of the classroom, it becomes difficult to assess those accomplishments when you compare students of higher-income families to lower-income families. How is a student from the South Side of Chicago who has to take care of his/her siblings going to compete with a student from Atherton who can afford a tutor every hour after school seven days a week? How is a student from the Bronx with two part-time jobs suppose to apply against a student from Park Avenue who’s parents give them internships at Fortune 500 companies?


II. The Case

The answer to that question, at least in theory, is affirmative action. The concept of granting a better opportunity to those disadvantaged by society in the applications process. This means that a school will attempt to account for the disadvantages of certain applicants and evaluate their applications based on the circumstances that students are faced with in high school. In theory, this will grant that student from the South Side a better chance of possibly getting into the school that the same Atherton applicant was applying to as well.

The idea of affirmative action has many sides and many opinions. First off, there are people who are either for or against affirmative action. Many of the people in favor argue that affirmative action is form of reparation. This outlines the idea that society places a predetermined status on certain people unable to overcome their lesser status. That means that in order to remedy this, universities should accept more students of varying socioeconomic and race backgrounds to remedy this issue in society.

Although this idea does make sense in theory, it has since been disputed and in the Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California V. Bakke in 1978, the idea of a racial quota for universities was destroyed. A white student demanded that he should have been awarded acceptance to the public university UC Davis School of Medicine because they were only evaluating merit in the application. He scored higher than many other minority students, yet was denied admission. He took the case to the Supreme Court, and they agreed that he was placed in an inherent disadvantage because in an application only evaluating merit for a PUBLIC university, he was denied acceptance because he was white. The school had quotas for the amount of minority students they wanted to include in their school, and they reserved those spots for minority students only. This inherently puts the white student at a disadvantage because the school application was merit-based and even he scored higher on his exams, he was being discriminated against.

By now,I hope you understand the issue when setting quotas with school diversity and acceptance. Schools have since adapted their affirmative action policies to adapt to the legal set by the Bakke case. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of affirmative action in the case Grutter V. Bollinger, where a white female student believed she was being discriminated against because she was denied admission into the University of Michigan Law School. Unlike the Bakke case, the Supreme Court argued that public institutions have the right to promote diversity as their ultimate goal in education. This means that if a school wants to accept a black student over a white student who share equal qualifications, or vice versa to bring more diversity to their school, they can do so legally. This was right around the time where schools began to use the term “wholistic application,” where they attempt to look at all the factors in your application to determine if you are what they want from future students. This in fact is is the most agreed-upon opinion when it comes to affirmative action. If a school believes in promoting diversity within their campus, they should the right to do so.


III. The Problems

Although I do support the concept of affirmative action, I also can there are some issues that exist with the policies that exist right now. First and foremost, living in Silicon Valley, a good percentage of my friends are Asian. They also happen to do extremely well when it comes to grades and standardized testing. So many of the people I know have scored well on the SAT, reaching well over a 1500, yet they sometimes do not make it into the amazing Ivy League schools they are ready to conquer. They do feel frustrated that their grades, no matter how hard they work, are not getting them to the places where, in many cases, they have every single qualification necessary to thrive there. This comes to the issue where there are thousands of Asian students who are doing so well at school, but universities are attempting to maintain their diversity, and this puts many of my friends at some sort of a disadvantage in the admissions process. The unfortunate case is that there aren’t enough spaces for all students who are qualified, and no matter how much a student believes he/she deserves to be at an elite university, the school cannot accept everyone.

On the flip-side, I was listening to a talk by Professor Richard Banks at the Stanford Law School, who argued a completely different problem that occurs with affirmative action. Many black and African students that are getting into schools are not actually students that are disadvantaged all of the time. Rather, they are often affluent students who have every single advantage many wealthy, white applicants have, and they are getting into the schools with the affirmative action policies that really should be going to more disadvantaged students with lower socioeconomic statuses. High-achieving students that are wealthier, in the top 20%, are three times as popular as lower-income, high-achieving students, the bottom 20%, overall in America. At schools like Stanford, that wealth ratio is 10 to 1. Average students in higher income situations are having a better opportunity than even the most high achieving low-income students. Even if universities are granting free tuition for low-income students, but those students have no one in their social circle from elite schools, they will never get those opportunities to get that free tuition because they never apply. The profound irony of this is that lower-income students will gain much more out of attending elite universities than middle and higher-income students, and lower-income students suffer more from not going to elite schools. Ultimately, Professor Banks is arguing that the problem with affirmative action is much more an economic issue than a racial one, and in actuality, students who know about the opportunity of Ivy League schools can follow the steps of people like Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor.


IV. What is next?

The ultimate goal of affirmative action is to promote diversity in universities. Rather than letting race and culture determine what “diversity” means, actual inequality should determine the process for which affirmative action should be informed by. Race is a crucial and very important part of society. This the foundation for many of the inequalities and resources available to students. If one’s resources are determined by their race, then a school should and does have the right to accept that student if they see he/she promoting diversity at their university, both on a racial and socioeconomic level. All students who have the same skills and the capability to succeed at an elite university should have the same opportunity, and that their socioeconomic status should not determine their fate. This is an issue that I do not understand, and frankly don’t know if I will ever be able to understand. I struggle to understand who I am and how my opportunities will determine my fate. But I have opportunities, something that many students across the nation do never have. I have seen people close to me overcome tough circumstances and thrive. Two of my first cousins are at Princeton as I write this on full scholarships, and they continue to amaze me at accomplishing the dreams that I didn’t know as truly a possibility until I saw them make it. I cannot control how a teacher grades my paper, nor can I control how well I can understand AP Physics in class. The one thing I can control is how hard I work, how much I take advantage of the opportunities I have, and how I can help those around me succeed.

When I went to Ethiopia this past summer and visited my grandfather’s village, Wojerat, a two hour drive outside of Mekelle, I met a second cousin who was nearly my age. I saw how isolated she is, never getting the opportunity to pursue an education because she has to take care of her younger siblings. Every single day, I think about her and remind myself how grateful I am to have the privilege to be here in Silicon Valley. My grandfather walked 25 hours a week to go to school from that village, and he gave my mother the opportunity to come to this country, and as a result, me the opportunity to not have to worry about anything in life but school. I don’t know where I would be today if it wasn’t for Dr. Kiros working that hard, but I hope that one day, I can work just as hard to achieve greater things for society.

No matter what university I may attend in a few years, I want them to know that I will work as hard as I can to make the most of that opportunity. I struggle to grasp what my future holds, but I know that if I get the opportunity to one day go to a university like Princeton, Stanford, or Columbia, or rather any elite school, I want to change the world by getting those who have the skills to attend any university to get that same opportunity I received. If there is one thing I have learned thus far in my journey for college, it is that no one should ever deter you from achieving your dreams. I didn’t understand at first in sixth grade when my math teachers in elementary school didn’t want me to take the honors math classes even though I was doing so well, and then I realized in that moment there are people who don’t want you to succeed. I am telling you that you can do that. You can control how hard you work, how empathetic you are, and there will be people that recognize this, no matter how much that is hard to believe. I struggle to understand why I am working so hard and worry myself about what happens if no one recognizes the effort. But you and I have to know that it will pay off. The work will pay off. College is just the beginning, and I hope that more universities can continue to recognize the efforts of all students, especially those whose lives you, the university, can change with one yes.


Being Noah Tesfaye #1: What does Diversity Mean?

I was in my journalism class recently going over the paper we just published. We were talking about how we could improve the sports section for our second publication of the year, and there were two articles on page 18. The first was one about one of our best basketball players who is committing to a D3 school and the other was about Japanese baseball. Now, one normally would think of this as a pretty cool two articles to put side by side and show the different types of stories we cover on our paper. But one student, who was white, said something so profoundly odd. She mentioned that we should have created a spread for diversity on that page combining both articles under the term “diversity.” She thought that it was justifiable to have an article about a white basketball player to share diversity because there are so few NBA, high-level basketball players that are white, which is true, but…

I don’t agree with her statement for a whole list of reasons, namely because our school is around 50–60% white, so how are we arguing that an average student based on race is “diverse.” Our editor also mentioned how he was not being recruited for being “white,” but for his basketball skills. This frankly caused all the minority kids to laugh, and instantly, I turned to the only other black student in our newspaper, and we couldn’t stop laughing. We were all surprised that she thought it was justifiable to compare diversity on a level of an American sport taking a massive following in Japan with an “average” American boy with exceptional skills in an American sport. How is the latter really meant to be considered diverse?

This allowed me to ponder more about what I truly think about what diversity means? And no, I don’t mean literally, as diversity is “the state of being diverse,” and diverse meaning “showing a great deal of variety.” I think of diversity as something that should be applauded in all places. Whether it may be in an education situation, or more broadly in society. The more people you have to provide variety of opinion to one another allows society to grow since everyone is exposed to new thoughts that they themselves may have never gotten.

In a weird way, I actually understand why my classmate would say something like that. Knowing her, I knew she was just thinking of something creative and wanted to sound unique. But she also did not think about what would happen if she said such an ignorant thing? Are we all going to just assume that the average demographic kid at our school should be mentioned in a diversity spread? That makes no sense frankly. But perhaps the worst part about this event was that we were all laughing and cracking up about it. Most of the class realized how ludicrous her statement was, but rather than being direct about why we thought it was absurd, we all laughed. That only alienates people from contributing. Perhaps we should do a better job as students to help guide someone to letting her know clearly what she said had no clear reasoning and she should think a bit before she says something like that.

Then again, the statement I made in the last sentence of the previous paragraph angers me to some extent. I don’t want to always have to correct someone. It’s kind of like the N word, which I hope to one day delve into in a full post in the future. At a certain point, I just begin to judge people based on their behaviors that either fairly or unfairly showcase his/her race attitudes. I’m not saying my classmate is racist, and honestly, I think she is the furthest from that. She is friendly from the interactions I have had with her, and she seems to have a kind heart. That being said, I think that as a young black man, I get tired of correcting people on what they should say/shouldn’t say. However, if I stop, how will anyone learn how to become a better person? What if someone says something that may slide for me, but says something racially charged against a much more angry person? I would much rather be the one to help guide them to be better informed on how to speak with knowledge about race.

In the end, I want to be understood and appreciated for who I am. Diverse groups of people often give the greatest amount of appreciation and understanding to me because being Ethiopian lets me connect with all people. I can connect with immigrants because both my parents came here from Ethiopia. I can connect with African American students because I too deal with the prejudices they deal with as well. I love being Ethiopian, but I love being African American just as much. If one can truly embrace who you are, you can be much better equipped to help guide those who have misconceptions about race understand it a bit more.

Welcome to the beginning of something special, hopefully…

Hello! I guess since I’m writing this as a welcome to what I hope could one day be the place that guided me to some profound discovery in my life. I don’t know what I’m going to write on this blog, other than what it is like to be me. That’s why this blog is going to have posts titled “Being Noah Tesfaye” because that’s the one subject I’m an expert on. I hope you learn and take something out of this blog and understand a bit more about who I am.

For context, I am Ethiopian, or 3/4 Ethiopian and 1/4 Eritrean, and I live in Silicon Valley. I am a current high school student looking to one day become a Constitutional Law lawyer or Constitutional Theorist. This blog might include some of my thoughts on Constitutional Law and Supreme Court-related issues as well as just some of my personal opinions as well. But who knows.

Anyway, if you are interested in reading this journey, please follow my profile and follow me on Twitter. It’s time to embark on something special, the ending to which I have no idea what it will be…