Chapter 7.   Image is Everything: Part 1 - A Stage Persona Created

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s JaHipster as INCOGNEGRO!

This is the first in a three-part series, which may or may not run consecutively, on the price and promise of creating an image for an artist.

I remember when I accidentally created JaHipster eight years ago.

I came into performance poetry in Baltimore. Baltimore (no ‘t’ sound if you want to pronounce it like local) is often slept on – the crime rate, drug rate, death toll and disease free-for-all tend to dominate our headlines. But the arts community in Baltimore – especially the live music scene – has always been very strong here. So naturally, hip-hop is having a field day. And when poetry had that nice little resurgence 5 years ago, she found herself surrounded by emcees. Now neosoul is on the loose and you can find him at Baltimore open mics jammin’ between spoken word kings and rap divas.

So eight years ago, when I walked into a poetry open mic, I walked into hip-hop’s living room. It wasn’t the music – almost all mics were a capella back then – and it wasn’t the host – more Huey Newton’s than Jay-Z’s – and it certainly wasn’t the bling because we hadn’t even created that phrase yet. It was atmosphere; it was intent. Remember hip-hop is a culture. It’s like walking into a church: Even if nobody is preaching at the moment, you still get it.

All that to say, everybody had a stage name. Of course they did. That’s the way of hip-hop – it’s about self-determination and the first thing you do is change your name. (But that is a DEEP subject that I will tackle later). Well, damn, I thought. I want a name. So I made one up. To my credit, I chose something fitting with promise and responsibility (JaHipster: God made me who I am-These Hips will make me famous), but I did not fully understand the ramifications of that choice until folks started forgetting my real name.

At first, I would always respond to a call to JaHipster by telling them to feel free to use my real name. I didn’t want folks to think I was arrogant or distant. But it wasn’t just total strangers – people who knew my mamma were calling me JaHipster. Huh? And then, I understood. There is no such thing as a real name. There is your government name, your stage name, the name you gave yourself, the name your mamma gave you, etc. It’s all real. Hip-hop is partially defined by a respect for things like that. The resurgence (note: resurgence, not creation or beginning) of spoken word has serious ties to hip-hop and that respect for naming yourself has carried over. I walked to the microphone and said (in a much quieter voice than I use now) “Good evening, everybody. My name is JaHipster.” And JaHipster was created.

And then I pimped her.

That’s right. I used JaHipster as an excuse – even a shield – for becoming the diva that I had always dreamed of being. I could wrap my hair, wear kente cloth, sarongs and flowy pants from the Caribbean. I could exponentially expand my shoe collection – hallelujah. Currently, I am discovering the joys of cleavage (although I got to keep it respectable fo da kids. JaHips luv da kids.) I could get loud and proud and raw without apology. I could rage against the machine and get applause for it. Hot diggity.
Now all that may seem like par for the course to the average reader who is not living under a rock. Erykah Badu? Beyonce? Sistah Souljah? Ain’t nothing new there, right? But we have to put it in context: 1) JaHipster is pre-Erykah, pre-Jill, pre-Lauryn. Nappy was not yet diva; all the Black Power mumbo-jumbo was reserved for February; and headwraps had not made it to MTV yet. I am not about to take credit for the creation of the new Afrolicious Diva – but Afro-Diva was a phenomenon that hip-hop was evolving at that time and given my age group, I was on the cusp just like Erykah et al. So we were probably wrapping our heads at the same time, but never knew about the existence of each other. So I had to make those leaps of faith in isolation. 2) I was raised in a private white high school, and then a private white college and then a private white graduate school. Are you kidding me? Living JaHipster was being in black girl heaven.

But I hadn’t been trained for any of this (though I think my mother was handing me subliminal messages from the git-go), and I had never seen it before(except maybe Thelma and Willona on “Good Times”), so I used JaHipster as an excuse. Liberal, angry, African. Hot diggity.

Too black? That’s just JaHipster. Ruffled feathers at a Klan meeting? That’s just JaHipster. Knocked somebody over the head at the Misogynistic Pigs Anonymous support group? Go, JaHipster, go! And (drum roll puh-lease) an afro? in 2000? really? Looks good on JaHipster, don’t it?

In JaHipster, I created a safe space, not only for my artistic growth, but for my personal evolution as well. It’s not that I wasn’t used to bucking the system – I was Malcolm Xia as an undergrad – but for once, I wanted to be able to evolve and explore in peace and quiet. No justification. No heated articles. No hate mail from your local conservative magazine. Just some nag champa incense and a little scented body oil while settling in for the latest attempt to style some happy nappy hair – after 7 pm, that is. Between the hours of 6 am and 6 pm, you couldn’t even recognized me… There was nothing to recognize actually: JaHipster was not something I to work; I kept her in the closet until I got home and put her own like a favorite t-shirt.

Better yet, JaHipster was more a house to live in, than a person to be.

Think about it: If you had all the money in the world to buy your first home and fix it up as you like, you’d do that carefully, wouldn’t you? This is the place where you breathe, eat, sleep. It may be more obvious with sisters – all the candles, flowers, orange and red walls trimmed in gold – but the brothers do it, too. We all create the place we want to live in when we have that option, even when it means a 46-inch plasma screen with surround sound audio.

(By the way, none of this was done on purpose at the time. This is an eight-year retrospective of what I did. My Grandmother prays a lot, and that’s how I did it right the first time. I’m telling you now… with some purpose and understanding in the forefront, maybe it will take less than eight years for the new generation.)

So. If you’re going to create an alter ego… if you’re going to call yourself something your mamma doesn’t and your daddy never will… choose carefully. This will be your safe space where you will live (or, if you choose badly, die), and this will be how people identify you. This will be the you the public thinks they know.

And if at all possible, I recommend that you just be you. Because I will tell you this: JaHipster started out eight years ago as an alter ego, but by her 10th birthday, she will simply be a stage name.

… and that is a lovely segue way into the next episode of Image is Everything: Creating an Image – Authenticity versus Strategy because…

The real you will always come through – whether that means that folks will see through your persona, or you will get carried away and become your persona, or, as in my case, you and your alter ego will do a Peter Parker-Spider Man thing and become one person – so create your image carefully. Your walk, your talk, your dress, your hair, your smile, your attitude. That’s all about image and Image is Everything.


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