Music, Tech & Mental Health
More content will appear soon, but for now a preview…
NEW BOOK (in progress): Street Intelligence: A Radical New Roadmap for Creative Care
There is no shortage of intelligence in this world, or is there? A critical area that is regularly ignored is the power of cultural intelligence, and most definitely Street Intelligence. In this book, Dr Inkster will reveal key future directions in which street intelligence, street literacy and self-expression, and youth-oriented music and culture can be integrated into improving care support and used to enrich and propel more inclusive AI with street and youth culture calling the shots.
Enter The Cypher: My first time as a Cypher Judge - while scanning my brain in real-time to see which rappers got my 🧠🔥
Let me rewind…
I am a life-long fan of hip-hop music and culture (evidence: DJ Plan B cassette mix tapes and Basement Flavour album), but I have zero know-how or experience judging talent and I have never judged a cypher or even been in a rap battle. Disclaimer: I suppose the closest exception was when I possibly won a rap battle in a prison on a technicality? In brief, I was invited to give a Hip Hop Psych talk inside a UK prison and Akeem (my co-founder) spontaneously nominated me to rap battle against all of the male prisoners (N=30+ participants), but no one challenged me when I suddenly grabbed the mic and stepped forward. I’ll take that as a win.
Flash forward, as an introverted, passionate life-long fan of hip-hop music and culture, I solidly assumed I would be attending this event in the backdrop soaking up all the culture from the edges. Nope. About 10 minutes before the event started, Dre walked up to me greeting me with a smile and asked me to be the 5th Cypher Judge. I was stunned for maybe 2 seconds and then jumped at the opportunity and immediately said yes.
I suddenly found myself in the epicentre of an epic UK Rap Cypher.
I knew I had to bring my A Game to the mix somehow, but not knowing how to judge I had to think of another way fast. Being a Neuroscientist, I always carry my portable brain scanning device everywhere I go. It suddently clicked in my mind that I would judge the rappers based on how they got inside my head and how much they impressed my brain waves.
More details coming soon, but here are a few images of how rappers got inside my head and how I used changes in my real-time brain wave data as a key metric for determining which top 3 rappers I would recommend to the other Judges as my choice. Importantly, I was always locked into the rappers words and their presence and only grabbed an image if they did something that moved my mind. All of the rappers made different impressions in my mind and it was beautiful to see how my mind flowed and reacted to the rappers unique styles and passion for the culture. When one rapper said my name I definitely reacted to that, that was clever I thought. I felt like the rappers were trying extra hard to impress me as a Judge like I had some brain super power they could unlock to win the cypher. It was just so amazing and I felt so connected with the Cypher rappers and the UK rap community.
As a real-world real-time neuroscientist, during that Cypher event at times I physically and mentally felt like I was ‘in the future’ but very much also present in the moment. I don’t know how to describe it, but I’ll try. I have scanned over 1000 people’s brains and more specifically in the past year and a half I’ve scanned over 100 people in real-world settings using a lightweight, portable brain scanning device. So I’m kind of ‘pro’ at very subtly collecting data but staying connected in the moment. Even to the point of having a small notepad and resting my phone on it while holding them both up right next to the experience I’m engaged with. So while others watching the Cypher had their phones recording the rappers I had my old school pen in my hair ready for writing in my notepad, which was also conveniently used to prop-up/hold my phone because I needed to see my brain waves being displayed on my phone and to grab screen shots when a rapper really got my brain fired up. It was such a nice fusion of old school and new school with my paper, pen, and technology.
All rappers were incredible and I was so impressed with their passion, cohesion, and playful competiteiveness.
Below are some currently out-of-context screenshots that map to certain rappers in certain ways (linked with my notepad scribbles to give it context and time stamp). I need to unpack all the data at some point when I have more time.
Three rappers stood out for me though, including one rapper named “Psychs”. Below is a video of Psychs accepting his Spotify Promotion Prize. I will be working with Dre Beatsora and as many rappers as possible to do some follow-up brain scanning while they engage in their craft.
Very importantly, we will also be having discussions that relate to mental health and wellbeing from culturally-sensitive and hyper-contextualised creative perspectives. You could ask the age-old question: “How can hip-hop be more embedded in healthcare?”, but that’s not my question, mine is: “How do street culture communities want to evolve, embrace, and embed health in creative ways that recognise street intelligence and always stay true to the culture?“.
