“If you black and you struggling that word is called hustle” – Da Hype Click, What I Know from their 1995 tape “Everyday Life”. I leave this playlist here as the proper meditative listen around this subject.

I recalled a conversation I had with my friend about how in school, he would make around $40 off a $3 box of brownies by selling them for $3 a brownie to students and faculty. It made me think about candy ladies (affectionately known as “the candy lady”) and other hustlers I knew in school.

When you have to go out and get it yourself, you appreciate it more.

I undertook a small business venture my senior year of high school. I got into crocheting halter crop tops from YouTube and I started taking orders from the girls around school. I sold them for around $12-15, thinking my margins were decent since the yarn cost around $2. At that time I didn’t know how to factor in to my price point the hours I spent making them; even so, I successfully sold a handful of tops and made enough to pay for some senior expenses. I remember the other kids who would sell snacks out of their backpacks; many hot chips (flaming hot Cheetos) were exchanged on the snack market. 

The drive to make something out of nothing.

I was friends with a group of guys in high school who called themselves the Space Boys, a collective formed around fashion, selling snacks and throwing parties. They all had a unique sense of style, wearing mismatched foams and painted overalls with Polo shirts; each guy had a cool haircut and had their own creative thing. Some were comedians, or designed clothes or shoes, or modeled. A few of them became very successful social media influencers, some of the first to do it when you consider the rise of influencers. Years later I learned who the conspirator of the Space Boys was, and that the collective was a business plan thought up to create a friend group, amass popularity, and leverage that popularity to make money. It worked too.

An underground Memphis-born song by a collective called Da Hype Click, produced by Shawty Pimp, one of Memphis' OG hip hop artists. Circa 1995.

Now, as an independent artist in Memphis, I still see this kind of spirit and hustle on a daily basis. I see small businesses rise and dissipate like the seasons passing. Whether brick and mortar or remote, commercial buildings or home-based, the entrepreneurial spirit of the ghetto remains strong.

What I’m really fascinated by in this theme is the drive to make something out of nothing. That is a common thread in the stories of Memphis. With few options to choose from, and the lot being largely undesirable, Memphis will create whatever is necessary before we succumb to the circumstances. Those who don’t apply legal ingenuity make a way nonetheless; there you have trappers, robbers, and scammers. The desperation that poverty breeds requires enterprise; a way has to be made to survive.

I cannot validate decisions that bring harm to anyone. But I can try to understand why such decisions would be made. When you take into account all the circumstances, like our school systems which failed to teach us real world skills like how to build credit and financial literacy, or even how to legally start a business, being born into households that imbue trauma rather than emotional growth and integrity, it’s hard not to form empathy to those dealt a poor hand in life.

But as the adage goes, it’s not where you come from – it’s where you go.

Despise not the day of small beginnings.

Learning to work for what you have establishes self respect.

I myself was born to a single mother of 4 kids, and my understanding is that none of her children’s fathers paid child support. My father passed when I was so young, I didn’t get a chance to know him. And I was so sheltered as a child, I couldn’t even conceptualize what I was missing because I didn’t see many father figures growing up.

I was explaining to my coworkers that my need to create is like an addiction – I just have to do it. I spent most of my life alone in a bedroom making something: art, clothes, jewelry, music. I started telling them how I would make clothes and houses for my stuffed animals out of old clothes and cardboard boxes and I stopped and said – DAMN we were poor! And I laughed, because I didn’t see it that way back then.

It never stopped me.

I’m grateful I even had those things to utilize.

Whether you’re born with extra advantages or disadvantages, no one is entitled to behave however they want.

A conversation I come back to often with one of my bosses is how learning to work for what you have establishes self respect. When you have to go out and get it yourself, you appreciate it more. That is true no matter what socioeconomic class you are born to. I know rich bored people and poor ignorant people who both make the lives of others harder.

A sense of entitlement can be unfortunate. 

I can form empathy for my fellow hustlers.

So I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit Memphis has endowed me with. It makes me appreciate everything I have more, because in one way or another I have to work for it. It also makes me more considerate towards others. Whether it’s recognizing hard work or even just imagining how much went into an endeavor, I can form empathy for my fellow hustlers.

There’s also this phenomenon in Memphis where people who want to work for what they have are unable to, and the reasons why are many: lack of transportation, being a caretaker for family, unfavorable and even inhumane work conditions. Don’t get me started on warehouses in the south. That’s a tangent for another day. 

To end this reflection and commentary, I’ll refer to Ecclesiastes 5:18 –

18 This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. 

19 Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God.

20 They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

Just some food for thought.