As an immigrant to LA and an avid hip hop head, for a short period, I performed + did a lot more listening in the LA battle rap and open mic environment. Alongside this, I developed the initial concept for Hip Hop Literature (HHL), a movement to highlight how clever some bars were + use hip hop as a medium to teach English to the less privileged.

Over the next few months, bringing it with me everywhere I went, HHL evolved internationally as I brought on high school students in California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Japan to start chapters of HHL at their own schools. I remotely led projects using hip hop as a medium to kindle writing with wit, "changed a school's English program completely", and eventually almost sold the rights to everything Hip Hop Literature to a subsidiary of Complex Magazine in late 2019.

Hiphopliterature.com was also the first website I'd ever deployed and for a way-too-long time, I kept accidentally sending emails from brandon@hiphopliterature.com :)