Harlem Arts Alliance Presents: On the “A” w/Souleo
Hip-hop great, Rah Digga will share her life lessons in the second installment of the New York Public Library’s free financial literacy series, Fame and Fortune on June 4 at the Mott Haven Library. The former First Lady of Busta Rhymes’ Flipmode Squad has successfully avoided some of the major financial pitfalls of her peers. Still she faced a few challenges including losing her home and belongings in a devastating 2009 fire.
“One of my biggest tragedies was my house burning down to the ground,” she recalls. “The blessing in that was I’ve always reported my home upgrades to the insurance company. The insurance payout was more than what I paid for the home. So I was able to pay for reconstruction and everything.”
During the intimate Q&A, Digga will also discuss how she has attained financial security by running her family business of restoring antique vehicles. She will touch on her plans to run for political office. The series runs June 4- July 19 at various NYPL branches. Additional guest speakers include R&B superstar, Freddie Jackson, pioneering hip-hop harmonizers, The Force MD’s, actor/artist, Federico Castelluccio and dance-pop powerhouse, Martha Wash. [Editorial Disclosure: The series is co-produced and moderated by writer).
When it comes to balancing budgets, few have done it as successfully as media mogul, Leonard E. Burnett Jr. With his new book Black is the New Green, co-authored by Andrea Hoffman, he explores the $87.3 billion buying power of the affluent African American community. For Burnett, this market has been overlooked by many luxury brands due to a lack of diversity in boardrooms. “Race is a big factor not in the sense of racism but that the majority controlling those budgets don’t look like us,” he says. “It is easy to overlook if no one in the room is having that conversation. So we want to educate brands on the power of that audience and ways of approaching them that makes sense.”
In addition to greater diversity in positions of power, Burnett notes that one of the most powerful tools to getting luxury brands to pay attention to the African-American market is hip-hop.
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