What title would you give for a speech if you were back at Texas Southern University, or Howard, or Spelman, and you were speaking on how the students should approach their lives and their future?
First off, shout out to Texas Southern University, that’s my alma mater, my law school in Third Ward Houston, Texas. I would title the speech, “Your life is not an Album; it’s a Mixtape.” And I would encourage them to lean into their Mixtape. I define your album as your contractual obligation to a label. In the music business, you produce “x” amount of records, you produce “y” number of shows and you get “z” amount of royalties. But your Mixtape is your passion project, it brings you joy and has no constraints on what it needs to look like. It’s your Lil Wayne “No Ceilings”, the art form that you’re putting out to share with the world without the expectation of financial return. When I say that your life is not your Album, your Album is your day job, it’s your contractual obligation to a label. We go to school and we’re put into this mindset that our full purpose in life is all about going to school, getting internships, and securing a job, and then you will be happy forever – and that is not the truth. Your real life’s purpose is to figure out what are the things that give you joy, what are the things that you can’t live without, what are the things that you would give to the world for free? All of those are your Mixtapes. It took me a while to appreciate this truth.
Listen below as Wenah describes a very personal story of her childhood and how that experience contributes to her adulthood and how she found her joy, i.e. her “Mixtapes” of life.
