Kid Maestro ft. Bartholomew Jones: Ideas Are Seeds

The role IDEAS have played in Kid Maestro’s life and career have been divinely profound. However, as of late, he’s had to question the existence of the pillars that have existed in his life without him being consciously aware of how they got in his life in the first place. The IDEA can spawn the greatest change to an environment, and ecosystem, a family, or a single life dramatically; just like a seed. So maybe in borrowing the language from and studying the world of seeds, we can unlock the mysteries of the nature and purpose of IDEAS.

Bartholomew Jones is a Memphis emcee and culture maker working at the leading edge of Southern Futurism — a vision of Black Southern identity rooted in the conviction that God don’t make no junk. He treats hip hop as an agricultural product — something grown, harvested, and rooted in soil — a thesis that binds his music to the all-Black coffee supply chain he’s built through Cxffeeblack. His sound moves through blues, jazz, boom bap, and electronica, and his breakout “Coffee Black” — “no sugar, no cream, please, don’t cover my dreams” — turned a hook into a movement, a documentary, a TEDx, and over a million streams. His latest project, Cxffee Makes You Black, is the fullest distillation yet. Along the way, the NBA and HBO have tapped him for projects, 8Ball signed on as collaborator and investor, and he’s shared rooms with artists like Propaganda — with VICE, NPR, Black Enterprise, and Memphis Magazine on the record. He currently serves as Artist in Residence on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and is now building his next full-length project in Memphis’ Idea District in collaboration with Unapologetic and Cxffeeblack. Memphis raised him. He’s raising it back.