“We don’t do this kind of work for awards or to be recognized. We do this to share stories with the world.”―Daniel Berehulak
TUPAC SHAKUR
Ask anyone in the hip-hop scene about the greatest rapper of all time, and you are bound to hear the name, Tupac Shakur. They will usually respond with reverence for his craftsmanship and sadness over his untimely demise. For many people, Tupac was the first person to give a voice to their lives by telling their stories. His brutally honest yet engagingly imaginative style brought the struggles of the African American community to the forefront of American discourse.
His expressiveness became the hallmark of his life and intensified as he grew up. In his interview with E!, he described how he uses music to respond to unfair treatment, such as being beaten by the police. “In my rhymes, it vents that anger because I can fire back at the police and I won’t go to jail for life. My music, and a lot of this music, it’s only talking about the oppressed rising up against the oppressor,” he remarked.
Telling stories and spreading positive ideas was something that not only came naturally to Tupac but was something he considered essential. The ideas in Tupac’s lyrics tackled complex issues that were often ignored by mainstream media and politicians, such as social injustice, poverty, and racism. But Tupac’s impact went far beyond politics. Through his music, he challenged the traditional views of masculinity. He spoke openly about his emotions and vulnerabilities, breaking down barriers and encouraging emotional expression among young men. The ideas in his music ignited important conversations and debates, sparking a movement of social consciousness among his listeners. Tupac’s iconic music and ideas continue to resonate with society.
THE EVOLUTION OF IDEAS
Your role as a creator is to create and inspire. That’s why you need to create and share your ideas with people. Once an idea is out of your mind, its success is in the hands of the people it inspires.
Your ideas can’t live on past you if you don’t share them. Ideas want to be released so they can fight to survive in the mind of our shared human consciousness. The survival of ideas works like the theory of natural selection. You see, Darwin’s theory doesn’t strictly apply to living organisms; it also applies to abstract entities, like ideas.
Similar to organisms in the physical world, ideas are subject to the battle for existence. Their right to exist depends on their ability to resist extinction by rival ideas. These ideas can be music trends, fashion statements, marketing slogans, languages, scientific theories, art styles, or any other creation.
THE GLADIATOR
I had thirty-seven ideas for the title of this book. I thought of How to Be a Creative Genius, The Starving Artist, and Creative AF, just to name a few. Instead of relying on gut instinct to pick one, I let my ideas compete like evolution. I decided that the best way to select an idea was to release them into the world and let each fight to the death. I created a few mockup designs of the book, each with a different title. I took all of those photos and paid for Facebook ads for each of them. About 30,000 people saw the ads, and thousands of people who were interested in buying this book clicked the ads. After weeks of testing, the book titles with the most clicks were Create or Die, 48 Laws of Creativity, and Born to Create. But in the end, only the strongest survived. And the victor? Well, that’s the title gracing the cover of this book.
YOUR IDEAS NEED CRITICISM
John Gould, the editor that Stephen King apprenticed under, shared a key piece of advice about writing that bleeds into creativity as a whole. He said, “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” When you create an idea, it starts off being solely for you. The journey starts off lonesome. Once you deem the work as complete, the idea belongs to anyone who wants to love it or criticize it.
Here’s what Walter Lippmann, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, shared about the value of having opposing forces that fight to either nurture or kill ideas:
“The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it—perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.”