The Judges
Ever since emerging as a member of Black Star in the late 1990s, Talib Kweli is one of the few artists making commercially viable music that matters. The Brooklyn bred rapper's hard-hitting music has been able to educate and entertain simultaneously. So it is no wonder that at the peak of their fame, both Jay-Z and 50 Cent named Talib Kweli as one of their favorite rappers. Read more at talibkweli.com.
Jamilah King is a writer and activist from San Francisco. Her writing focuses on race, gentrification and music. She's worked as an organizer with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), helping to unionize hundreds of passenger service workers in the Bay Area. She's currently associate editor for WireTap Magazine and her writing has also appeared in Pop and Politics, The Nation online and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. A few years ago she founded the quirky group blog The Playground.
Adriel is a Bay Area native and a lover of all things weird. In 2002, he founded iLL-Literacy, a four-person spoken word collective that has since toured worldwide and received high acclaim in the spoken word, music, and theater scenes alike. In 2005, the video for his poem "Slip of the Tongue" received an EMMY Award and was featured in over 75 film festivals throughout the world. His new music project, Pretty Buoyant Society, is set to debut in at the end of 2008.
Favianna is a celebrated printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland, Calif. Rodriguez is renown for her vibrant posters dealing with issues such as war, immigration, globalization, and social movements. She has exhibited and lectured around the globe, including Mexico, Europe and Japan. She's co-founder of the EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA) and Visual Element, both programs dedicated to training young artists in the tradition of muralism. She is additionally co-founder and president of Tumis Inc., a bilingual design studio helping to integrate art with emerging technologies. Rodriguez is co-editor of Reproduce and Revolt! with internationally renowned stencil artist and art critic Josh MacPhee (Soft Skull Press, 2008).
The Executive Director of Change the Game -- a group of cultural and media activists with a devotion to justice and peace. CTG have created a new, progressively motivated organization to provide unfiltered and non-censored voice and visibility to the issues, expression, culture and politics of young people around the world. Monifa is also a 2004 recipient of the Ford Foundation Leaders for a Changing World Award, the 2005 Essence Women Who Shape the World Award, and the 2006 Louis E Burnham Award. Most recently she served as the National Field Director for Right to Vote -- a national collaborative of eight civil rights organizations -- that changed the law in three states expanding the right to vote to 250,000 formerly incarcerated people.