Show 18: Presidents To Represent Me (feat. Nas, Hillary Clinton, & DJ Ushka)

There will never be a U.S. President to represent me. That’s because there will never be an immigrant President.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution states:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

But one person came really close to representing me.

On April 12, 2016, I got a text message telling me to pick up the phone. The voice simply asked me if I was available the following day. When I asked why, the voice gave a vaguely responded that it was have a meeting with someone running for office. The voice conveyed a nervous excitement for me. It was a trusted voice. It was the voice of Ushka.

Most know her as DJ Ushka, a Sri-Lankan born force of global music who has DJ’ed across North America, including in some of the most iconic museums in NYC. She has been one of the superstars of NYC nightlife for the past 15 years, having run the iBomba party experience for several years. But I also know Ushka for unrelenting work in immigrant/migrant rights and climate justice. Ushka connects both movements better than most ever will.

Ushka also connects people to opportunities better than most. She had seen my increasingly visible immigrant rights advocacy work and my storytelling skills. Ushka kept me top of mind when the opportunity arose. Despite giving me no details except for address and date/time, my trust in her and her voice never wavered.

And so on April 13, 2016, I entered an NYC building that housed a prominent labor union and went through two rounds of thorough security checks. I saw Ushka. I smiled and said thanks. I then shook hands with Steve Choi, former Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition. Then I was ushered towards my seat at the table along with a few organization leaders..

“Thank you for the work that you do,” is what Hillary Clinton said to me. I was invited to discuss her 100 day plan for her Presidency because the plan focused on comprehensive immigration reform.

The DREAM Act, in all of its iterations, has been the most touted effort for comprehensive immigration reform. I have a couple of decades of lived experience riding the emotional ups-and-downs of the DREAM Act. From 2014-2016, I ascended to high-stakes advocacy work that involved features in media outlets, national campaigns, and fly-ins to Washington D.C. to meet with members of Congress. But this meeting felt different. The stakes felt much higher. I didn’t feel like a surrogate for another organization. I simply felt like I was representing myself as and immigrant and entrepreneur. The meeting developed into an interplay of personal stories, organizational narratives, and policy framework. I was invigorated by Hillary’s 100 day plan. I felt like there could finally be a President to represent me, and champion immigrants like me.

“I’m out for Presidents to represent me… Say, what?!” is the call-and-response line in “The World is Yours,” the classic Hip-Hop anthem by Nas. It’s the 14th and 15th lines in the first verse of the song. He’s talking about money—dead Presidents, as he makes clear in the 16th and final line of the verse.

At least 13 people were left dead in NYC at the start of September 2021. The remnants of Hurricane Ida had hit the Northeast and caused major winds and flooding. In the borough of Queens, there were many reports of basement flooding, including one instance where 3 people died in a basement apartment.

I spent much of my elementary school through high school years living in a cramped basement apartment in Hollis, Queens. My front door was actually a heavy cellar door. In snowy winters, the door would occasionally be frozen shut, forcing my family and I to inconvenience the property owners by taking the narrow staircase that led to the main house’s kitchen area, on the way to the backyard exit. It was my childhood version of the walk of shame.

My basement apartment housed a boiler room, and its pipes ran through the top small bedroom area that my entire family shared and around the tiny kitchen/dining room area. Even when the cellar door would be frozen, it would the boiler and its pipes would make the basement incredibly hot. By the bottom of the staircase that led up to the main house was a shelf where a dual cassette deck radio sat. Making a sharp right turn from that shelf would lead you to the bedroom. It was separated from the kitchen/dining area not by a door, but by a curtain.

Once you get passed the curtain, you would see a 27” TV with the long adjustable antenna mounted on the top rear of the unit. My parents couldn’t afford cable. But with the antenna positioned just right, I would get channel 31 perfectly clear. When I would come home from school, my routine including tuning into channel 31 to watch Video Music Box.

Video Music Box was created by Ralph McDaniels, one of the icons from my neighborhood. It still stands as the longest-running music video program in NYC. And when I first started to watch it, a teenager called Nasty Nas started making an appearance. The album Illmatic, often cited as one of the greatest Hip-Hop albums of all time, was released in 1994, and along with it later that year came the release of the single, “The World is Yours” and its music video.

The music video has a few scenes of the notorious Queensbridge housing projects of NYC—the largest public housing project in the entire country. Viewers of the video can see an actual building in Queensbridge and presumably a staircase and a room in the building, There are also a few scenes that have Manhattan’s skyscrapers faintly visible in the background, including when Nas repeatedly declares, “I’m out for Presidents to represent me.”

Those are very familiar scenes to me. It’s not just because a bit of my work has taken me to Queensbridge or the Astoria projects down the road. It’s because at the start of September 2021, I lived in an apartment that had a direct line of sight to Nas’s childhood building in Queensbridge.

It took much longer than planned, but I went from living in a cramped basement in Hollis, Queens as a child to enjoying the amenities of luxury buildings that overlooked the Queensbridge projects. Each time I stepped out to my balcony or the rooftop pool, I could pinpoint the exact building where Nas grew up. And among all of those times, there would occasionally be a moment of pride in the obstacles I navigated, how far I came, and precisely where I made it far. Queens, NY will always be my hometown.

It’s also the hometown of one of my oldest friends, D. In August of 2021, when I heard about a special Nas concert in Queens, D was the only person I asked to come with me. My request was sent via text message at 6:41am in the morning.

Even before Hurricane Ida’s remnants destroyed NYC, I was concerned about the rain. I had been to Forest Hills Stadium to see D’Angelo back in 2015 and experienced an intermittent thunderstorm. On the day of the Nas concert, 9/23/21, weather forecasts cited a 50% chance of rain. That was 100% wrong. Severe weather news alerts started to be shared in the midday local news program. My concerned text message in August wasn’t hope. Maybe it was “Nastradamus.”

That afternoon, in just a few hours, several inches of rain fell. There was consistent thunder and lightning. There were delays on the F train going towards the Forest Hills station in Queens. When I got to street level, many of the streets were flooded up to my ankles. D had doubts. Police officers were sure it would be cancelled.

We went to the stadium anyway. The rows of our seats were flooded. We had to stand on our seats, even while it was uncertain that the show would go on. Showtime was delayed. I was resolute in staying. It was going to be the first time that I saw Nas headline a concert. Nine songs into his show, as the downpour reached its climax, Nas uttered the line, “I’m out for Presidents to represent me.” With my socks soaked and body chills settling in, I shouted along with the crowd, “Say what?” Soon after, the night skies cleared. The deluge finally stopped.

I was at the Hillary campaign headquarters on election night 2016. A room full of excitement was extinguished with downpours of concern in just a matter of a couple of hours as poll results and projections were announced on major television networks. I left around 11:30pm. While underground on the F subway line, an angry passenger 10 feet from me shouted that Donald Trump won.

Say what?

It dawned on me that for all of America’s promise and social ills, for its 250 year history, the only solution it has failed to ever try is to elect a woman President. Less than seven months after being called in to meet with Hillary, she conceded defeat to Donald Trump. At that moment, I conceded to the realization that in my lifetime, there will never be a President to represent me.

At this moment in America’s history, I feel exactly the same way.

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Concert access + more:

1. J. Cole’s world tour is coming. Get presale access / presale codes here. 

2. City Winery Atlanta has everyone from Robert Glasper to Bilal to Goapele

3. NYC’s Brooklyn Academy of Music has some amazing concerts on its calendar

4. Blue Note Los Angeles features Lizzo, Willow, Kem and more

5. Free music at PAC NYC

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Job/Career Opportunities in Music and Entertainment:

1. Warner Music Group has marketing, creative, and finance roles currently open

2. Sony Music Group has open jobs in analytics, marketing, and more

3. Universal Music Group has open roles ranging from strategy, product, and operations roles

4. Spotify has many open roles in business development, HR, and engineering

5. Sirius XM is ramping up hiring for engineers, technical program managers, and more

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About the author:

Cris is the award-winning Founder & CEO of GrantAnswers, an NYC-based data, strategy & consulting firm founded in 2013. His journey to becoming an award-winning entrepreneur has been highlighted in NYT, WSJ, MTV, and Forbes. He has directly impacted +1000 individuals in launching careers in tech & securing acceptances to top colleges & programs. His speaking engagements for the likes of Columbia Business School, Teach for America and the US Chamber of Commerce encompass immigration, career development, entrepreneurship, and tech diversity & inclusion. He is also an avid concertgoer for +25 years and counting, and likes to tell stories about it.