We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Camille Sledge a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Camille thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

I believe that the multi-billion dollar industry of HipHop is not run by those who created it. If the people who created HipHop were more aware of how to use their own platform and intellectual property to create profitable outcomes, they would be way more well-off than they are today. HipHop is created by a youth movement. It is a Black American culture and there have been little to no resources available or accessible for us to learn and grow professionally. We created School of HipHop after seeing a void in our community for the accessibility and inclusion of Black youth in HipHop culture. With my own family members becoming young signed artists in the 1970s, I was able to get first hand accounts of how they were made into huge stars. Yet still today, I see the record companies and their staff being more profitable than the artists themselves. I believe this is due to the lack of support or knowledge about how this industry works. I was determined to make sure youth are more aware of their own value.

Camille , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was always passionate about making music. My whole life has been surrounded by it, and I even joined several bands in order to hone my craft. I had some big shoes to fill with my own mother and 3 aunts, who make up the group Sister Sledge. They were inspirational to me, and showed me that this was an accessible career path. After I had my daughter in 2012, my husband and I discussed our love for music and how we could proceed to get more involved in the local music scene in Phoenix. He had never been to Arizona before and I asked him to move here from Philly, to be closer to my parents. I thought it would be too much on him if I was to join a band, but he encouraged it because he knew how important it was to me and how it would feed my soul. I ended up being a part of the Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra (PAO) and I loved it so much. After some success with PAO, we knew we wanted to do more music as a family.
My husband was truly the one who came up to me with the idea of beginning the School of HipHop. He and I both always worked with youth, and in our revelation as first time parents together, we knew this world had to be a better place for our children. We knew HipHop culture. We grew up with HipHop as a savior and guide for our own triumphs. We saw that even as adults in the world of music, inequalities existed and even more inequitable for youth. We hoped that creating something mindful of the healing qualities of music and industry business could affect our community in a positive way.
Today School of HipHop has been in existence for about 11 years. We host a summer Jazz and HipHop camp, that highlights the similarities and impact of Black American classical music. We will be opening registration for the camp in May for our July 2024 camp week. We are also prevalent in the schools, where we use the 5 core elements of HipHop to teach students about instrumentation, dance, visual arts, technological advancements, and how to monetize their newly acquired skills. It has been a crazy journey, but we feel so rewarded by our accomplishments with each new year. We are proud that most of our participants came to us by word of mouth from other parents and families. We hope that our youth will continue to learn and thrive and protect their valuable assets and creative abilities. We are not slowing down anytime soon. As we always say, Hiphop is resilient. We will continue to grow and evolve with each new chapter.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We built out our social media platform by creating a clause in our registration form that allows us to share photos and videos of our youth during their time with School of HipHop. This allows us to create fun-filled real content and share bits of our classwork and community engagement. We know people love to see real action, and see evidence of true laughter and joy. We also went to the leaders of our Hiphop community to post their thoughts and stories about the School of HipHop, and they get it! Most importantly we have to align ourselves with the founders and leaders in the Hiphop community. For example, my band PAO opened for The Roots at the Super Bowl block party in 2015. We had known some of the band members from Philly and we gained some respect and insight from Questlove and rapper Black Thought. We also met the original members of the Sugar Hill Gang, while on tour with Sister Sledge. They all seemed very excited to know we were doing this work, and most all of the artists we encounter are willing to take a photo and share a message of encouragement to the youth. These types of IG posts are often the best ways to grow our audience, worldwide.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

During the pandemic, we had to scale back our business and close down our building. The pandemic was super intense and unpredictable as to when we would be able to get back to doing classwork, or live shows. Our board voted unanimously to stop paying rent on the space. We knew that it would be difficult to get back to our normal routine, but William and I were parents and had to focus on our family. We were now parents of three beautiful children, who needed us. We had completely immersed ourselves in our nonprofit. We knew that we had to let go of our employees and teaching artists. This was a very crucial moment for our business.

As the world began to open back up, I began to do live shows myself and earn money here and there. Once schools opened up, we were finally able to secure a contract to get back to our after school programming. William and I taught the classes ourselves. Once again we created a new wave of activity on our social media platforms and the word-of-mouth advertising campaign that we had experienced over the years began to spread. We started to create a buzz, and added more partnerships and more community involvement to grow back to our current level of success. We knew we could not go backwards and quit our commitment that we had made to the community and students who were already in our network. So we just started with a small seed of faith and moved upwards from there. It was difficult to keep up momentum. We wanted to make sure that our own children didn’t become neglected by our commitment to other families in the community. The healing power of music and faith were strong in our household. And we are so grateful to the people who knew us and cared about our growth and the survival of our business during that time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.schoolofhiphop.net
• Instagram: @Schoolofhiphopphx
• Facebook: camillesledge music
• Linkedin:
• Twitter: Camille Sledge
• Youtube: School of HipHop Phx
• Other: linktr.ee/camillesledge

Image Credits
Photo of me and my husband (back to camera) wearing a PAO hoodie. Photo credit- Matty Steinkamp Photos of Camille Sledge on stage taken by my husband William FEGGINS. All other photos are logos or taken by me on my phone.