When it comes to women in the hip hop culture unfortunately we predominantly focus on the video vixens and why they do what they do or the plight of Lil’ Kim coming out of jail and or Foxy Brown going in. Baltimore representative Felicia Pride who is an Author, Blogger (AOL.com Black Voices) and founder of www.theBacklist.net” has come to give her contribution to hip hop from a different standpoint. With her first book The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip hop Greatest Songs do out the end of this month Ms. Pride is here to give her interpretation of what hip hop has means and has done for her throughout her life and career. Whether it’s learning the corporate ropes of publishing, discovering what brings her liberation of self or a stories of how and where she acquired her swagger. With a published book in addition to writing a literary chapter for the television series Everybody Hates Chris or interviewing the next up and coming writer Felicia Pride has her hands full, but without hip hop music the road would be a lot harder to travel.

Scheme: When did you start writing?

Felicia Pride: I started playing around in 2000 when I was trying to get published. I was writing for a small Staten Island newspaper and I did music pieces and stuff that came easy. I used that to start freelancing more. Then I stopped writing for a minute and went back to school. I’ve just recently started writing publications again.

Scheme: What turned you on to writing?

Felicia Pride: It was a creative outlet for me, I was working in marketing and it wasn’t as creative as I thought it would be. After college I had more of an idealistic idea of marketing. I was working in corporate marketing and it didn’t necessarily appeal to me and so I had a lot of time on my hands.

Scheme: What other writers have inspired you to write and to keep going when you want to close up shop?

Felicia Pride: Well they inspire me and also intimidated me are I love Mark Anthony Neal, Joan Morgan, Greg Tate and Jeff Chang, and they write in a different space because their journalist but I still really like their work. On the fiction side I’ve been getting into a lot of Walter Dean Myers who is a great author because he knows his market so well but he’s always creative and incredibly prolific. For him to churn out quality books the way he does is a big deal.

I guess when I was a freshmen in college people would tell me I could write but it never looked a viable career for me.

Scheme: What kind of support were you getting from your family regarding pursuing writing as a career?

Felicia Pride: When I told me my mother I wanted to quit my job and pursue writing she said, “I’ll never be happy until you quit your job.” I’ve never been the type of person that works well for other people and I had went through string of jobs. So when she gave me the green light I was a lot more comfortable pursuing my goal.

Scheme: I know you also taught in the South Bronx, what did you teach and what were some of the biggest things that you noticed about your students?

Felicia Pride: I taught adult students that had returned back to school. It was rewarding because they had a different motivation than your average freshmen because they are older, the age ranged from the 20’s to the 60’s, but there was also a lot of fear. Fear of writing and reading so that was a big obstacle, getting them over of being intimidated by big words.

“…there are so many other ways to entertain yourself. Books are trying to compete with video games, internet, television and movies.”

Scheme: Did you ever feel that was a problem for you?

Felicia Pride: No but I see it a lot in a lot of people, my friends that work in the corporate world don’t like to write or read for pleasure but I guess that’s my thing.

Scheme: Why do you think that is? There are people who still read but I feel like there are lot less that don’t read.

Felicia Pride: I think because there are so many other ways to entertain yourself. Books are trying to compete with video games, internet, television and movies.

Scheme: How would you describe your writing style?

Felicia Pride: I definitely think it’s hip hop influenced, the way that I put words together when I’m at my best (laughs). It’s conversational, confessable and it has some intelligence to it.

Scheme: theBacklist.net, how did that come about and why did you feel the need to create this platform for other individuals?

Felicia Pride: I always wanted to do a magazine, but I realized the start up cost of a magazine and that made me nervous (laughs) so I said let me try and do something online because in graduate school I realized there wasn’t editorial heavy literated mediums. You had online bookstores like you ALBC or your Mosaic, but there wasn’t anything online that I found that did interviews with authors and not just authors but also discussed publishing. So I wanted to bring in interviews with editors and agents to bring exposure to that side as well. Publishing is a different monster and when I was in school that’s when I realized that other students had no idea about the publishing industry the way they need to.

Scheme: Were you surprised with the response you received from the Blacklist because you started out with 100 and then it just expanded?

Felicia Pride: It’s funny because that’s how people introduce me and how I’m kind of known but I couldn’t update it for a few months and people were still loving it and that’s helped me to gain a lot of contacts in the industry. It’s really opened doors and given me a lot of opportunities. I’m blogging for AOL.com Black Voices. So I’m grateful in that sense that’s it’s forwarded me a lot of opportunities.

Scheme: Would you almost compare it to an underground movement in itself or would you compare it to one?

Felicia Pride: No (laughs), that’s an interesting question I’ve never thought about it like that but it’s just me doing it.

“Trying to get published is more about who you know, getting an agent is about who you know. A lot of it is coming down to the bottom line. It’s harder and harder to achieve a balance between commercial works and literary works because commercial works a lot of the time makes so much more money.”

Scheme: What is your ultimate goal for the Backlist?

Felicia Pride: It could be a lot more than what it is now and if I have a team of people because I just started it, I didn’t have a business or marketing plan so it’s not a revenue generating project. So if I really wanted it to be where it could be I would have to take a step back.

Scheme: I’ve grown to learn that politics arise in everything, what type or red tape did you learn about in the publishing industry?

Felicia Pride: That’s the loaded question (grins) since a lot of what I did involved writing from an African-American background, I was interning at a very prestigious Boston publisher and I was in an editorial meeting and I was looking around, in which they basically decide what books are going to be published, what type of topics that need to be published in the book and I’m looking around the room and there’s no people of color. Yet this is company that publishes books that are supposed to be progressive. I had an epiphany like damn people who decide what books are going to be published there’s really no representation of people of color. So that’s one thing, you’ll hear a lot of the times Black editor’s talk about the fact that it’s hard for them to explain the market to their bosses. Then there’s the whole marketing thing, should it be marketed to all Black people should it not and publishing in general is kind of political. Trying to get published is more about who you know, getting an agent is about who you know. A lot of it is coming down to the bottom line. It’s harder and harder to achieve a balance between commercial works and literary works because commercial works a lot of the time makes so much more money.

Scheme: Do you feel that those politics dilute your craft and you feel like you’re writing for more of the publishing company than your audience?

Felicia Pride: This is the first time I’ve worked on a book and not really because I’m with an independent publisher so and I almost kind of strategically went that way. I didn’t shop it to a lot of publishers, it was at RandomHouse but they wanted me to change things and I wasn’t comfortable with that to a certain extent. I was a thing where I wasn’t really sure about going to a big publisher but my independent publisher was sold to another publisher so that’s another political hurdle for my book.

Scheme: So what does the Message comprised of?

Felicia Pride: It’s almost like a “don’t sweat the small stuff” for the hip hop generation. I look at 100 songs and I talk about the messages within those songs. Everything from classics like “the Message” of course the Brakes, to Little Brother “Not enough”, “the Truth” by Pharoahe Monch, “Hypocite” by Akrobatik, Nas, Jay-Z and Biggie. I’m one of those that uses hip hop lyrics as mantras and that’s kind of how the book came about.

Scheme: How do you feel about hip hop right now lyrically?

Felicia Pride: I’ve been listening to a lot more non-mainstream stuff, I avoid the word underground, so for me I’m okay because I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t watch BET like that, so I’ve kind of found my own way with it. In writing this book it’s been difficult and it’s forced me to reconcile my differences with hip hop I’m basically highlighting what hip hop has done for me and really it’s motivated me in a lot of ways.

Scheme: What else do you have planned for the rest of 2007?

Felicia Pride: I’m writing, Everybody Hates Chris the television show has a book coming out and Simon & Schulster are publishing it and they have these chapter books for kids and I wrote one of those and that comes out this month. The Message comes out in October and transferring into a published author is my goal. Finally do some touring and talking with young people and that’s what I want to do for 2007.