Joey Bada$$ celebrated the success of his ImpactMENtorship program with a holiday gala.
Sponsored by Tres Generaciones Tequila and held at Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s restaurant Tatiana, the program offers free career guidance for men of color 18 years and older.
Speaking to the crowd, Joey spoke about the importance of representation.
“I think people sleep on the fact of how important it is, especially for communities of color, to have proper representation,” Joey said. “I’ve been navigating this industry for the last 12 years of my life, and every room and every table I come into, the circumstances are the same. There’s not enough people who look like [us] in positions of leadership.”
Cordae and KidSuper’s Colm Dillane were also in attendance to support Joey and the program.
“This ain’t about me,” Joey said as the crowd cheered. “Making music is cool, having platinum records and stuff like that is cool. Starring in TV shows and all of that, it’s cool. But this, this is my greatest creation to date.”
Along with his successful mentorship program, Joey Bada$$ is taking his talents to the Ivy League. He announced he is the “Artist Scholar Residence” at Columbia University’s Edmund W. Gordon Institute.
Fresh from his first Artist residency at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU, Joey is the youngest to ever hold an artist residency at Columbia. In 2025, over the spring and fall semesters, Joey will bring his unique perspective to the classroom.
In an interview with Billboard, Joey shared how much it means to be working in the academy.
“I think it plays one of the biggest roles. Hip-hop was founded in the beginning as a means of spreading messages through communities. The first rappers were, in every sense of the word, neighborhood reporters,” Joey said. “So I think education is key, and hip-hop is the channel that we can spread a lot of information quickly.”
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