Styles P and Hezues R: The Message

At this point, even casual hip-hop fans are likely to know that Styles P, supremely gifted MC and one third of the legendary Yonkers rap group The LOX, is a staunch advocate of holistic living. Styles is famously a principal in NYC juice bar Juices For Life and is also renowned in NYC outdoor workout culture. What fans can learn if they listen to the latest episode of The Message, though, is that all of that is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Styles’ influence on his friends, family and community. “You feel great when you see people's lives change,” Styles P tells Ebro Darden. “But then also, some days you feel really blue because you understand that most people don't understand we're in a losing war. And you don't even know we're at war. Some days that becomes a little deflating, but that deflation also makes you know you've got to wake up the next day and go harder and just keep pushing forward.” Styles, who is nearly three decades deep into a still very successful rap career, has lately been focused on the influence he can have on the generations to come, bringing along filmmaker, business partner and friend Hezues R to his appearance on The Message. “Our friendship and our union starts with making music,” R says. “But our energy connects off the measurement of, ‘Okay, we know where we went wrong, we know what we did wrong’—and it's glorified a lot, the wrong, through the arts and what we do. And that's understandable because it is a sport, and most people never had the proper direction, guidance or role models in front of them to understand the eight ball they was behind in the first place. So with understanding, once you go through a journey yourself, and understanding you could also go through it again if you don't do the right things, you begin to want to impact other people's lives.” For their The Message playlist, the pair curated a selection of hip-hop—Pharoahe Monch, DMX, Jay Electronica, Styles himself—and even a few soul classics, like Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, that they feel speak to mental health in a way their neighbourhood is most likely to receive it, something they know is paramount to getting the message across. “Hezues, pretty much his whole existence since I've known him is figuring out how to get kids out of the environment they're in,” Styles says. “How to get them into a lifestyle that's going to educate them and eventually lead to them having a career into entrepreneurship, or the arts, or whatever they like. It's a rough journey, but this is what we do.”