What happens when hip-hop tells Trans stories? When Kendrick Lamar released "Auntie Diaries," the public conversation quickly expanded beyond the music itself. Listeners debated his use of slurs like faggot, his decision to deadname his family members. We ask whether Kendrick’s personal journey to acceptance justified the harm some Transgender listeners felt the song reproduced in its high-stakes time. I was not one of those Trans people. I thought the song was a beautiful, honest reflection of Kendrick’s journey to understanding the Trans experience. I made a full YouTube review breaking it down. In my lifetime, mentions of Transgender people in mainstream hip-hop have been relatively rare. When they did appear, they often went back to those age-old Transphobic tropes, shock value, and anxieties surrounding gender identity. Against that backdrop, hearing Kendrick Lamar thoughtfully examine his relationship to Transgender people on "Auntie Diaries" felt genuinely refreshing. Rather than positioning himself as someone with all the answers, he made himself part of the story, exposing his own ignorance, inherited prejudices, and capacity for growth. We don’t have to agree with all the artistic choices he made, but I respected his willingness to place himself under scrutiny instead of simply scrutinizing Transgender people. That was something I believed deserved serious consideration—not blind praise or immediate dismissal, but deep thought and rigorous critique. That's exactly what I want us all to do.

Creating Change carries a legacy of bringing together LGBTQIA+ leadership from all over the nation to one city- to teach, learn and experience each other for the last 38 years. Stepping into a space that holds 2-3000 people who have embraced their Queerness and often made it an extension or the centerpiece of their work isn’t an experience that is easy to adequately verbalize. Breaking the 4th wall a bit to speak in 1st person as an individual who has shared that space, opposed to just a journalist that is reporting on it, feels important. Creating Change and the hotel it lives inside of each year feels like a living, breathing thing. After so many days together, you almost feel like you live there. Each day full of activities from sunrise to nearly sunrise again makes every day feel like three. All of those people that climb out of your email, DMs, and zoom calls- to standing in front of you, arms outstretched to embrace you is more beautiful and overwhelming than I know how to put words to. Creating Change feels more like a city than a conference. It is an ecosystem that only includes community and that is both refreshing and staggering. There are co-workers, friends, enemies and exes. There are lovers, strangers, former business associates, allies, accomplices, entities with competing goals, shared dreams and shared fears. There are endless possibilities and endless work to be done. There is a space to teach and endless things to learn.