“Then I Feel Like I Am the One Who Has to Create It”: Epiphany Morrow, Nicole Dugger & Tarrell Campbell in Conversation
aug 2020
Epiphany Morrow is Big Piph, the self-proclaimed Hip Hop Adventurer. As described on his website: “He employs visuals, the stage, online platforms, podcast, written text, or whatever media he finds fitting—striving to find and to explain narrative threads throughout his journey. Piph pursues the ideas he can’t shake; he pursues the ideas that he feels need to exist in the world…and then: He makes them.”
Tarrell Campbell is a native St. Louisan. In addition to teaching in the College Writing Program, he works with several online and local organizations as a copywriter, editor, and content publisher. He received his doctorate in English Language and Literature from Saint Louis University in 2018.
Nicole Dugger is the president of ÉcritureSTL, a non-profit company dedicated to the literary arts. She is also a writer, editor, and rap connoisseur.
In an interview conducted on 26 June 2020 with College Writing Professor Tarrell Campbell and President of EcritureSTL, Nicole Dugger, Piph explains details of his creative process and the receptions he envisions for the media that he produces. The following is a condensed version of their discussion.
Tarrell Campbell: Hello, I’m Dr. Tarrell Campbell. Today, we have with us the astronomical, amazing, marvelous, convoluted, difficult, insane—intellectually just all-around-dope—human being, Epiphany “Big Piph” Morrow. Say what’s up to the Good People, Piph.
Epiphany Morrow: Cool. Cool. How y'all doin’?
TC: Going along on this journey with us is Nic, President of EcritureSTL, a local St. Louis 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the exploration of everything literary. Nic will help aid and guide this conversation—because I get off topic. Sometimes.
Nicole Dugger: I want adjectives. That’s all I’m saying. Piph had like 100 adjectives.
TC: Nic and I, we were discussing literary topics and we said: “That guy Piph…he does a lot of writing. You know, everything he does has a writing background to it.” So, what we want to kind of chop it up with you about today is an understanding of your approach to creativity, any current projects on which you’re working, and basically, anything else that you may want to share with the Good People, especially the students. But, really: how would you describe your approach to creativity?
EM: My own projects tend to be more of—as you [Tarrell] would say—a convoluted process. I almost let them find me, so to speak. I don’t want to repeat myself and I don’t want to necessarily create things from the same moment in life—in terms of larger projects. So, my creative process sort of becomes a process of living life and then, normally, more times than not, something will stick with me that I can’t shake. An idea will hit me and I will try my best to forget the idea. If I can actually forget the idea or be convinced out of it…that the idea is no good…that means that the idea was not that heavy to me. But, if it sticks with me to a point where I have to see it in the world, then I feel like I am the one who has to create it. Right? And that could be a simple essay, you know, a written piece. A, one-, two-page essay or, that could be an elaborate, you know, one-man show. I do a 90-minute one-man show. It’s the same principle, though.
This “thing” does not exist. For me for some reason I feel it should exist in the world. Then, I have to do whatever “that” process is to create it. So, that’s like my basic approach to creativity. And, I can speak on what happens after that. But, that’s, like, where the creative inspiration for personal projects comes from.
TC: Before we get deep into that, why don’t you tell the people a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? What do writing and narrative have to do with who you are?
EM: Funny that writing does have something to do with who I am. I call myself The Hip Hop Adventurer. That’s because no job description really fits me anymore.
ND: A journeyman?
EM: Exactly. It’s an overlap of Hip Hop creativity, community building, and entrepreneurship/life betterment. Where those three meet is kind of where I find myself. It ranges from creating music, just musical projects, to shows…I might be with the band…you know, like I said, I have the one-man show [The Glow], more of a theatrical performance implementing Hip Hop artistry. I do Hip Hop Ambassadorships. So, I go to work with global programs…currently it’s Next Level. I have done nine different countries where I do workshops and panel discussions…all in the name of Hip Hop. And then, just other things that fall along my path.
I am from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Actually, I’m living in Atlanta Metro right now, but that kind of encompasses it. There’s no longer any set thing that I do. Hip Hop music and being an emcee was always like the foundation for me. But, now it’s just expanded from that.
ND: So, when you do your shows that are not your own projects, does everyone get a show kind of tailored to their particular concepts?
EM: When it comes to shows, more times than not it’s someone who has seen my show and they are asking me how the show could fit into a concept that they may have. For example, I did something for a black entrepreneurship conference. They were like, “we saw this [your show]. This is what we do. Can there be some kind of synergy between the two?” So, it just becomes a conversation centered on how can we get together and do something around the synergy desired by the client. But, actually it’s like no set thing. Simply a conversation based off of something the client has seen before or heard. And we go from there.
ND: You write essays, too? Did I hear you say that you write essays?
EM: Yes, which is funny because my goal freshmen year in college was to never write a paper again.
ND: You do not know how often I hear those exact words in my line of work. I hear that all the time.
EM: Well, see…I went tech major. So, once I was more of a tech major…part of that was that I just hated writing. I didn’t think I was good at writing well. So, I just had the goal of not having to write another paper. If I could achieve such: I won at life. But now, [writing] just became…writing for my own betterment. I started writing down my ideas…like coming from emceeing as the foundation, but after a while it was like, “ok, I can express myself in this song, but it’s not all the ways.” So, then it became I might make this visual to show another aspect of what I’m trying to express. Then, it became like I may just need to put words on paper to express certain aspects. Then, I was just like I’m not limiting myself to any of the possibilities. So, I got something written coming out now surrounding the murder of George Floyd. Yeah, I got inspired after what happened…same type of [creative] process. Like I can’t…I don’t see this existing in the world, I don’t see this written piece existing in the world…it’s sticking with me for some reason…ok, I need to do it. Right?
It’s not too much more difficult than that. It just depends on…like I said, the medium changes, but I write a lot these days. I’ve been flirting with, not a book of essays, but a book of different points of my life and how, in hindsight, I interpret them.
ND: And then your perspectives will change again, as you keep living.
EM: Right, right. That’s what I hear. That’s why I actually want to write the book, so that I can mark, like, “at this point in time” this is what I was thinking. Because, when I was living certain perspectives, I saw them from a certain standpoint…but, now, at “this” point in life I can look back and see how, “oh, this impacted me in this way” and this is how it ties into “that.” That [reflection] is something that I find I can do better with the written word than with any other medium. Either the written word or longer performances. Like, longer performances…allow me to connect what are seemingly disparate thoughts and topics. That’s a lot of how writing serves me nowadays.
TC: I’d like to return to two points that you made earlier—particularly for our writers who may not have found their creative niches yet. You said that you look out into the world and you see if this “thing” exists. And, if it does not exist, its lack of existence serves as motivation for you to create such a thing. And then the other thing that you said related to if the “thing” sticks with you—that is, if it sparks epiphany—then that could also motivate you to create. I point to these because when we talk with writers about writing, one of the more important questions that we ask is, “What is your purpose for writing the piece?” Like, why are you doing this? Why do you think the world needs to see this, your writing? And another thing that we ask writers: who do you think your writing would be of use for? Now, in your position—because you are such a dope, hip hop entrepreneur, world adventurer type of guy…you don’t usually, seemingly, have too much difficulty imagining your audience. Your audiences seek you out and tell you what they desire of your creations, no? Or, am I wrong? Do you still have to envision certain aspects about your audiences?
EM: I am going to answer from the perspective of when I first became an emcee versus where I am now. So, when I first started I was like “this” is my audience. I envisioned, like, grimey, off-the-block…you know what I’m saying.
ND: Yeah, the boom-bap.
TC: So, Bo…You thought there would be a lot of Arkansas Bo’s in the crowd.
EM: Even grimier than Bo. Like, I just envisioned a whole bunch of dudes with gold teeth…mesmerized, because I’m “spittin’ bars.” And, these cats will get this, because I’m dope and I’m “spittin’ bars.” And I was doing these songs…but that was not who was showing up to my shows. So, in the effort to attract my envisioned crowd, I would “write more bars”…cause I have bars. My homeboy called me up…because, I’m like I gotta represent…my homeboy was like, “Bruh, that [the grimey crowd] is not who is at your show.” And then he pointed out the predominant group. And then I realized—because as an artist or a creative you can believe “this” is who I truly am, this is who I envision myself being, and “this” is the audience I write for—I was on the verge of getting caught up in a bubble. It’s not that I was being fake—because I was writing stuff that was true to me. But, I was not being true to who the audience was. That kind of changed my paradigm. As an artist, I just want to live in my “truth,” like truth with a lower-case “t.” Because like you said, Nic, in the future my perspective, my truth, will most likely change. So, I want to be true in the moment. And whoever gets attracted to that, then that’s who the audience is.
All I really do now is make stuff that is really interesting to me. Then I expand it out a little bit on both sides to incorporate some common themes of relatability. It’s like, I’m telling my story, which is authentic and non-fiction, with certain themes that run through it that are relatable to anybody. Then, whoever gets it, gets it.