Alejandro Hernandez

Delacreme Scholar Spotlight: Class of 2019 

By Bragard Kizenga

What led you to apply for the scholarship? 

I didn’t apply the first year because the scholarship was made available to Black students, so I shared it with one of my homies, and then the next year other minority groups were welcome and eligible to apply. So, I applied, and the prompt was “if your life was a book, what chapter would this current phase be.” I think I titled it “The Come Up Year” because I had just turned twenty-two, and I wrote a narrative based on a conversation I was having with my father--shout out Javi--where he asked me how I feel at this point in life, too. And I was like “I don’t know!” So he gave me a real philosophical speech, and I just wrote about that.

What has happened since you received your scholarship?

I would say a lot of things particularly happened in the last year, because it was around this time last year I kind of just took that leap of faith to take my writing career serious. I always had ambitions as a writer, quite honestly, part of it was my living situation. I was living my parents at the time. So I just worked a nine to five to make sure I was doing what I had to do to move out. So that was my main priority, but then once I finally did that, I was like, “okay, I definitely did not plan that out as well as I should have in retrospect,” Imma be real. I only had like a few months, maybe three or four months of rent saved up when I quit. Which is really ironic, because around this time I also interviewed Femi for a story I did on him. And he was telling me his story about when he quit his nine to five to just pursue music full time, a similar experience. Hearing that was very affirming to me. If he could do it, I could do it. 

'It's been about a year since I have been freelancing, as a journalist and just a writer in general. I’ve been working with the Chicago Reader the past few months. Once a month we do a profile on local artists and activists in Chicago. The most recent edition that we did actually was ended up being the cover story, my very first cover story with the Chicago Reader. I interviewed Saba earlier this year for the first time when he was coming back for the tour. That was like a cool full circle moment, because Saba’s been one of my favorite artists since like high school. I became a cannabis writer, I got tapped in with this group called Black Hippy Farms, a startup black-owned cannabis company. They got me doing reviews, interviewing rappers out in Michigan. Man, it's a lot I can say. I've also been organizing with Healthy Hood Chicago, had to shout them out, just trying to do what we can to decrease the life expectancy gap between like white affluent Chicagoans and Black and Brown residents.

Have you seen any affirmations manifest in your life in comparison to where you were a few years ago?

Absolutely. I always had this personal mantra that I've had since I started college; be the person you needed when you were younger, something generic like that. Growing up--I don’t want to say never--but I didn’t have a lot of role models or access to pathways or things of that nature, in terms of things that I do now and what I wanted to do for a living. Growing up, it was always kind of like, you know, that stereotypical “you're either going to rap or play sports.” And I was always like real nerdy, too. So even though I loved football and so on, I just wasn't athletic. And I was like, man, there's no way in hell you're gonna be a football player. That was my first childhood dream job, so when I realized that I was like “damn,” but then I watched how on ESPN they get paid to talk about sports, so I was gonna try to get into sports journalism. That evolved into what I’m passionate about, I just love writing about anything I’m passionate about.

That was my biggest thing growing up.I just wanted to get paid to write and make a living off of that. Just having the ability to just talk my s**t, and, you know, and make a living off that. And just to be clear, I'm not out here. In the words of Saba, “I'm balling on a budget” for the real ones who know that reference. But it's just the fact that I'm taking those steps to get there. It's amazing because like I said, when I first quit my job, I didn't make money off writing for a couple of months in the beginning. So now that I’m okay, I'm slowly taking less shifts at my part time job, because I'm slowly starting to get more money from writing or more consistent money, I should say. It’s like, cool, cool, cool, I’m out here doing my thing.

What would you tell future Delacreme Scholars?

Keep going. You got people around you who rock with you, and some of those people not only want to see your vision grow, but they will do whatever they can to help help it. It's important to find those people. And since I have not hated on anything this entire interview, let me say; all these generic B.S millionaire mindsets, alpha male mindset, Andrew Tate s***, don’t trust it. Love your community. Love Yourself. Love one another. Be vulnerable around people. Trust people. Trauma that you might be experiencing might make you not want to trust no one, but trust me, I used to be like that for a long time, and I wasn't going nowhere with that mindset. It wasn't until I started to trust people around me and just like take that leap of faith and trust myself that I really started to really blossom into my swagness--word to A$AP Yams. So go ahead and be vulnerable. That's all I gotta say.