Hila the Earth is a born and raised New Yorker that harnesses her deep love of classic rap and hip-hop to create songs that promote environmental advocacy and sustainable living. She loves engaging with her audiences, both children and adults, through her live performances and interactive social media content to get her messaging to as many people as possible. Her songwriting is her way of staying inspired and grounded as she reminds herself to remain present and in the moment and avoid stressing about the future.

Where are you based? Where are you from?
I’m based in Brooklyn, and I’m from New York City.

What inspired you to become Hila the Earth? What is your goal for Hila the Earth?
Hila the Earth is my artist name. I'm a performance artist and I'm a musician and comedian, and used to be called ‘Hila the Killa’ as my rapper name and it was kind of like a joke and I switched over to Hila the Earth. I wouldn't say it's like a character, I mean obviously there's elements to that, it's just not the way I would describe it. I'm an artist and that's my artist name.

I'm inspired by the Earth. I'm inspired by nature, trees, mushrooms, plants, food, the water we drink, the air we breathe. I think it's really important to connect with the Earth because it's the source of all life. And I really love music and the way that music connects people. I love comedy and music. I love life so all of these things are really inspiring to me and there's just a lot of things to learn. I didn't grow up with a lot of education or culture surrounding the Earth and the materials of the world and my mission and goal is to teach about what makes our world, what makes our Earth, and our connection to it in a really fun and exciting and funny way.

It's interesting that you don't think that your particular education was as thorough as it had the potential to be. Do you think that's something that's kind of improved over the years?
I don't know. I mean, I would hope so, but in general, I think that children and kids, especially in New York City, aren't getting an education that is about where their food comes from, the actual history of the land, how plants grow, how trees grow, you know, learning about the materials that they interact with every day, what plastic is, the harms of pollution and big oil and all these things. I mean, I would hope that things have changed a little bit. I know that there is more education in the city around hydroponics and gardening and climbing and things like that. But when I was a kid, there definitely wasn't. I don't remember anything like that to really teach me about ecosystems or conservation or anything.

What came first in your pursuit of your career? Was it more that you just wanted to be an entertainer or more that you wanted to be an advocate? Which were you chasing first when you embarked on this journey?
I wasn't really chasing anything. I was inspired by education and comedy and inspired also to learn as much as I could, and relay the information that I learned in a really interesting and fun way. So yeah, it kind of all was one.

How do you rely on tools like music and social media and video editing? How do you think that tools like that help you grow your platform faster and move your messages along more quickly than sort of we had the means to do beforehand?
Technology-wise, I mean, the ability to connect with so many people online on platforms such as Instagram has been really important and has made the process of becoming seen and heard more accessible, I think. I don't know really how that compares to other times. I was never an artist during a different time, but I really am grateful for the platforms that I am part of and for the audience that I have. And the medium that I use is video and music. I do a lot of live shows as well.

What typically inspires you to write a song? What is the process like?
I love writing. I do a lot of writing research a lot when I write I pick, you know, usually some kind of topic that is important to me, for example vegetables, I really love a lot of vegetables. I have a series of veggie raps where I kind of make short songs about each vegetable and the process for that is just like ‘All right, I'm going to write about beets today.’ And I go through everything that I want to say about beets and I find a beat for it. It's a very magical process.

Where would you say, musically, your biggest inspirations come from?
Well, I have a lot of music tastes and what I love to listen to is so broad. But, of course, I'm inspired by hip-hop and the legacy of hip-hop from New York and everywhere, actually, and just the global hip-hop community. But I guess early inspo was just a lot of old school hip hop, a lot of like Mos Def, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang. I was really into Eminem when I was younger. A lot of my inspiration came from hip hop and loving rap music. Loving Left Eye and TLC and loving Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott. Especially Mos Def has a lot of songs that are really conscious, in my opinion, about water about eating healthy or Dead Prez actually also had a lot of really great songs. So there's a lot of artists that I really love on a lyrical and hip hop world and then in the other realms of music I've been inspired by kind of like melodic house music. I love reggaeton.

I'm pretty obsessed with music, and I just kind of listen to a lot of it, and a lot of different genres. I mean, my song, “Mycelium”, was kind of like a reggaeton song. I really wanted to do that kind of genre for that song. I'm kind of veering into different genres as well. I will say that lyrically it is kind of harder to find inspiration around the topics that I really want to listen to songs about, but they exist and there's a lot of really cool, conscious stuff out there that I love. I've done a lot of parodies, right? So I've remixed and rewritten the lyrics to DMX's "X Gon' Give It To Ya" turned into "Earth Gon' Give It To Ya" Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, "Wet Ass Planet" and I did a version of "Baby Got Back" Sir Mix-a-Lot "Baby Got Fracked.”

We wanted to touch a little bit about your costumes as well. How are those made? Do you make them yourself?
I make some myself, but most of them are collaborations with other designers. And we really make sure to create new costumes, especially some of the ones that you see, like the apple core, the banana peel, carrot. They're made out of secondhand materials so they're really upcycled costumes and very cool for that reason. They're not made from new materials, so yeah they're really cool costumes.

We touched briefly about your live shows and your more interactive performances. Can you talk a little bit about what goes into putting a show like that together?
Well, it's evolved a lot over the years. I've been doing a lot of kids shows, especially in the last year, and what started out as what I do in my more adult-focused shows kind of just went into kids really easily because I bring all my costumes to shows and I kind of dress the audience in them. I always get volunteers to come kind of be my backup dancers and put them in the costume because I'm the Earth. So instead of me changing costumes and being a tomato or a carrot or whatever, I make the audience be those things and then they get a little moment to shine and we do a song for them and it's super fun. I really love doing that. The show is so fun and you never know what an audience member is secretly bringing to the room. They really surprise me and they’re so much fun to do that with.

Speaking to your audience again a little bit, what are some simple ways that your audience or our readers can contribute to improving sustainability in their everyday lives and healthy environment? And how do you advise people to do better in that way?
It's an interesting question because right now I feel like I am obviously an advocate for lifestyle and, you know, being conscious of the Earth and everything. I'm a musician as well. I'm an artist and I really want people to engage with the music and I want them to enjoy that and learn from it. And so a lot of the songs are about, you know, learning about the earth and learning about different trees and connecting with nature. And at the end of the day, like we live in this society, in this world. A lot of us grew up in a place where we were not connected to nature, and especially in New York City, we're surrounded by pollution and plastic waste and a lack of awareness and education towards the physical material and the food that we eat and how healthy and nutritious it is, how clean our water or air is. And I think that my audience and the people who vibe with me are kind of already on that journey of reconnecting to nature or they already are feeling very connected, and they love that I'm making music that speaks to that connection.

I've been trying to give less advice about, you know, how to be more eco-conscious or whatever, because I think I don't want that to be my role. I'm not a zero waste or an environmental advocate coach. I am an artist and I want to continue to focus on building the connection and relationship with my audience that centers the music and the art. But there's so many things that people can do, you know, people can literally just go outside more, be mindful, go hang out with some trees, learn about them. Just be part of their communities, speak to their neighbors, get involved in things. If you're part of your building board and you're learning about the water, you're learning about the energy of your building, and just things like that. I think really getting out of the individualism of ‘What can I do’ and kind of building more of ‘How can I be part of a community that does something together’ I think is also really important so things that I'm also working on personally.

How do you keep yourself and your audience sort of motivated and optimistic about the future when it can sort of be kind of a crushing feeling sometimes?
I do think that your habits and your lifestyle and the way you show up in the world every day, every moment, absolutely matters and has a huge ripple effect. Not just on the environment, but on your own life. And one of the main core messages of my work is that you are the Earth and I am the Earth and we are the Earth and there's no real separation between the individual and the collective. We are part of each other and we are each other and we're all mirrors of each other and what we do to ourselves affects the greater all and what we do to the outside affects ourselves, you know? If you work on yourself, if you do your best, if you wake up and you meditate and find stillness and you take care to pay attention to where you shop, where you're putting your money, where you're putting your energy, how you're showing up for yourself when it comes to what you buy and what you consume and what you produce. I think that that is so important, and that is what motivates me, is that there's always something else that I could be doing, some other way that I could adjust and change and grow. And so I'm constantly motivated by that. And I think one of the big things that I work on is, you know, just healing the parts of me that feel like I can't do it, the parts of me that feel shame, the parts of me that feel depression, sadness, guilt, worry, anxiety, all of those emotions don't really help me get closer to the vision.

So just holding the vision, letting go of the negative spirals, and, obviously, it's important to do shadow work. It's important to confront the difficult parts of ourselves, the parts that don't want to change, the parts that do harm, and accept them, love them, honor them, and move forward from that. I think there's a constant practice, constant work. I think that keeps me motivated and staying present. I think a lot of it is about anxiety about the future, but the future hasn't happened yet. So, that's like a really painful, difficult frequency to exist in. And so just being aware of that and doing my best to stay present and just like being real and confronting the difficulties as they come. If something makes me uncomfortable, letting go of people pleasing and really just kind of honoring that we're in a difficult time. We've been so disconnected from nature for so long and it's not going to be an easy pull but it is something that is definitely possible. Even just me ,the way that i've changed in my lifetime I think is pretty amazing on its own, so I definitely have faith in us as a collective as well.

Do you have any notable/favorite resources and organizations that you personally enjoy supporting or that you would encourage your audience to support to do their part?
I think about children and animals a lot, and I think that protecting them and caring about them and being around them is really important, you know? So, spaces that honor children and honor people, animals that make it possible for us to kind of coexist and be together I think are going to be really important. I think that organizing and being together is a huge part of the movement towards things, and I guess I just like really want to encourage people to find artists that they love that are doing this work and really support them as much as we can.

What are you currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?
So many fun things. Well, right now I'm working on a parks anthem for the National Recreation and Parks Association, and I'm about to release that on July 1st. I wrote a song called “Nature is Gay” that is a little about, just like the beautiful diversity of nature. It is kind of funny, kind of tongue-in-cheek, you know, everything is gay vibes, but it's also just about the joy of diversity, of knowing that we live on a planet with so much diversity different kinds of expression and even reproduction abilities for different species and it's not binary, it's not gender essentialist and I think that we really do ourselves a disservice as humans to, not only, paint over other species our own sexual reproductive of the world, but then also for even ourselves to try to put people into boxes and not allow for the beautiful diversity of human beings and human sexual realities.

So, that's something that I'm really inspired by and have been kind of working on different ways to promote the song. I have a bunch of cute New York City songs, specific kind of nature programming that I'm working on. New veggie raps, new costumes, hopefully an album. I finally got a lot of stuff together. So I'm working on just writing more verses, writing more songs, posting more, doing live streams on YouTube. I would definitely encourage people to follow me on YouTube. That's kind of where I'm kind of trying to move my content towards. There's a never-ending list of songs that I want to write so just kind of gonna get started cutting through them.

What is your motto in life?
Well, one of them is everything changes. So that's been carrying me for a while. And I think that another one is I am the Earth, that's a big one. I haven't maybe made it a motto yet, but presence is just the most important. So maintaining presence. All we have is now is really another one that I think about.

To learn more about Hila the Earth , please check out the links below:
Website: https://hilatheearth.com/
Spotify: @hilatheearth
Instagram: @hilatheearth
YouTube: @hilatheearth
TikTok: @hilatheearth

Hila the Earth Writes Beats About Beets, and It is Magical