Toni Blackman

Toni Blackman is a rapper, poet, educator, and social entrepreneur recognized for her work at the intersection of hip-hop culture and international diplomacy. Blackman was selected by the U.S. Department of State as the first hip-hop artist to serve as an American Cultural Ambassador. As the inaugural Hip Hop Cultural Envoy, she traveled to countries including Senegal, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Botswana, and Swaziland, where she delivered lectures on hip-hop music and culture. Through her role as Hip-Hop Ambassador, Blackman has demonstrated hip-hop’s capacity as an international platform for cultural exchange and global citizenship.

Blackman has traveled to 47 countries, performing, speaking, and teaching. Her work has taken her throughout Europe, Angola, Brazil, Canada, and Southeast Asia—including the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Taiwan—as part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rhythm Road Abroad program. She has contributed to peace and reconciliation, literacy, HIV awareness, and gender violence prevention through her diplomatic efforts. Blackman was selected as a Rhythm Road touring artist and later served on the selection committee for American Music Abroad with American Voices.

Her career began as a poet and MC in Washington, D.C.’s spoken word and music scenes, where she engaged with the cypher as a tool for creative expression. Blackman is the founder and director of Freestyle Union, a workshop that uses freestyling to encourage social responsibility within hip-hop activism. She also founded the Hip Hop Arts Movement while at Howard University and has participated in the Hip Hop Theater Festival. Blackman co-authored "Hip Hop Nightmares of Jujube Brown" with Psalmayene 24 as an ACT-Co presentation at ARENA Stage in Washington, D.C. She is the author of "The Wisdom of Cypher" and co-creator of the Meditation Mixtape Series, a hip-hop meditation project. Her first book, "Inner-Course," was published by Villard/Random House.

Blackman has shared the stage with artists such as Erykah Badu, Mos Def, The Roots, Wu-Tang, and Guru, and has performed at events including Lilith Fair and Def Poetry. She has appeared in Eve Ensler’s V-Day Festival, the DODGE Poetry Festival, the Barcelona World Social Forum, and headlined the URBAN VOICES Festival in South Africa. Blackman has spoken at the Ableton LOOP Summit, the World Social Forum in Barcelona, the Aspen Institute’s Creative World Forum, and has delivered two TED Talks.

Blackman served as a fellow with the Echoing Green Foundation and the Open Society Institute, where she launched Rhyme Like A Girl. She participated in the DOVE Real Woman campaign in the United States and Canada, supporting women and girls in developing self-confidence and self-love. As a music educator, Blackman has worked as a teaching artist and hip-hop specialist at Carnegie Hall, collaborated with the Apollo Theater education department, and served as a poet-in-residence at the Studio Museum of Harlem. She has led workshops and taught at institutions including the Kennedy Center, Harvard, NBC Universal, Hallmark, Coca-Cola, Spelman College, Juilliard School, and the Smithsonian. Blackman’s work has been featured in scholarly articles on hip-hop culture, and she is a member of the Spoken Word Committee of the New York Chapter of the Recording Academy.