Most of what passes for “content” these days is disposable. Made fast, optimized for whatever invisible math decides what people see today, and forgotten about five minutes later.
That never interested me much.
I’m Kennyatta, and what I care about are the stories that stick. The ones rooted in culture, in places, in the messy, contradictory reality of how people actually live, work, and make things.
So this is where I put those stories.
What You’ll Find Here
The Workshop — Interviews, Adventures, Observations.
Curiosity: What would it look like if we were all on the same page? Category: Announcement
Before They Gave Us the Language
Economics was never taught to us in the language we lived it in.
I had an amazing professor in college named Mrs. Holder who, in both Micro and Macro Econ, would adapt the curriculum to the way we engaged with finance as students. It was part of why her classes were my favorite and hold some of my favorite memories from college. Seeing how wide a gap she had to clear to make it relate to us stuck with me.
The curriculum didn’t teach the version of economics we learned through access, attention, rejection, pricing, proximity, beauty, taste, labor, or status.
It didn’t teach the version that I’ve seen show up at casting calls, in partnership meetings, at dinners, during a shoot, in group chats, waiting at the airport or in a hotel lobby, pitching to land a client, or during the event you were invited to, not because they really wanted YOU there, but because they wanted what you bring with you.
The truth is everything runs on some form of exchange.
Attention for access.
Image for credibility.
Proximity for opportunity.
Taste for mobility.
Labor for visibility.
By the time anyone puts a number to it, if they do at all, the exchange already happened.
And we usually understand this way before we know what to call it. We know when someone is being copied but not credited, when “collaboration” means unpaid labor, and when “community” is customer acquisition hidden behind a veneer of better manners.
We know it because we live it. Everyday.
For too long, the language of economics has been made to feel like it belonged to the filthy rich, out-of-touch intellectuals, and the finance-obsessed. For some reason, we assumed that it rightly belongs to Wall Street, and people who swear by the All-In podcast and believe Elon Musk is the only sound voice to explain scarcity as if he invented wanting something you cannot have.
Economics belongs to the people.
It always has.
And culture, by its very nature, has an economy of its own.
Who gets invited. Who gets ignored. Who gets copied. Who gets credited. Who gets called expensive. Who gets called difficult. Who gets to be original. Who gets to turn taste into margin. Who gets told to be grateful.
Yet, those of us who make the dominant cultural narratives are asked to treat ourselves like labor inside someone else’s larger agenda when we’re the ones who make a room feel like something worth paying attention to before anyone sells it as a scene for content.
Too often, we’re asked to be grateful for access to a value we’ve created or introduced people to.
I have no interest in continuing that arrangement.
I’m not interested in being a guest in a house I helped build. I’m also not interested in turning every observation I have into a take just because the internet is rewarding the loudest noise with a false sense of importance and furniture money.
That’s why launching this Substack, From The Corner, feels like the right place to begin right now.
Now don’t get it twisted. This isn’t a newsletter about finance, and this isn’t a branding newsletter either. This isn’t a luxury newsletter; it’s not a diary, and I’m not here to make culture sound more complicated than it is.
We’ve been complicating things enough.
From The Corner is a weekly newsletter about the hidden economics of culture, taste, status, and access. It studies the market inside culture and the culture inside the market.
My POV comes from the corner because the corner is culture to me. It’s the store we went to after school and before school. It’s where we chilled when we didn’t want to be in the house. It’s where we made money, had cyphers, had fun, and made history. The corner was a useful place to stand; not too high, not too low, and not swallowed by the middle of it all. You’re close enough to understand what is happening, far away enough to see who is performing, who is paying, who is working, who is being used, and who thinks nobody noticed.
I’ll start with language.
Instead of more language that makes us sound smarter while keeping us stagnant, I’m looking for language that helps us move differently, understand what value is being created, who is capturing it, who is being priced out of it, and who has been taught to accept less because they never had the words for more, so we can act in our own best interest.
We’re quick to do anything for a client, major brand, a platform, room, or a person we assume sits above us. We’re quick to bet everything on someone else’s vision to prove our loyalty.
But what changes when we understand our own value clearly enough to act on it?
That’s the question I want answers to.
From The Corner launches this Thursday for people with the same interest and curiosity. In the meantime, subscribe HERE to make sure you don’t miss the first issue when it’s released.