Today we’d like to introduce you to Khalilah (aka Bo Brite) Ali.
Hi Khalilah (aka Bo Brite), can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I came up through the culture. Before I ever called myself a professor, playing hopscotch in the burbs just outside of Youngstown Ohio; I was a listener, a reader of walls, a lover of lyrics. Hip hop taught me theory before the academy gave it a name. My first classrooms were cipher circles and city blocks, where creativity was survival and expression was a form of literacy.
Over time, that impulse to translate art into knowledge and resistance into pedagogy became my life’s work. I’m an art educator, researcher, and activist who studies how Black expressive culture street art, hip hop, and women’s literature teaches us about freedom, identity, and imagination. I teach at Spelman College, where I prepare future educators to see classrooms as living communities and to bring the spirit of the cypher, the studio, and the mural wall into their teaching.
My research travels through Ghana, Brazil, Benin, and back to Atlanta, tracing murals and music as global conversations on Black consciousness. Whether I’m writing scholarship, building curriculum, or spitting under the name Bo Brite, I’m interested in how sound, color, and story move people toward awareness and action. At heart, I’m still that kid who believes learning is an art form. My work academic, creative, spiritual lives in that space where hip hop meets humanity, where education is not just about information but transformation.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not at all and I wouldn’t want it to be. The smooth road doesn’t make a revolutionary. There’ve been challenges funding, gatekeeping, burnout but hip hop trained me to sample the struggle and make something new from it. Every setback became a remix. Every detour, a new beat. I’ve learned that the road to purpose isn’t straight, and it’s not always pretty. I became a mom as a teenager and dropped out of college before I ever thought I’d end up teaching in one. When I went back, it was hard. Grad school was even harder. I struggled with depression for years but kept pushing because I knew education was part of my calling.
Losing my mom in 2019 was the hardest blow. She was the person who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. After she passed, I had to figure out how to keep going without that foundation. What I’ve learned since then is that healing has to be part of the work. You can’t really teach liberation if you’re not doing it in your own life. Everything I’ve been through shows up in how I teach, mentor, and make art. It’s what helps me meet people where they are and remind them that their story isn’t over.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m an emcee, educator, and researcher all of that lives together for me. I perform and write under the name Bo Brite, and my music is where my scholarship breathes. The same things I teach about Black consciousness, womanist spirituality, liberation, and creativity show up in my lyrics, my classroom, and my research. I study how hip hop and street art function as public education, how people learn from the walls, the beats, and the stories around them.
At Spelman, I train future teachers to think like artists by seeing teaching and learning as performance and practice. Outside the academy, my work travels through the diaspora, tracing how murals and music move across places like Atlanta, Accra, and Bahia as global languages of resistance.
What sets me apart is that I don’t just study culture—I create it. My research, art, and teaching are all part of the same conversation about freedom. I’m most proud that I’ve built a life where I can stand in all those identities without apology: professor, emcee, mother, and woman finding joy through the work.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite memory is staying up at night with my teddy bear, Tizzy. We’d create whole worlds together—-castles, galaxies, secret cities. That’s where I learned I could shape reality with imagination. Play became my first form of therapy, and it taught me early that creativity isn’t just escape. . .it’s healing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bobrite.wordpress.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobrite
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-706113993/ancient-immortals?in=user402678400%2Fsets%2Fphlo-god
