‘A voice for the voiceless.’ Lexington hip-hop artist, activist wins Emmy

Devine Carama is a Lexington native, an activist, a hip-hop artist and, as of July 30, an Emmy Award winner.

Carama made a name for himself through hip-hop albums and nonprofit work in Kentucky. So when local news channel WLEX 18 needed a theme song for a new segment focusing on positive news, the station asked Carama to create one.

The song, “Positively LEX 18,” won an Emmy for News Production — Image or Campaign at the 2022 Ohio Valley Regional Emmy Awards, something Carama called “shocking.”

“It’s still hard to believe,” he said. “This is regular for these journalists, but for a hip-hop artist, there’s only a handful ... that has ever won one.”

According to Carama and Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton, Carama is the first hip-hop artist from Kentucky to receive an Emmy. He mentioned his producer J.K. Wyche, stage name JK-47, along with WLEX employees Dave Medley, Jared Hamm and Kate Johnson, as also being part of the win.

Gorton publicly congratulated Carama, who she appointed to be the director of ONE Lexington, a program intended to prevent gun violence among Lexington residents between the ages of 13 and 29.

“I’ve always been proud of the amazing work Devine Carama” and the ONE Lexington team do, Gorton said in a tweet. “Now, Devine, along with artist J.k. Wyche, have won an Emmy Award! ... Their theme song for a “Positively LEX 18” news promotion is an inspiring message of love and the importance of spreading positive news.”

Although the song was not originally intended to have a music video, Carama said that changed after he shared it with LEX18.

“When they heard the song, they said, ‘Oh, we’ve gotta add visuals to this,’ and then the rest is history,” he said.

The story behind the song

Carama said the song’s message is one of unity, emphasizing the similarities that all Kentucky residents share rather than the differences that divide.

“Even though along political and racial lines, Eastern and Central Kentucky are separated, the kids that I serve that live in the inner city in Lexington have a lot more in common with the kids that are from the hollers of Eastern Kentucky,” he said, referencing his work with the city-run program ONE Lexington. “There’s still drug addiction, there’s still poverty, food insecurity.

“And so it’s trying to show that there’s more that we have in common.”

Carama said his favorite line from the song is, “I love you, my friend, te amo, mi amigo/The strength of Kentucky is the power of the people.”

He said he hopes it speaks to those who feel underrepresented and unseen to remind them that the state’s strength comes from them.

“When we first created the song, all we were trying to do was just kind of uplift people,” Carama said. “We wanted to create a song that would bring people together.”

Activism work

In addition to being a motivational speaker, Carama is an activist and works with initiatives around the bluegrass, focusing specifically on youth violence prevention.

His own nonprofit, Believing In Forever Inc., works to encourage young people toward community leadership “through art, education, mentoring, and community service,” according to the organization’s website. Each year, the nonprofit hosts a youth coat drive to provide winter coats for Kentucky children in need.

In 2021, Gorton named Carama the director of ONE Lexington, an initiative through the mayor’s office to reduce violent crime among young people ages 13 to 29. According to Carama, the majority of instances of gun violence and homicides over the last few years have come from that age demographic.

He said there has been around a 40% drop in gun violence this year among juveniles.

Hip-hop ‘meant to be a voice for the voiceless’

Carama said hip-hop is a unique art form because it “is meant to be a voice for the voiceless.”

From its earliest days during the civil rights movement in the 1970s, he said hip-hop brought attention to the disparities and marginalization seen among Black people in the United States, helping to bring those issues into public discourse.

“A lot of people talk about the content (of hip-hop), but the reason some of the content is so ugly is because it represents some ugly situations,” Carama said. “I always tell people if they want to see the content in hip-hop be better, then you gotta go to the communities that they come from and make the communities better.”

In his Emmy acceptance speech, Camara echoed this idea, referencing disasters, natural and otherwise, that have been seen across Kentucky.

“This is dedicated to hip-hop culture, which was created to be a voice for those who do not have one, and that’s what we were able to do with this song,” he said at the Emmys. “This is dedicated to my daughter, who passed away in 2020.

“This is dedicated to Western Kentucky, who’s been leveled by tornadoes, this is dedicated to Eastern Kentucky who’s been leveled by a flood, but we also cannot forget Central Kentucky that is being leveled by gun violence.”

Since winning an Emmy, Carama and JK-47 released another song on Apple Music called “Kentucky, We Fight.” The song features Bryce Jamel and is dedicated to the victims of the Eastern Kentucky flooding.

“When there’s hope, you can do and accomplish anything, I believe,” he said. “I hope that us winning this Emmy just validates us more and puts us in more spaces to do what God is calling us to do, which is bring people together, try to help undeserved communities and uplift our people.”