The Artist's Responsibility: A Fireside Chat with Equipto

Equipto is a rapper and political activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In his teens, he founded Bored Stiff, a long-running hip hop group -- and led the Frisco Five hunger strike outside San Francisco's Mission District police station, to protest police brutality and killings of unarmed civilians. He has performed and toured with many notable hip-hop acts, including KRS-One, De La Soul, Mac Dre, and Nas. He has also released music with Andre Nickatina. Equipto is of mixed Japanese and Colombian ancestry. He is named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. His father, Art Sato, was born in a Japanese internment camp in Colorado.