Rabbi Darkside is an MC/DJ/Beatboxer/Educator based in Brooklyn, NY. His movements aim to incite empathy and empowerment through social justice education and creative freedom, facilitated by his mastery of improvisation and elastic collaborative abilities. He is the 20-time Freestyle Mondays “Off the Head Gameshow” Champion and the 2010 End of the Weak MC Challenge U.S. Co-Champion, in addition to winning every major freestyle rap competition in NYC in the new millennium. Darkside blurs the line between Hip Hop, Jazz, Folk, Poetry and Progressive Soul. His prowess as a multi-elemental artist has led to 15 international tours, landed his latest album atop the CMJ Hip Hop charts and found him on MTV’s “Made,” Okayplayer, New York Times, the Today Show, CBS Early Show, HipHopDX, 2DopeBoyz and the Village Voice. Recent performance highlights include headlining the 2016 and 2015 Blue Note Jazz Festival, 2014 SXSW, 2013 CMJ Festival and the 2012 WNYC Battle of the Boroughs. Darkside is the co-founder of the Hip Hop Re:Education Project, a Hip Hop Education Fellow at the H2ED Hip Hop Ed Center at NYU, and the artistic creator of NYS Regents test prep program “Fresh Prep.” In 2015-2016 he traveled to Kampala, Uganda as a U.S. Hip Hop Cultural Ambassador with the Next Level Initiative and is currently a part-time lecturer at The New School, teaching seminars of his own design focused on Hip Hop Culture, Arts & Pedagogy. He is also a secular ordained minister and recently presided over his 7th wedding.
Sam “Rabbi Darkside” Sellers
DJ / Educator