By Connie Zhou
The ancient Greeks had Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the 17th century had Descartes; the 19th century had Nietzsche; and 21st century Harvard has Alex Olapade. Intimidatingly well-dressed from afar, what becomes immediately apparent after sitting down with Alex is that he is also intimidatingly well-spoken, too. His comments are insightful and biting; they drive at a truth about our world and what it means to be a part of this confusing, aggravating, invigorating time that is the present. Alex's interview is fittingly, then, a bit of a manifesto - he knows what he wants to say, and he wants to make sure you hear it. It is beautifully worded and flowed so naturally that I actually asked him if he had practiced (he didn't, obviously. He is just that eloquent).
It is this persistent urge toward self-expression that has transcended Alex's introversion and permeated every aspect of his life, in particular music-making - Alex is an outstanding DJ with the goal of connecting people together with his music. And having seen him open for Elephante in person, I can attest to the fact that, connecting with people he does.
Alex is the perfect exemplar of taking the road less traveled - or perhaps, the road less traveled that turned into a turbulent ocean that dried into a scorching desert and tunneled into the other side of the Earth. His story is truly unparalleled, and from the way his life seems to be turning out, I'd say we all need to embrace the unexpected more often.
On style:
"The most significant item is the one that people usually miss - it's my school ring from Phillips Exeter Academy. They gave me the capacity to go for the things I wanted to go for. Before that, it was like, I'm going to be the B student, I'm going to be sort of average, and I kind of learned how to push for goals that were specific to me. I went to Japan for a program and lived there for a year - I was playing in an orchestra there; I started a band and performed in front of bunch of crowds while I was there, and I did a bunch of things that really meant something to me for the first time instead of my parents telling me what to do."
The significance of clothing in general to me would have to be... it's an artistic form of expression, and that used to be what it was for me, really - and when I lived in Japan, I came back wearing, like, asymmetrical hoodies and pants with three sets of belt loops and weird shit. But it started to become practical mechanism as well. I'm black and sometimes I find myself for utilitarian reasons dressing a certain way, wearing my hair a certain way, to make a certain impression. I wear blazers more often than I don't, right? My girlfriend just pointed out, it was really funny - we were at a restaurant, and the police came to take some other dude away, and they asked me for a statement, and I got up and I wasn't wearing my blazer, and I was like, 'Oh, let me put my blazer on before I talk to the cops.' And she sort of laughed at that, and actually the cops sort of laughed at that as well. I went through prep school and then I went to this school, and I learned how to make people comfortable while also feeling comfortable with myself. I think my mom pointed it out to me a year ago. I thought about it recently and concluded - my mom sent me an article about other African American men that do this, and I was like, oh, I guess I do do that. And it's interesting because when I look through my life, I see moments of racial tension, but in the moment I'm not necessarily good at noticing those things. Sometimes I wonder if it's because I happened to present myself in a certain way or that makes me appear comfortable to other people. You know, I've never been stopped by the police at night. I've never had a situation like that happen to me that I remember, but people also will tell me, like 'Wow, Alex, did you see how they treated you just now? Can you believe that?' And I'm like wait a minute, I guess you're right."
"I think that... every single person at Harvard is arguably a very high quality person in some sense. And I think we all deserve to treat ourselves well. When I look at the world that I operate in, I always see it in three ways: the way we treat other people, the way other people treat us, and the way we treat ourselves. And those three things are really connected, for me at least. The clothing thing - think about it with grooming, whether you're male or female, it's the times when you're in a bad mood, when you're sort of depressed that you let that stuff go. And whether it's the chicken or the egg, right, those things are really connected, and you can find yourself in some emotional hole for whatever reason, and more often than not, one byproduct of that is, oh, my grooming is a little off today, I didn't shave for a few days, you know, I'm wearing a pair of jeans for the second time in a row - whatever it is. Turning that around whenever I get a haircut or I get my clothing for next season and I wear it for the first time or something like that, I always feel really good. And I always find myself getting a lot more done in other aspects of my life."
"My style is... European? Maybe? Good fit, I love Frank and Oak, I love Reiss - I love those looks. It's kind of borderline between preppy and a little bit more hipster. And the reason why I say that is like, you know, if I was really going to go for hipster, I'd have half my head shaved or something like that, and wearing the same thing. Or maybe I'd have tattoos or something. I don't really go for that - that's kind of the line - but I do go for a lot of color. I love the details - I love a great pair of socks and a great pocket square."
On growing up:
"I was born to a single mom in Jamaica Plain. And we lived in a small apartment in Jamaica Plain, and she moved over to Newton, and she was in seminary, so she was learning to become a pastor. And for the first five years of my life, I was with her, and I'd be pulled around to classes and later church meetings, and I'd be sitting in her office, and I remember her buying me pizza from across the street because I'd be sitting in her office for so long. And I do remember I was a trouble maker - I think I drove my mom's car away one time when I was like, four. And I would very frequently get lost, and by lost I mean that other people couldn't find me. So that would cause freak-outs - this is all hearsay, of course. And then at the age of five, my mom met my stepdad, and they got married and had my brother when I was six. And we moved over the course of that time from JP to Newton Corner and finally to Woburn. So we lived in Woburn from when I was six to age ten. We went from Woburn to a place called Reading, where we lived for about seven years, when I was again nine or ten - and I went first to the public school in Reading from like, third to fifth grade. And then in the sixth grade, I went to this private middle school called the Clark School, and I ended up graduating with like, three people - it was very small. It was really an alternative experience because instead of everyone being on the same math book, everybody was on whatever level they were, going at their own pace. It was a very free-reign sort of experience because there were fewer people and you got a lot more attention. But there came a point when the principal said, 'Alex, you know, there's not really much else that we can give you,' because they were just about to start a high school but they were like, you need a better experience than what we have to offer, and you should apply to other schools. So that was my first foray into the whole, super focused, driving to the ultimate college kind of thing, where it was all about getting the best grades possible. I was a cellist and I was doing that off to the side, but in terms of school, prior to that, it was a little bit less pressure. So I do that, I end up getting into Exeter and Concord Academy. And I remember I was having a fight with my dad. He wanted me to go to Exeter, and I wanted to go to Concord because I enjoyed the interview at Concord more - they had me sleep over, I felt really welcomed there, and I felt the small environment made more sense. He was like, 'Look, you have to go to Exeter. It's just going to unlock doors...' He's Nigerian and came here when he was nineteen and started from the bottom. He was living with a distant family member, paying rent, working at gas station for the first three years, and upgraded to some more property maintenance sort of stuff, and then he started a property maintenance company. And so he's of the opinion that if the opportunity is there, you should take it - you should shut up and take it. So I ended up doing it, and thank God I did because the experiences I had at Exeter, they did actually end up being really phenomenal.
On Harvard:
At Exeter, the first year I had a lot of trouble. As I said, this was the first time that level of pressure was on me - like you have to get these grades and it's going so fast, and everybody is really smart. So I actually was doing really badly for the first year. We're talking - I actually got a D+ in biology, which then transitioned the next year into a B+, which was a lot better. Part of it had to do with the fact that I hate classes where I learn words that I just don't care about - like why am I looking at a pig's heart right now? My grades got up to A- level by the end of my tenure there, but then at Harvard, the same thing actually happened. And this time it was even worse. I took psychology - SLS 20 - and I ended up failing that class. It was the same type of study habits, right? I still didn't have those study habits. So suddenly I'm in the same situation as I was before, and I had another class that was really difficult - so I ended up failing one and a half classes, which is the place where Harvard says, okay, you need to take time off. And I said, oh, it's my family's fault - my parents are getting a divorce. Oh, it's, you know, this other thing's fault - I didn't get the proper support - please don't make me leave. But they ended up putting their foot down on it, and I remember being extremely angry about that for the first month. And settling into my situation after that, a year later, I was really comfortable with it. It just had to happen - and because it happened, I was able to actually look at what I wanted to do with my life. You know, when you don't know what it is that you want to do with your life, you're sort of trying to follow other people, which is what I was trying to do - you know, economics, taking classes with HFAC, trying to do that. I was trying to be finance. Me and my friend actually made this pact to get into this freshman program at Goldman Sachs. But I hated the financial work. It was so dry for me. It was so uninteresting. And yet I put myself through that because I thought had to. Luckily, Harvard said, go away for a year and we'll see where you are when you come back. And that year was phenomenal. I ended up working in marketing and sales in this fashion company. I ended up designing fashion shows for the fall and spring lines, and I had this client book that by the end of the year, it was just crazy - my favorite client was the event organizer at the MFA. And she actually invited me to events over there, and I would network at these really posh local bars. You know, I was well-dressed, I looked like I was 23, 25, so I went - didn't drink - and I would network. I remember this woman that I met was the first female senior partner on Wall Street, ever. And she and a bunch of other people invited me to this dinner, and this dinner had this famous writer who wrote this book about Coca Cola and their entire history. There was this famous conductor of an orchestra, there was that woman that I just mentioned, there was this award-winning scientist from MIT, and there was this editor of a top lifestyle magazine in Boston. And we ate at - I think it's called Erbaluce's - which is this Italian place in Bay Village. And Bay Village is the area of Boston where all the light - all the lamps on the street are really soft, and it feels really comfortable. It feels like you're walking through a pillow, basically. But the dinner lasted for three hours, and the conversation lasted for four. And it was one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had. And that was one of many instances of things that at that point had never happened to me at Harvard. Yeah, there were conversations about philosophy and all this stuff, but that level of connection among different life experiences was something that I had never really experienced before."
"Harvard is a mixed bag because there are some fantastic people here, and I'm a sociologist, and one thing you realize in sociology is that systems in place have a much stronger hold on people's behavior than you might think. Of course, you look at extreme examples, like okay, Nazi internment camp. And when you study it, you realize a huge part of the reason people act the way they do is because there's so much pressure - it's the propaganda, it's the 'This is what's right; this is what you should do.' And it's so powerful and overarching and all-consuming in people's lives that they believe it's okay. There was this teacher in California who basically made life for his students like Nazi Germany for a week, and by the end of it, the students were treating each other so badly. He separated them, like 'You guys are, like, the majority ruling class and you guys are the minority, and these are the rules and this is how you treat each other.' And literally people were demonizing each other and treating each other in ways that were very uncomfortably similar to Nazi Germany. So you can't underestimate that. For me, my Harvard experience has taken me six years - it's going to take me seven years or something. And part of that is that I felt this pressure that went unchecked - to do a certain thing, and that was further exacerbated by my being from a prep school, and everybody there was like 'Oh, I'm going to go to college for four years, and then I'm going to join my dad's law firm or I'm going to join this, that, or the other thing.' So it was severely unchecked, and I can't help but wonder why that was. And I was trying to figure out where I contributed to the situation or where Harvard contributed to the situation of me having to take time off, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, remember. But I did feel at the time like I didn't have - I had resources - there's TFs, there's sections, there's advisers - but I felt as though there weren't any resources there that I could see, that I noticed. I personally did not notice any resources that A, looked attractive, and B, would result in me really questioning what I wanted to do and whether what I wanted to do was in line with me or the really subtle pressures that come with being at Harvard. The social scene at Harvard in many ways doesn't help. Look at women, right? The rate of sexual assault at Harvard is higher than the average. Women come in as freshmen. They are looking for something - some sort of acceptance, I guess, as everybody is. And these senior guys are also looking for some form of acceptance, probably in the form of sex. They're looking for the 'I'm a senior' feeling. And there aren't really any checks and balances for that kind of thing, like in a final club or whatever space. It's hard to make people accountable for that, and it's also hard to reach people and say, 'Look, you need to accept yourself as a person. You need to treat yourself well, and you need to learn to separate the way you see yourself from the way other people see you.' I think at Harvard, it's easy for people to fall into the trap of forgetting themselves and becoming a part of this collective, almost, where they're running on autopilot and they'll do anything to get that social fix. I mean, I used to go to dorm parties like crazy. I actually remember a moment when I started straying away from this mode of existence where I constantly felt unaccepted. It's like how Don Draper says, 'Happiness is just a moment before you need more happiness.'"
"A lot of people just get an okay education at Harvard. And that's because there are classes that they think they should take that aren't really what they're interested in. There's a lot of pressure to learn Excel. There's a lot of pressure to go to CS50 - not that I have anything against CS50; I actually think that's fantastic. Whatever it is, there is some direction that is the natural direction to go, and people really miss out on the really cool stuff off to the side."
On being a DJ:
While I was taking my year off, I was DJ-ing. And what I mean by DJ-ing is that I was practicing DJ-ing. I'd go to work, I get out at 6, maybe I'd network for an hour, and then I'd come home and I'd DJ until three in the morning. And by the time I got back to school, I actually had some skill. And I had equipment - I actually got speakers that freshman year because I wanted to throw parties and practice DJ-ing myself. So I get to Harvard, I end up networking like crazy to just meet people, especially people who had big rooms and who liked to party, who loved great music, and I just started organizing events for people right out of my dorm room. And that was September to late October, and then I realized that there might be an opportunity for me to DJ at Toad's Place in New Haven for Harvard-Yale. I contacted them and I said, 'Hey, I'd really like to throw a party at your place. I know it says 'nineteen-plus' - do you guys usually do this? I will bring as many people as possible for free. Do you guys mind if I DJ?' And they were like 'Go ahead, DJ.' I ended up performing back and forth with this guy who was their resident DJ at the time. And that was my first 2,000-person gig. I was hooked. I still have that set because I recorded it, and I still listen to it from time to time to remind myself of how bad I was. But I think people liked it, and I loved it, and so that was the feedback I needed to keep going. I ended up starting a brand called The List, and I ended up throwing a great party in December at HardRock Cafe for New Year's Eve, and between December and that summer, I ended up connecting with a bunch of nightclubs in the area. I opened for Clinton Sparks, for LOUDPVCK, I just recently opened for Elephante - I've performed at six clubs in Boston and have had residencies at three... more, even. It's been a lot of fun, and the business aspect has been really cool for me, too, because I didn't know what I was doing, right? I was just trying to throw all these parties and I started working with business partners, and I have a team right now that is fantastic. So yeah, that was sort of the DJ-ing experience, and now we're transitioning that into an app. We're creating this marketplace that's going to allow people to connect with services themselves instead of us doing it for them, which is kind of the epitome of that drive to change the social scene because, you know, instead of throwing 70 parties in a year, we can help other people throw 70 parties a day. I think that especially given the tilt - there's a sense of bureaucratic exclusivity at Harvard with the social scene - people are very separated from each other. There's a small sector of the university social scene that has a lot of resources to organize events, to throw parties, to do what they want to do. So it's kind of democratizing that a bit, I guess - giving people resources, helping them realize it's not that difficult, nor is it that expensive. That has all been a reaction to the realization that I wanted to do music, and I wanted to connect people."
"When I look at music, I see two ends of the spectrum. When I think of classical music, which is something that I've done for fifteen years, I think about a very personal, internal and individual experience. Certainly, you have very powerful music that connects people together as well, but it falls closer to that end in many ways than the other. And the other end is what I think about when I think of electronic music, when I think of pop music and club music, and all this stuff. And those tunes - I see those things as tools. They're like a jigsaw puzzle, or even better yet, Tetris or something. You have all these pieces that all represent a certain emotion, and as a DJ, you get to create this experience that flows over the course of two or more hours. But you can't just play a song and then play another song; it's about the tempo at which you go from song to song, it's about where you start one song and end another song, about how you combine the two - do these two songs make sense together? Sometimes you add a vocal to a beat, and vice versa. It's really interesting for me to see, and it's really powerful and emotionally satisfying and gratifying when everybody is - I just DJ'ed a block party in Winthrop Park for the Harvard Graduate Student Government, and everybody was doing the macarena in the park. It was like, 500 people doing the macarena in the park. Or, you know, everyone is singing 'Clarity' by Zedd together in a nightclub. And part of why that is gratifying for me is because I'm an introvert. And that is a way that I express myself where I am often unable or uncomfortable to do so elsewhere. I couldn't exactly say how it works, me transferring my experience in to the music, but I know that I do. I guess that's really the heart of music-making; that's the mystery. And it's also amazing to watch other people do it. I watched Elephante and when you saw him perform, there was this energy that was hidden before that just exploded, in a good way. His head was banging; he was into the music. And everybody else was into the music. And you saw people leaving - this is always what happens. You have DJs who are cover - they play other people's songs because they haven't made any of their own. And their job is just to keep people on the dance floor for as long as possible. And I think there's this mid-level of energy that they maintain pretty consistently, with high peaks. Now what he was doing, the whole thing was a peak. And it was interesting because the place was so packed at like, 11:30, and at 1:30, it was only like, a quarter full. But every single person there was just, banging, like so energetic. And you could just tell that those were the diehard fans. And they connected so deeply with the music that they were like, 'Oh, ten people here? Fuck it, let's go!' And that says nothing about, oh, did he sell tickets or not, because the place was packed, packed, packed. But it does speak to the way people connect to music and recognize that sense of ownership - if it's the performer. If people go to see Beyonce or JayZ, they go bananas."
On love:
"Love is fantastic. There's certainly not enough of it. I think most people are afraid of it. I think I was afraid of it for a long time. And that goes back to the whole relationships thing - I just read the funniest Yik Yak of all time. The girl was like, 'Why is it that I'm only attracted to guys who make everything like a joke but are secretly geniuses, yet still are super flaky?' Like, goddamn, sorry, sorry to hear that. Most people don't know what they want. Most people have low self-esteem. Most people don't have proper boundaries, and most people aren't vulnerable people. Now what do I mean by vulnerability? When I think about vulnerability, I'm not saying, like, oh, you're weak. What I'm saying is that they're afraid to share themselves with other people. Not being vulnerable means being unwilling to share yourself with other people. And it sounds a little bit backwards, but I'll explain a little bit further. In order to be vulnerable, you have to be comfortable with yourself. For example, in order for me to say, well, Harvard told me to take a leave of absence because my grades weren't high enough, I have to first become comfortable with the fact that that happened and recognize that there's nothing wrong with that. And that's sort of all-encompassing, right? First of all, how can you even know what you want if you aren't first, honest with yourself? And then of course, knowing what you want and being able to share that with other people all come from the same thing - that aspect of vulnerability. So you gotta accept yourself, and you gotta accept yourself regardless of other people. You need to get as close to not needing validation all the time from other people as possible. That's never going to happen one hundred percent; human beings are social animals. But, you know, all of that connects back to love because there's a lot of people out there who don't have the capacity for love for themselves, let alone others. People lash out - I sort of look at it one way - this idea of confidence. What does it mean? There are different levels of confidence and different ways of showing it. The level of confidence that I hope to attain someday is that where I take value from helping other people - I take value from being a mentor, and when I see other people succeed, that makes me feel good. That's where I'd like to be. Not saying that's where I am, but that's where I'd like to be. Again, that's another thing that first requires a certain level of comfort separate from others - where you can define what your goals are and what you value, who you want to be, and whether you're measuring up to that, as opposed to 'How much money am I making,' or 'Do I have this many friends,' or 'Am I in this club?' And again this goes back to love because I think it's such a fantastic thing and such a special thing, and it's connected with everything else. I think that love is something to strive for, not because everyone should have a wife or a husband and a white picket fence, but because being able to do that, it's so satisfying for oneself; it can really make me feel good to love somebody else. It's not even just the fact that they love me - it's the fact that I'm able to express that to them. I think it's an important thing - a lot of people think it's like, hokey, like 'Oh I'm not going to do it until I'm 30,' but love is not synonymous to being in a relationship. It's also not synonymous with not being able to hook up with people or not being able to have a good time... If you start treating other people well and you can make that a habit, you'll start to notice a discrepancy between how you treat other people and the way you treat yourself. And maybe there's an opportunity there to treat yourself better, you know? It's just so important - love as a principle and as a concept and as everything* LINK: Check out the original Interview *