Ever since he was born, Diggy Simmons has been in the public eye. Born in Queens, New York, Diggy Simmons is the son of Joseph Simmons aka Rev Run and Justine Jones, of course of Run-DMC hip-hop royalty. At the age of ten, he first came to the public’s attention after appearing in the MTV reality TV series, Run’s House (2005) which featured him alongside his parents and brothers. Historically, the middle kid gets no love. But Diggy is the exact opposite as he has taken the music and fashion world by storm and on his way to solidifying himself a triple threat (singer, actor, dancer).
Although he’s mostly known for his work as a rapper, Simmons also acts. In 2013, he made his debut on the small screen in the made-for-television movie, The Start-Up, which he also helped to produce. From there, it wasn’t until 2016, that he appeared as an actor once again in an episode of the crime thriller, StartUp. Aside from live-action acting, he has also appeared in various TV shows such as Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day (2011), Fashion News Live (2013), Pop Wrapped TV (2015), and Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers (2016). At just 30 years-old, Simmons has already amassed countless credits to his name; not only is he a musician and actor, but he also launched his own line of sneakers back in 2010.
In a recent interview, it seems important to Diggy that his fans know how empowering it is to believe in yourself and fight through self-doubt–something that social media perpetuates. He said, “It feels really good to talk about what I’ve been through… I see it all the time on Twitter. People saying: ‘I’m going through this.’ Or: ‘I don’t feel too good.’ I wanna tell people: Me too.”
Diggy doesn’t have much faith in social media as a means of communication, and thinks it’s detrimental to the young people who are on it all the time.
“Everybody’s looking at what everybody else has,” he said to me, leaning forward on the couch and ignoring his phone as it unceremoniously chimed with a notification. “You can just swipe and you have too much access to what everyone’s doing… I feel like what makes a lot of people go crazy is that it stunts people’s growth. That’s something even I can fall into… thinking too much about what people think about me.”
Opting out of choosing his father’s reputation to earn his hip-hop stripes, he’s done a good job of doing both with no controversy. He’s even managed to ride the thin line between being a lady’s man and gaining respect from your favorite rapper’s rapper. He’s done all this while growing up in the public eye.
People say that when Black people go back to the “motherland” of Africa, something changes in them. The same is true for Diggy.
Four years ago, Diggy took a trip to Africa and it seemed to totally change his life. He describes his journey to the motherland as “freeing” on instagram
“Perhaps I’m ignorant. Perhaps I have been for some time now. Many of my perceptions, or misperceptions rather, were overdue to be rightfully shattered. It’s a shame—as one with many friends from Cameroon, Nigeria, and other countries throughout the continent of Africa—that I have remained so unaware. These friends raved about their homelands, and somehow their praise fell upon deaf ears, in part due to that as a child, Africa, to me, seemed branded as less than alluring. The media and my societal narrative has often viewed Africa with a lens of violence, poverty, and underdevelopment.”
“This portrayal has caused generations of Africans to abandon their own heritage and traditions. During my trip to Ghana, I can’t say I’ve ever felt more comfortable in a space. I don’t think I stopped my Shaku from the time I got off the plane. Every stereotype that’s been perpetuated never pointed to me feeling this free. I was also fortunate enough to visit the slave dungeons in Cape Coast—small quarters where over a hundred of my potential ancestors were held captive on any given day with no nourishment, suffering in their own feces and urine. As heartbreaking as it was to stand on those grounds, my takeaway—apart from feeling both inspired and devastated—was a galvanized sense of pride. I felt as if I gained a more authentic and emboldened sense of self, furthering my own understanding of endurance through my ancestors’ plight.”
“That’s what makes me so different,” explains Diggy. “In that time where you’re going from someone who is a kid into an adult, there are so many people you encounter and you learn different things in your life from. It’s like OK, I know how to go about this situation now, or I know how this works, or I just know how life works. Period.”
When he talks about his using his father’s legacy or being born into hip-hop royalty, Diggy doesn’t miss a step and wants to prove himself on his own.
“It’s tough if you let it be. My reasoning for making music was never about [my dad]. I shied away from it actually just for the fact that this is what my family did. I have always been an independent person. I didn’t want my dad to tweet anything, I didn’t want my uncle to say anything. That’s just how I was being so young. I didn’t want that support or cosign or anything.”
“My dad is about going out and just being yourself and just knocking the world dead with whatever you want to do and not worrying about other people. That’s a lot what my family is about, just being genuine and being the person you are, and not letting anybody else tell you differently. You know, it’s up to you, not them. Who is anybody to tell you what you’re not?”
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