Founder Profile: Healthy Hip Hop Co-founder Roy Scott

Healthy Hip Hop infuses hip-hop culture with innovative technology, education, and positive attributes to improve learning environments. Our online platform allows educators to livestream our original programming to improve focus and engagement. The Healthy Hip Hop mobile application empowers students to createTikTok style videos in a safe space for children — “Spotify meets TikTok for children and families.”

I was heavily influenced by hip-hop culture as a child and I had very little guidance, so after graduating high school I decided to forgo my college career to pursue becoming a street rap artist. Everything changed years later when I was picking up my then 4-year-old son, Justus, from school and I noticed him repeating my music word for word. These lyrics promoted drugs, violence, and misogyny. That was my light bulb moment that I couldn’t be this kind of influence on my son or anyone else. This is when Healthy Hip Hop was born, taking the urban hip-hop beat and marrying it with a positive message for children and families.

I learned my entrepreneurial spirit on my journey as a rap artist, selling CDs and merchandise out of the trunk of my car. Also, creating an independent music label, distributing our own music and managing artists was key experience to helping me effectively build and lead Healthy Hip Hop today.

The vision for Healthy Hip Hop is to become an “Urban Disney,” an iconic children’s brand that is a leader in technology, education and entertainment.

Our co-founder, Wes Smith, is the creator of our flagship character, PJ Panda. I met Wes through a mutual friend right when he was launching his PJ Panda music and brand. I sold him on the vision of owning and scaling our own tech platform, and we joined forces, creating a cast of characters and original IP to support PJ. Matt White is our Tech Product Manager — we started by contracting with Matt for UI UX and graphic design. He loved our mission, vision, and values and joined the Healthy Hip Hop team.

Our top competitors are Kidz Bop, GoNoodle and Flocabulary. The Healthy Hip Hop value proposition is our cultural competency and dual sided technology, allowing the end user to become creators of the content. 

The Healthy Hip Hop business model is B2B2C, accessing schools, hospitals and corporate partners as a distribution pipeline to get in front of educators, professionals, parents and students. We sell an annual subscription directly to teachers and parents. We also sell an enterprise license to corporations and strategic partners.

One of our trusted advisors sits on the investment committee for Republic and thought with our consumer-facing product and incredible story, Healthy Hip Hop would be a good fit for crowdfunding. We had just closed our private round and wanted to go the Reg CF route to give everyday people an opportunity to become investors. The funds raised will be utilized to develop next iterations of our technology, make key hires, and scale our sales, marketing, and PR efforts.

We are extremely passionate about what we do. We are determined to scale our company and most importantly make a positive impact on the world.

The North Star vision for Healthy Hip Hop is to become an “Urban Disney.” Our goal is to reach one million users and 100K paid users. Hopefully, our company will then be acquired by a company like Disney, Nickelodeon or Amazon.