Byron Crawford

I'm staying inside this summer.

My name is Byron Crawford, though most people on the Internets call me Bol, which is Swahili for “The Gulliest One.” As you can see, I take no small amount of pride in my African heritage. When I’m not working like a hebrew slave at a series of soul-crushing minimum wage jobs, I devote most of my free time to doing community outreach with black and “latino” youth. No homo. I run a website (perhaps you’ve heard of it) called ByronCrawford.com: The Mindset of a Champion, in which I educate today’s youth on some of the most pressing issues of the day, including racism, homophobia, healthy living, respect for women, tolerance for religion, and who really runs the record industry. I also work as an online columnist for XXL magazine. A committed feminist, I also donate as much money as I can (sometimes more) to underprivileged female college students in a small, rural town called Sauget, Illinois. Because as far as I’m concerned, it’s one thing to talk about it on the Internet, but it’s a whole other thing to put your money where your mouth is. Literally. I’ve lived in an around St. Louis, MO all my life, except for a five year period I spent in a tiny, rural town called Chicken Switch, MO. I hold a bachelor's degree in business administration, with a concentration in marketing, from Truman State University, the Harvard of the Midwest, as well as a certificate in food safety I earned while working at a White Castle. In addition to hip-hop, I’m also a big fan of the album New Miserable Experience by the Gin Blossoms.