Freestyling with hip-hop artist D.O. Gibson

D.O. Gibson is a Guinness World Record setting rapper, author, professional speaker and music executive. He set a Guinness World Record for the longest freestyle rap ever (8 Hours and 45 Minutes). Gibson has coordinated tours for himself and his artists in Asia (Taiwan, Japan, Singapore), Europe (England, France, Netherlands), USA (NYC, Miami, Los Angeles) as well as in his native country Canada.

He is the co-founder of the Northern Power Summit (NPS) – an Urban conference based in Toronto. In 2021, NPS celebrated their fifth-year anniversary with a three part virtual series that concluded in March and included Tom MacDonald, Maestro Fresh Wes, and Classified amongst others.

As a professional speaker, Gibson has spoken at over 2500 schools through his Stay Driven program including at the world-renowned Harvard University. In Feb 2021, he kicked of a 90-show virtual tour “Black Canadian 365” that focused on Black Canadian history.

Check out the lyrics to Still Driven

We talked about:

• How the best songs start with a concept
• Writing original beats vs. sampling
• Freestyling to generate ideas and starting a lyric
• Doing free writing exercises to generate songs
• D.O.’s networking tips: talk about anything but music, smile, listen, and be proactive about connecting