Actress Issa Rae recently visited her alma mater Stanford University to share her life experience and wisdom with the graduating class of 2021. Using a rap lyric, she illustrated the most important lessons she learned during her college years and beyond.
Rae first garnered attention for her award-winning web comedy series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl—creating, directing, and starring as a passive-aggressive black female nerd named J. The YouTube series went viral. In 2015, she even released a memoir of the same title, which became a New York Times best seller.
Currently, the 36-year-old actress co-stars in the HBO series Insecure for which she received multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. However, Rae made her film debut in the acclaimed drama The Hate U Give (2018). She also recently starred in the Netflix romantic comedy The Lovebirds (2020).
Issa Rae’s Commencement Speech
Rae credits Stanford for granting her the room to “make a space for myself if I didn’t see one, which in turn gave me the confidence to create a space for myself when I officially entered the outside world.”
She insists her college years were especially influential thanks to the community she was able to build. “The community I built at this school is without a doubt the reason I was able to pursue my dreams,” she says.
Rae’s college mantra was taken from the 2007 hip hop single “Wipe Me Down (remix)”: “I pull up at the club VIP, Gas tank on E but all drinks on me. Wipe me down.” She breaks down the significance of the mantra like so …
“I pull up at the club VIP”
Rae explains how she learned to approach every opportunity as a VIP—“someone who belongs and deserves to be here.” Academic challenges initially left her wondering if she deserved to be a student at the prestigious school. However, she soon realized that virtually everybody was experiencing those same insecurities.
And when she was feeling like she didn’t fit into the drama department, she says, “I was able to get the resources from Stanford to put on multicultural theatrical productions for all four years that I was here.” By the end of her second year of creating plays, Rae was confident she could write, produce, and direct professionally.
Overcoming
So she took a quarter off to go to Los Angeles to push a screenplay she’d co-written, promising her parents that she’d return to Stanford if she couldn’t get anything going.
“Long story short: We did not make it in Hollywood. And I learned so many disheartening lessons about the kinds of stories Hollywood was not interested in telling—lessons that would make me question whether I could ever tell stories in this industry at all,” she shared. Specifically, she was told her work didn’t have an audience and couldn’t sell.
Returning to Stanford, Rae continued to put on plays, further developing both her skills and her confidence. She created a web series during her senior year called Dorm Diaries and posted it to Facebook. Receiving an outpouring of support from her community, she realized the feedback she’d received in Hollywood was incorrect; yes, now she was sure there was an audience for the stories she was telling.
“Gas tank on E but all drinks on me”
Rae insists these lyrics are all about building and tapping into your community with a generous spirit. “No matter what obstacles or dire circumstances you personally face, you should always value and celebrate your community,” she asserts. “He’s saying, ‘No matter what I’m going through, I got you.’ And those are words to live by, and words I’ve experienced for my chosen family right here.”
Indeed, Rae’s college buddies over the years have come through for her, as she has for them. For example, in 2011 when she was four years out of college and struggling financially, Rae developed an idea: The Mis-Adventures of an Awkward Black Girl web series. Sure enough, one by one, members of her Stanford community pitched in any way they could to make the web series happen—even when money was tight.
“Wipe me down”
“Wipe me down” translates to: “Give me my props—I’ve earned them.” With each new achievement, Rae makes sure to bask in the glory. In fact, Rae just finished filming the fifth and final season of her HBO show Insecure. Wipe me down!
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