Behind The Scenes of The Irie Foundation with Ryan “RBK” Killinger

We had the privilege to get behind the scenes of the Irie Foundation in an exclusive interview with his business manager, and director of the Irie Foundation, Ryan “RBK” Killinger.

Mike: Tell us about how the Irie Foundation began, what inspired it?

RBK: The foundation started a little over 10 years ago when Irie volunteered as a teacher for a day at Booker T. Washington Senior High School. He was sharing with the kids his experience growing up in Richmond Heights, being from immigrant parents of Caribbean descent and making his way through life.

At one point one of the kids just asked him, “How is the beach? Have you been there?” Irie thought, ‘wait a minute, you’ve never been to Miami Beach?’ Mind you, Booker T. Washington Senior High School is right under the I-95. The kid could get on a $1.25 bus and be at the beach in ten minutes, but the kid had never been to the beach; didn’t know what it looked like, never seen it, nothing.

Irie left that experience just completely moved by how isolated many kids can be, which leaves them without opportunity or directions.

This sparked his interest to get involved with Big Brother Big Sisters (BBBS) and start contributing to scholarships.

He also really started getting the wheels turning to how he was going to create his philanthropic legacy, which would eventually become the Irie Foundation.

Mike: What is the mission of the Irie Foundation?

RBK: The mission of the Irie Foundation is to provide opportunities to at-risk youth here in South Florida, that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

We do that through our Cultural Passport Program, which gives eighth grade students the opportunity to interact with community mentors in different fields and the chance to go on field trips and get out of the same four blocks that they’ve been in their entire life.

We also have the Impact Scholarship Program, which is a college scholarship that we are specifically trying to give to those whose applications may fall short in traditional ways, but whose stories of overcoming difficulty set them apart.

We’re trying to create this conduit where you’re coming in from middle school, and we help you, we follow you through high school and make sure you’re doing alright, be a part of our program and we’ll help you get to college.

Mike: That is incredible, how do you see the foundation growing or making an even bigger impact?

RBK: Actually I am stoked about how it’s all coming together, through our business relationship with carnival and our philanthropic endeavors with BBBS, we brought them both together for our biggest project to date: The Big Brothers Big Sisters Carnival’s Center for Excellence.

We purchased a building for the headquarters of BBBS and are building a multi-million dollar studio space on the fourth floor. It is one of the most state-of-the-art, up-to-date, unique studios on the east coast of the United States. It is going to be for the primary purpose of free music lessons for at-risk youth.

There’s a lot of talent here and the possibilities for lining up at-risk youth with people that are really executing at high levels in entertainment, business, you name it—we’re looking to be that conduit.

Mike: What’s been your biggest challenge?

RBK: For me, it’s self-discipline. It’s keeping that trajectory down to a path. I have a serial entrepreneurial mind. I think I tend to get bored kind of easily and I also like new challenges. So, for a while, I was kind of floundering around. In college, I had two majors and four minors. I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to take. I think that, along the way, that’s been my biggest challenge.

I think it’s just focusing on a certain discipline and remaining filled with it. So, for me personally, that’s really been the challenge. Now, especially in this new role as tour manager, I’m plenty busy trying to keep up with all of these different tasks. I’ve been challenged in all my roles. The challenges have grown progressively and this is certainly a mighty one.

Mike: What’s been the most braggable moment in your career?
RBK: Jamie Foxx singing me Happy Birthday last year at Irie weekend, hands down.

Irie does a celebrity weekend every year in June. It’s basically our central platform. It’s the gravity to our universe. We take over a hotel, we have several events throughout the weekend, hundreds of celebrities come through, all the entertainment wires are buzzing with our news. It’s really that opportunity that we use to rally our efforts and push our information out.

So, Jamie Foxx was one of our distinguished guests last year. Irie’s birthday is the 21st of June and mine’s the 22nd. So, last year the gala was on June 22nd, on my birthday, the day after his. They had just celebrated Irie’s birthday and at the end of the night, after we had made the final announcement, Jamie gathered everybody’s attention and started singing happy birthday to Irie.

As he started singing, Irie put his arm around me and got Jamie’s attention and mouthed Jamie my name. When he came to say, “Happy Birthday to…”, he said “Irie and Ryan” and I just lost it. That’s definitely it.

Mike: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

RBK: Irie mentioned a piece of advice the other day. We were at Johnson and Wales and he received a distinguished professorship. He was sitting down in front of the entrepreneurship class and he said, “If what you’re doing in life isn’t enough to wake you up in the morning, without an alarm clock, you’re doing the wrong thing.”

I’ve been thinking about that, it’s just been buzzing in my head. It’s not like I can say I’ve used that piece of advice to really get myself to this point in my career, but looking back on it, I can say, “yeah, I’ve been doing that for my entire life.” I’m up in the morning and I’m ready to go, because I cannot miss a day of music. Especially when it comes down to the work that we do with the kids, it’s just one of those things where there’s a certain neuron in my brain that fires off and says, “there’s so much to do.”

Mike: How do you define happiness?

RBK: I’ve been working on that a lot lately. There’s another quote that I’ve been trying to internalize lately: “Happiness comes from within.”

I was watching this the other day, it was from a few years ago, but J. Cole put out an interview. He was talking about how he always talked very negatively to himself. He took all that energy and put it into his first album. That’s J. Cole’s persona; ‘world on my shoulders’ and struggle. That will be his shtick for his entire career. He said, “I got the call that it went platinum—in the fifth week, my first album—and I hung up the phone and I sat down on my couch and I was like, ‘I’m still sad as shit.’” How is that humanly possible?

I recently went on my first solo, international tour. I was on the road and able to look back and say, “what’s going on back there?” I’d been talking to myself very negatively. Outwardly, I was doing some really cool things, I just wasn’t allowing myself to be in the moment and enjoy those

things and really take the pride that I wanted to be taking in it, and letting that pride fill me.

I just think real, true happiness comes from within. It really is waking up in the morning and talking to yourself the right way.

Mike: Is there a book you’ve read that has had a major impact on your life?

RBK: Yeah, there are two.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life by Bill Brewster, he’s a British DJ. He self-proclaims it as the unabridged history of DJing. It doesn’t tell you about all the awards the DJs won and the moves they made to raise them to the level that they got to, it tells you who they really are. It tells you the drugs they did, or whatever. It literally tells you who they were as people and how who they were as people got them to be the DJ that they were.

The second book is Clive Davis’ autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life. He’s arguably the most accomplished entertainment industry executive. Honestly, he’s a semi-god in our world. That book taught me a lot of lessons. He puts you right in his shoes; deals with Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson and what their lives were really like behind the music. It’s just eye opening.