Berkeley-Haas MBA Balances Job At Facebook & Rap Career - Poets&Quants

Anthony “Ace” Patterson renewed a rap career during his last semester in the full-time MBA program at Berkeley-Haas. Courtesy photo

In 2011, Anthony “Ace” Patterson was at what seemed like an apex in life. At just 21 years old, Patterson was enrolled at Columbia University, the co-founder and president of the Columbia University Society of Hip-Hop (CUSH), and he was onstage rapping under the pseudonym Tha Pyro as an opening act for hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg. But it was also at that moment Patterson says he had a “come to Jesus moment” that would re-route his life path.

“I didn’t like the circle I was being surrounded by,” Patterson, now 28, tells Poets&Quants. Specifically, Patterson had a literal platform and listening ears to spread whatever message he wanted. What exactly was that message?

“Total frat-boy style of let’s party, take shots, let’s do bad things,” Patterson says. “Hood-rapping with my friends — those sorts of things. So I stopped rapping.”

Now, seven years later, Patterson’s winding path has taken him from hopping couches of family and friends to UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business as an MBA in 2014-2016 on a different coast to a freshly-minted and more purposeful rap career while juggling working long hours as a consultant and now marketing manager at Facebook.

EARLY BEGINNINGS IN A FAMILY OF IMMIGRANT ARTISTS

Patterson grew up in a family of immigrant artists. His sister sings, brother dances, mother writes, and Patterson, too, began writing poems as young as elementary school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where his family landed after immigrating from Jamaica. “Music is one of those things that has just always been around me,” Patterson says. “My mom will tell you that classical music was the first type of music I listened to, but society will say reggae and hip hop became the immediate genres I gravitated towards.”

At the end of middle school, he began to put music behind the poems and a young rap artist was born. Towards the end of high school, Patterson applied to Columbia University, reportedly on a “whim” and with the promise of a “substantial financial aid package.” In his application essay he talked about living in a homeless shelter for a while as a kid.

When Patterson arrived at Columbia’s New York City campus, he found his community and created one. According to its campus webpage, the mission of CUSH is to “bring together lovers of Hip-Hop music in all the forms they come in, fans, artists (emcees, singers, poets, etc.), Producers/BeatMakers, DJs, B-Boyz/Girls and Graffiti artists.” What’s more, the group says, is to “provide a space for networking, entertainment, and to discuss some critical issues in hip hop today, both on the music/industry side and also Artform/cultural side of things.”

Patterson had found and organized his people. Driving it all was what Patterson now calls the “hood dream,” or making money through the art. With a simple Google search, YouTube videos of Patterson and other CUSH members freestyle rapping on stage and in dorm rooms are abundant. Patterson and others take turns rapping about everything from homework to football, but Patterson does seem more comfortable with the flow in his raps than others.

And then in 2011, Patterson performed with a group from CUSH in the Battle 4 Bacchanal at Columbia. Setup in a battle of the bands format, the winners would earn opening rights at Columbia’s annual Bacchanal concert. CUSH and Patterson won and would soon be opening up for Snoop Dogg and local Brooklyn rapper, Das Racist. And that’s when the transition began for Patterson. “I was cocooning into a different butterfly, if you will,” Patterson recalls. He chopped off his longer braided hair and when graduation came later that school-year, he decided he would put all the music aside. “I didn’t think I was going to be a rapper anymore,” he says.

CONSULTING: THE ‘DOG YEARS FOR BUSINESS EXPERIENCE’

The problem was Patterson had spent the majority of his time and energy at Columbia planning on becoming a rapper. “I didn’t have a job lined up, mind you, because I thought I was gonna be a rapper,” he says. So he moved back home to his mom’s place and began sleeping on the floors of friends and working non-paid internships to find some sort of lead. Eventually, Patterson snagged a role as an operations analyst for Success Academy Charter Schools, a New York City-based nonprofit.

That’s when the business school roots were placed. As an anthropology major, Patterson had never really considered business education. But two of his managers at the nonprofit had earned business degrees. And both were very supportive of Patterson and his potential and would later write his letters of recommendation for his MBA applications.

“They (bosses) worked in banking and consulting, etcetera, before they went to nonprofit and they told me the best thing you could do for the nonprofit world is bring that private sector experience and that rigor, etiquette, and thinking to this world to help make things more efficient,” Patterson explains.

Around the same time, Patterson took a trip to Colombia where he worked with a church that had an established business program aimed at rehabilitation and restoration of former gang members, drug addicts, and homeless. The program, Patterson explains, gave these populations vocation and a general importance in life. More than anything, Patterson saw that business and the marketplace could be used for social good, something Patterson decided he wanted to be a part of. So Patterson decided to apply to business school with the end-goal of going into consulting.

“That was also the reason to go into consulting,” Patterson says of going to business school to build “business chops and acumen.”

“It’s like dog years for business experience,” Patterson continues. “You know, one year is like seven when you’re moving from project to project.”

RETURN TO THE RAP GAME

During the winter break of Patterson’s second year of the full-time MBA program at the University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business, he met with an old friend in Connecticut. Patterson’s friend asked him a question that hadn’t been on his radar for years. He asked Patterson if he still thought about music and knew how to rap. Patterson told him he still listened to beat occasionally online and every once in a while might freestyle to them. Then the excuses poured out.

“I’m about to get married,” Patterson told his friend. “I’m about to have a real job as a consultant, probably making more money than regular rappers,” he reasoned, “I was about to have a health care plan. All of these things. Even down to, I don’t even have a rap name anymore.”

One-by-one, Patterson remembers, his friend dispelled each excuse. It’s OK to have a job and be a rapper, the friend said. It’s even OK to be faithful to a spouse and still be a rapper, he continued. As for the rap name? Patterson’s friend asked what his Instagram account name was. Call me Ace, Patterson told him. “He was like boom, there’s your rap name,” Patterson laughs.

Call Me Ace performing. Courtesy photo

THE CREATION OF ‘YOHO’

With “senioritis” setting in hard and a consulting gig at Deloitte already in hand, Patterson experimented. He began listening to beats on YouTube and writing poems and songs again. Then he found The Grill Recording Studios in nearby Emeryville. “All these rappers from the Bay Area would be there,” Patterson recalls. “And I was like, OK this is definitely the spot to be.”

The Grill Studio’s client list is impressive. It includes rap legends like Dr. Dre, Tupac, Warren G, and Snoop Dogg, as well as Bay Area legends like E-40 and B-Legit. Patterson also started using the infamous studios to record. Around the same time, Patterson was talking to a friend in a Haas negotiations course about his recently renewed hip-hop artist spirit. The classmate suggested Patterson connect with fellow Haas MBA student, Bomi Kim, who is a South Korean rapper, to write an anthem to Haas. Soon after, Patterson and Kim were in The Grill Studios recording “YOHO (You Only Haas Once),” which led to a music video with a Haas Dean Rich Lyons cameo and an astounding cult following.

“We didn’t really think anything of it, but it just picked up so much steam internally (inside Haas),” Patterson laughs.

They took the steam and ran with it. Soon they were not only performing on the Berkeley-Haas campus, but at nearby rival, Stanford. They were making shirts and selling merchandise.

“Literally, we were using the business school white boards to draw up our marketing plan,” Patterson says. “It became more exciting than the classes we were actually taking because we were putting it all into practice.”

On graduation day, there were Snapchat filters created with the YOHO phrase. “People had the YOHO bear that we created on their graduation hat with glitter and stuff,” Patterson says, still sounding in disbelief. “They designed it themselves, put it on their hats, and graduated with it. You could see the pride.”

GRADUATE, MARRY, LAUNCH RAP CAREER

All the buzz was another turning point for Patterson. Indeed, he thought he could be a rapper. And he had three months from graduating from Haas during the spring of 2016 to when he was starting at Deloitte’s San Francisco office. A week after graduating, Patterson got married and went on his honeymoon. When he returned, he began writing and networking with the local Bay Area music scene. The networking led Patterson to prolific local producer, Sean Miguel Thompson (also known as Sean-T).

By the time Patterson started at Deloitte, he already had his routine down. Instead of figuring out how to be a rapper and a consultant, Patterson already knew what he needed to do and the time it would take to continue writing, producing, and performing as a rapper. “All of that time helped propel the plane off the ground and by the time I was at Deloitte, I was already flying,” he says. It also helped that his position at Deloitte was to work with tech and media entertainment clients mainly in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

If he had to catch a plane, train, or an Uber, Patterson says he was writing. “If I fly from SF to LA, I can write a song in the air,” he says of his routine flights from San Francisco to Los Angeles.” If I fly in and out of LA, that’s two songs right there. I also probably just didn’t sleep.”

‘FOR ME, THIS IS MY SOCIAL IMPACT’

But it’s not just rap anymore for Patterson.

“For me, this is my social impact,” Patterson says with conviction in his voice. “This is how I’m able to create a positive influence and a positive image of a rapper.”

Just a few weeks ago, Patterson spent time at a high school in Davis, California, where he rapped one of his songs and then read them to the students as a conversation starter about social issues like racism.

“We all love Kanye West’s College Dropout, but how many people are rapping about their graduate degrees? How many people are encouraging you to save and invest as opposed to spending? And there’s nothing wrong with spending, but how many people are thinking about those types of things,” Patterson says. “I’m not condemning other rappers. I’d rather just be the change that I want to see and do it in a dope way.”

And for Patterson, all that goes back to his roots and being a product of an immigrant family of artists.

“I’m from the inner-city ghetto,” Patterson says. “I remember being homeless and not having anything in our names. To be in the situation that I’m in right now, it’s unfathomable, number one. But, number two, I just know the responsibility I have to give back. Especially, to similar communities that lack that pipeline of resources. So, to be that pipeline for these communities is something I’m galvanized to do. It’s part of my responsibility. When I’m rapping, I keep that in mind.”

DON’T MISS: HAAS DROPS MBA HYPE MUSIC VIDEO or INCUBATING A HIP-HOP CAREER AT WHARTON

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