Bethonie Butler
THE WASHINGTON POST – From The Boondocks to The Simpsons to Afro Samurai there is a well-established history of rappers lending their voices and music to animated TV shows.
But there’s a lot more to Karma’s World, which was created by rapper Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges.
The animated Netflix series follows a 10-year-old girl named Karma Grant (voiced by Asiahn Bryant) as she navigates life in her close-knit Brooklyn community and pursues her passion for hip-hop.
Inspired by the eldest of Bridges’ four daughters, Karma’s World has been more than a decade in the making.
Long before it debuted as a Netflix series in 2021 – and well before the rapper delighted the Internet by rapping the words to the children’s story Llama Llama Red Pajama – Bridges was struggling to keep six-year-old Karma out of his home studio, where she often told him she wanted to follow in his footsteps.
She was so persistent, he recalled in an interview with The Washington Post, he realised he had to take her seriously.
“Daddy talks about what goes on in his life,” he told her.
If she wanted to make music, she would have to do the same thing.
Bridges and Karma, now 20, created an educational website that debuted in 2011 and marked the first iteration of Karma’s World.
The site was revamped a few years later, and with every version, Bridges said, the music got better, the animation and storytelling richer.
As the TV series got underway, Bridges came in with a clear vision.
“I want to move hip-hop culture forward with this show,” head writer Halcyon Person recalled the rapper saying in their first meeting. “I don’t want to just make another show – I want to really feel like we are changing the next generation of kids and bringing hip-hop to a whole new generation in a new way.”
In addition to his role as creator and an executive producer on the show, Bridges has infused Karma’s World with his Southern-fried sound, so much so that Karma’s flow sounds subtly familiar.
“There are definitely elements that I can’t run away from,” Bridges said, but the key is “understanding the elements of just simplifying things” so that kids take in both the catchy tunes and the lessons.
Bridges also lends his famously crisp diction to Karma’s father, Conrad, who reliably comes through with the dad jokes, in addition to the advice he regularly gives his daughter. (On Karma’s favourite rapper: “MC Grillz? Does he barbecue?”)
The show’s brief episodes (13 minutes including credits) are as steeped in curriculum as they are in hip-hop culture.
An early installment, Hair Comes Trouble, breaks down the concept of microaggressions after some of Karma’s non-Black friends pepper her with insensitive questions about her curly hair and why she wears a bonnet when she sleeps.
Karma unpacks her feelings in the way that feels most natural to her: rap.
“I always thought my hair was beautiful the way it was / but now I’m questioning myself and I don’t feel the love / All because my hair is different from my other friends / Should I change my look? / Should I follow trends?”
9 Story Media Group, which produces Karma’s World alongside Bridges’ Karma’s World Entertainment, has an ongoing partnership with the Perception Institute, a research consortium that consults on every episode of the show to ensure storylines avoid bias and stereotypes.
The collaboration helps the writers dig deeper, according to Person. For the hair episode, that meant pushing beyond the typical anti-bullying story in favour of “a more complex, nuanced and difficult story”.
There are already “really great stories that help kids handle bullies and handle that kind of negative talk”, Person said.
“But we had not seen a story like this one, which was really about what happens when a friend does that to you. How do you handle that?
Karma’s World has joined the pioneering Proud Family, along with Doc McStuffins, Ada Twist, Scientist and Matthew Cherry’s Oscar-winning short Hair Love in increasing representation in children’s animation.
Karma’s family – including her mom, Lillie (Danielle Brooks), and kid brother, Keys (Camden Coley) – and neighbours have a range of skin tones and hair textures so detailed that in some frames it’s hard to believe they’re animated.
Karma’s best friend, Winston (Isaia Kohn), is Dominican American, speaks Spanglish with his family and sports a mop of chestnut curls. Her friend Switch (Aria Capria) sports multicoloured pigtails.
Many of the episodes are based on experiences that Karma Bridges went through as a kid, but the show has also consulted with other children to find out which topics they need to be covering.
“We went to Brooklyn and talked to kids and got their experiences, truly asked them every question under the sun,” Person said. “What do you and your friends do at recess? What are you reading right now?”
That level of research sets Karma’s World apart, Person said.
In an episode from the new season, Winston designs a pair of vivid sneakers for a school assignment but is hurt when Karma doesn’t like them. The writers wanted to tell a story about opening your mind but weren’t sure kids would get it.
“If anything, we saw that kids were not only ready for that conversation but were going even deeper than we ever expected,” Person said. Their feedback helped elevate the storytelling in the episode.
Dad Conrad helps bring the message home by asking Karma whether she thinks “rapping is just rhyming words”. Horrified, she says, “Rapping is so much more than that.”
“Well, there was a time when some people thought rap wasn’t art,” Conrad replies, bridging the generational gap between young viewers and parents that grew up on Ludacris’ music (and perhaps grandparents who didn’t get it back in the early aughts). “They thought it wasn’t as important as classical music, or even rock-and-roll.”
Conrad is a former jazz musician and not a rapper, though he does spit bars in one of Person’s favourite episodes, called Daddy Daughter Day. As Karma grapples with not wanting to disappoint her father, a rap battle between Conrad and the dentistry-obsessed MC Grillz takes place in Karma’s mind.
The scene transitions with a slowed-down version of the imagined hook: “Don’t push your Dad – don’t push your Dad – don’t push your Daddy away.”
“It reflects Chris’ relationship with his daughters, but it also reflects my relationship with my dad,” Person said.
“I love that story. I love the idea of growing up but not growing apart and the fact that kids can understand that their parents will always love them even if they change – even if their favourite things change.”
Chris Bridges is the first to admit that the idea of him tackling an animated children’s programme sounds, well, ludicrous.
But, he adds, “I’ve based my entire career on continuing to do things that no one would really expect me to do. I love surprising people.”
That approach has taken Bridges from the airwaves of Atlanta, where he began as a well-known radio personality, to global stardom as a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning rapper, movie star (he’s a familiar face in the Fast and Furious franchise) and beyond.
He is also chairman of the Ludacris Foundation, established in 2001. It’s stated mission is to “inspire youth to live their dreams through programs and partnerships… that help them envision new possibilities for their lives”.
On the heels of its third season, Karma’s World is expanding its Ludaverse even more.
Recently, Mattel released a range of dolls based on Karma and other characters from the show; one is a styling head with Karma’s 3C curls, which can be transformed into various hairstyles with any water-based products. Bridges and Person also collaborated on a children’s book about the bond Karma shares with her dad.
At the Essence Festival in New Orleans earlier this month, Person had her first opportunity to see firsthand how kids and their parents (and grandparents and aunties) respond to Karma’s World. The dolls weren’t available in stores yet, but attendees were able to get a hands-on look.
One little girl came and “she wouldn’t leave”, Person recalled. “She was like ‘I have to bring Karma home with me’.“ When her mom told her they would have to wait a few weeks to get the doll, the girl cried.
For Bridges, the most gratifying feedback has been from young girls who identify with Karma – “she looks like me”, they’ll say, or “she has hair like me”.
“That type of stuff almost brings me to tears,” Bridges said.
Person also met a school principal who said she was going to buy a Karma doll for every classroom at her predominantly Black school.
“What she said really stuck with me,” Person said. “She felt that all of (her students) were looking for something like this. And she was just so moved by the fact that a show like this existed and that we were doing all this work to get it right.”
