On music, identity, agency, emotional regulation, and why education and organisations should take informal learning more seriously.
By Sahil Tayal | October 2026 | 0308
I studied commerce, went on to pursue an MBA in Human Resource Development at JBIMS, and developed an enduring interest in organisational behaviour, psychology and the development of human potential. These experiences gave me valuable conceptual frameworks for understanding motivation, performance, leadership and the relationship between individuals and institutions.
But some of the influences that shaped my understanding of human beings arrived long before I encountered those frameworks in a classroom.
One of them was hip-hop.
I grew up listening to artists such as Eminem and Lil Wayne. Their music was not a substitute for education, nor do I consider every message in their catalogues worthy of endorsement. Some of the language, imagery and attitudes in hip-hop deserve thoughtful criticism, just as other cultural forms do.
What interested me, however, was something beyond whether a particular song expressed socially acceptable values.
I was listening to people constructing identities through language, telling stories about adversity, asserting agency, experimenting with personas and turning personal experiences into creative expression.
Years later, when I began studying human motivation and organisational behaviour, I recognised that some of the questions I had been encountering through music were also central to academic inquiry.
How do people develop a sense of agency? How do they construct identities? What helps them persist through uncertainty? What makes someone feel capable of influencing their environment? And how much of human development happens outside institutions that issue degrees, certificates and performance ratings?
These questions now seem particularly relevant to education, leadership and the future of work.
1. Human capital is larger than formal qualifications
In economics and management, human capital generally refers to the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics that contribute to people's productive capacities. Education and training are important mechanisms through which human capital develops, but they are not the only ones.
People also learn through families, communities, relationships, work experience, hobbies, cultural participation and informal experimentation.
Consider the range of capabilities involved in engaging seriously with music. A listener may learn to recognise complex language, follow narratives, distinguish emotional tones, develop cultural awareness and articulate experiences for which they previously lacked vocabulary. Someone who writes or performs music may additionally practise storytelling, timing, collaboration, memory, improvisation and responding to an audience.
These activities do not automatically produce transferable professional skills. Listening to a technically accomplished rapper does not make someone an effective communicator any more than watching an excellent manager makes someone a good leader.
But they illustrate why a narrow equation of education with classroom instruction can overlook meaningful forms of learning.
The work of educational researchers such as David Kolb, whose experiential learning framework emphasises learning through experience and reflection, provides a useful starting point for thinking about this distinction.
If people develop through interaction with their environments, then schools and workplaces are only part of the developmental landscape.
That raises a question for those of us interested in human capital: Are we measuring the full range of capabilities people develop, or primarily the capabilities that institutions have learned to certify?
2. Hip-hop made the idea of agency emotionally intelligible
Agency is a recurring theme in my writing because it sits at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, education and organisational behaviour.
At its simplest, agency concerns people's capacity to make choices and act in ways that influence their lives and circumstances. It does not mean having unlimited control, and it certainly does not mean that structural inequalities disappear through determination.
Nevertheless, the perception that one's actions can matter is psychologically significant.
Albert Bandura's research on self-efficacy examined people's beliefs about their capabilities to organise and execute actions required to produce particular outcomes. His work provides a rigorous way to understand why perceived capability matters for motivation and behaviour.
Hip-hop frequently explores the tension between constrained circumstances and personal assertion. Its narratives may involve ambition, resistance, frustration, reinvention, survival, recognition or the desire to be heard.
I do not interpret these narratives as universal instructions for living. An artist's account of success may be shaped by commercial incentives, artistic exaggeration, personal mythology and circumstances that cannot simply be replicated.
But the broader question remains compelling: what happens when someone encounters a story that expands their imagination of what is possible?
A song cannot guarantee greater self-efficacy, and the research on music should not be stretched to make that claim. Yet cultural narratives can provide material through which listeners interpret their own experiences and aspirations.
For me, hip-hop was one such source of material.
It introduced possibilities for self-expression that did not require institutional permission.
That idea has stayed with me.
3. Identity is something we inherit, negotiate and construct
Organisations devote considerable attention to professional identity. Employees are encouraged to see themselves as leaders, specialists, entrepreneurs, managers or members of particular professional communities.
Yet identities are not simply labels attached to job descriptions.
Psychologist Dan P. McAdams has contributed extensively to the study of narrative identity: the ways people construct evolving stories that help connect their past, present and imagined futures.
This framework is useful when thinking about music because artistic storytelling often offers listeners alternative ways of organising experience.
Hip-hop is particularly interesting here because of its engagement with persona, reputation, autobiography, exaggeration and reinvention. Artists may adopt stage names, construct public identities and move between vulnerability and confidence within the same body of work.
These artistic practices are not identical to psychological identity development. But they offer an accessible cultural illustration of a deeper idea: the stories we tell about ourselves influence how we understand who we have been and who we might become.
Professional environments do something similar, although their preferred narratives often sound different.
A graduate may describe themselves as an aspiring consultant. An employee becomes a high performer. A founder becomes a visionary. A manager becomes a people leader.
These identities can be useful, but they can also become restrictive when individuals begin confusing their institutional roles with the entirety of who they are.
My own interests have moved across management, psychology, writing, perfumery, technology and creative experimentation. I increasingly find it difficult to regard any single professional label as a complete description.
Perhaps that is one reason the idea of artistic reinvention resonates with me.
People can develop new capabilities without having to deny everything that came before.
4. Emotional regulation is not always taught in classrooms
Another reason music deserves attention is its relationship with emotional experience.
Research in music psychology has examined how people use music to regulate mood, manage arousal, process feelings and support everyday psychological functioning.
For example, Saarikallio and Erkkilä's research on adolescents' use of music in mood regulation identified different ways music could serve emotional purposes, including entertainment, revival, diversion, discharge and mental work.
The significance of such research is not that music is a universal treatment or that a particular genre is inherently beneficial. Effects vary with the listener, the material, the context and the way music is used.
A song that helps one person feel understood may make another person uncomfortable. Music that provides emotional relief in one situation may encourage unhelpful rumination in another.
That variability matters.
Nevertheless, the broader insight has implications for education and workplace well-being. People do not arrive at schools or offices as purely cognitive systems. They bring emotions, memories, motivations, stressors and individual strategies for managing their experiences.
If institutions care about learning and performance, emotional functioning cannot be treated as irrelevant.
This does not mean employers should prescribe playlists or attempt to manage employees' private emotional lives. It means recognising that emotional skills, personal meaning and psychological resources contribute to how people learn, collaborate and function.
I have written elsewhere about why schools should take emotional literacy seriously. My interest is not in replacing academic learning with cultural consumption, but in examining what formal education might learn from the ways people already engage with emotion and meaning.
5. What does any of this have to do with leadership?
A great deal, potentially—provided we avoid making exaggerated claims.
Leadership involves more than technical competence. Leaders communicate meaning, shape expectations, respond to uncertainty and influence how people understand their collective work.
The ability to construct a compelling narrative can be valuable in these processes. So can sensitivity to language, audience, identity and emotion.
But there is a difference between recognising a conceptual connection and claiming that listening to hip-hop makes someone a better leader. I am not making the latter claim.
What interests me is the possibility that leaders and educators could become more attentive to the unconventional experiences through which people develop capabilities.
An employee may have learned public speaking through theatre, coordination through community organising, persistence through sport, visual communication through gaming, or improvisation through music.
These experiences may or may not translate into workplace performance. The relevant capabilities still need to be demonstrated.
But dismissing them simply because they were acquired outside formal professional settings seems unnecessarily narrow.
It also creates an opportunity for a more inclusive understanding of talent.
A manager interested in human development might ask not only what qualifications someone holds, but what they have learned to do, where they learned it, how they demonstrate it and what additional support would help them grow.
That is a more interesting conversation than treating a résumé as a complete inventory of human potential.
6. The danger of turning every meaningful experience into productivity
There is an irony in writing about music through the language of human capital.
I began by suggesting that hip-hop contributed to my development in ways that were not formally certified. It would be easy to conclude that music should therefore be valued because it might make people more productive employees.
But that would reduce the argument to another version of the problem I am trying to examine.
Human experiences do not need to generate measurable workplace returns to deserve appreciation.
People listen to music because it brings pleasure, connection, excitement, consolation, cultural belonging, beauty or simply a sense of being alive.
Those outcomes matter even when they cannot be converted into performance indicators.
Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, offers a relevant perspective. Their work emphasises autonomy, competence and relatedness as important psychological needs.
This reminds us that motivation and flourishing cannot be understood exclusively through external rewards and instrumental outcomes.
The question is not merely whether hip-hop helped me acquire skills that employers might value.
It is also whether the experience enriched my life, helped me encounter different perspectives and gave me another language through which to understand myself.
I believe it did.
And I would be reluctant to defend that experience only by arguing that it made me economically useful.
7. What education and organisations might learn
If there is a practical implication for education and management, it is not that every school should teach rap or every corporate leadership programme should include hip-hop.
It is that human development occurs through a much wider range of experiences than institutional systems typically recognise.
For educators, this invites curiosity about the cultural material students already engage with and how it might become a starting point for critical thinking, communication and emotional literacy.
For HR professionals, it suggests evaluating demonstrated capabilities rather than relying too heavily on conventional signals of competence.
For managers, it encourages attention to the identities, interests and developmental histories employees bring to work.
And for individuals, it offers permission to take their own informal learning seriously without pretending that every hobby must become a career advantage.
There is also a necessary caution. Not every cultural influence is beneficial, not every form of self-expression is appropriate in every context, and not every personal narrative provides sound guidance. Critical engagement matters as much as appreciation.
We can be grateful for an artist's contribution to our lives while disagreeing with particular lyrics, attitudes or choices.
Admiration does not require imitation.
8. A larger understanding of human development
I sometimes think about how unusual the combination might appear on paper: someone who studied human resource development at a leading management institution, remains interested in organisational behaviour and educational reform, and also finds enduring intellectual and emotional value in the work of artists such as Eminem and Lil Wayne.
But I no longer see these interests as contradictory.
They are different encounters with questions that have occupied me for years.
What shapes a human being? What makes people feel capable? How do individuals develop identities? What helps us move from passively accepting circumstances toward participating more actively in our own lives?
Academic psychology offers methods, evidence and conceptual precision. Organisational behaviour helps us examine how people function within groups and institutions. Art offers experiences, perspectives and expressions that may make those questions personally meaningful.
Each has limitations. None needs to replace the others.
Perhaps the real mistake is expecting human development to occur within neatly separated departments.
We learn from classrooms, workplaces, relationships, mistakes, communities, books, films, games and music. Some lessons are measurable. Others remain difficult to describe until years later, when an experience suddenly makes sense through a new conceptual framework.
Hip-hop was never my business school.
It was one of the cultural influences that accompanied me while I was becoming the person who would eventually enter business school, question some of its assumptions and continue learning beyond it.
And that is enough reason to be grateful.
Research and further reading
The following sources inform the article's psychological and educational framing. They do not establish that hip-hop, as a genre, causes particular leadership or career outcomes.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative Identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622
Saarikallio, S., & Erkkilä, J. (2007). The Role of Music in Adolescents' Mood Regulation. Psychology of Music, 35(1), 88–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735607068889
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355
Related inquiries
This article adapts the themes of my personal essay, Hip-Hop, the Psychology of Survival, and the Making of a Larger Self, for a professional audience interested in learning, motivation and organisational behaviour.
For readers interested in the wider inquiry:
Education and Human Development explores how education might better recognise human differences, agency and emotional development.
You Are the Main Character. So Is Everyone Else. considers personal agency alongside empathy and respect for other people's autonomy.
Am I Successful? Who Taught Me What Success Means? examines achievement, social expectations and the metrics by which people judge their lives.
Sahil Tayal — Still Becoming brings together ongoing writing and creative experiments across psychology, philosophy, technology and human development.
I welcome perspectives from educators, HR professionals, organisational researchers, musicians and anyone interested in the different ways human beings learn.
Thank you to the researchers whose work has helped me develop a more precise language for these questions, to the educators who shaped my formal learning, and to the artists whose music accompanied the parts of my life that never appeared on a transcript.
Preserved from the LinkedIn data export of 24 October 2026. Links and references reflect the original article; they are not independently re-verified here.