TIMELINE
Barbados
School and church recitals, Junior Calypso and the early foundations of Hotta Flames.
ROD HURLEY · RODERICK HURLEY
ARTIST.
SCHOLAR.
ATHLETE.
One person. Several dimensions. A single life rather than a stack of unrelated biographies.
BARBADOS-BORN · BROOKLYN-ROOTED
Never one thing at a time.
Rod Hurley is a Barbados-born, Brooklyn-rooted artist, scholar and athlete creating as Izza Natural Ting: moving through the world, thinking deeply, and living in culture.
His public life began in music. As Hotta Flames, Rod became a singer, songwriter, DJ, performer and producer, performing across the Caribbean and in cities throughout Canada and the United States. The music carries messages of upliftment, education, love, culture and collective responsibility.
Scholarship and teaching widened the field. A graduate of Medgar Evers College, Rod is a doctoral candidate in Critical Social/Personality Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught psychology at the College of Staten Island since 2017. His current research examines cultural gifts, success and belonging among Black male students and faculty at CUNY.
Running became another way of moving through place, community and possibility. Ten marathons and all six World Marathon Majors later, the runner is central—but still part of a larger life.
IZZA NATURAL TING.
A long-standing phrase and worldview: something inherent, connected to nature and allowed to exist without being forced into one lane.
The website makes that wholeness legible. MOVE. THINK. LIVE. organizes the stories. Hotta Flames remains the music. Rod remains the person living all of it.
A BRAIDED TIMELINE
THE LIFE KEEPS CONNECTING.
Music, scholarship, running and creator work are not separate résumés.
TIMELINE
Hotta Flames
Songwriting, performance, radio, production and music-industry advocacy.
TIMELINE
CUNY
Student leadership, psychology, teaching, doctoral work and public higher education.
TIMELINE
10 Marathons
World cities, long training cycles, running communities and six stars.
TIMELINE
Cultural Gifts
An original concept connecting lived resources, community and educational possibility.
TIMELINE
One ecosystem
Izza Natural Ting brings the dimensions together without erasing their histories.