Black Star News
Photos: Edwin Freeman
Southeast Queens has a new voice at the table of local governance, and it is one shaped by stage lights, film sets, and the sound of a beat drop. Edwin Freeman, the actor, filmmaker, and recording artist known to hip-hop audiences as Billy-D, has joined the Queens Assembly District 32 Committee, bringing a career built on storytelling into the work of community representation.
Freeman’s path to this role runs through some of the most recognized platforms in Black film and television. He appeared in the blockbuster biopic Notorious, chronicling the life of The Notorious B.I.G., and took on a role in Marvel’s Luke Cage, a series celebrated for centering a Black superhero in Harlem. Behind the camera, Freeman has produced two documentaries that confront difficult truths about American history and culture: Modern Day Slavery: From Plantations to Prisons, an unflinching look at mass incarceration, and Beats & Lyrics: The Essence of Rap, a study of hip-hop’s roots and its power as cultural expression. As Billy-D, he has also released independent music that reflects the same commitment to authenticity found in his film work.
But Freeman’s influence extends well beyond entertainment. He is the Founder and Executive Director of The Freeman Foundation for the Arts, a Southeast Queens based nonprofit that builds advocacy driven programs connecting artists to the communities they come from. Its flagship initiative, Hip-Hop Harmony, is a Social Emotional Learning program grounded in restorative circles, reaching elementary, middle, and high school students across New York City. The program uses the language of hip-hop, movement, and storytelling to help young people process emotion, resolve conflict, and build community, proof that culture can be a tool for healing as much as entertainment.
His civic commitment to Southeast Queens is not new. For the past two decades, Freeman has worked alongside the District Leader to address the everyday conditions that shape quality of life in the community, pressing for traffic signals at dangerous intersections, speed bumps on busy streets where children walk to school each day, and resolution of longstanding issues with Con Edison and the New York City Department of Sanitation. He also partnered with the family of slain Southeast Queens rap star and his former mentor, Raymond “Freaky Tah” Rogers of the legendary, Grammy winning, multi-platinum Queens group Lost Boyz, in the effort to rename the street where Rogers grew up in his honor, ensuring the neighborhood’s cultural history remains part of its physical landscape. That same commitment led Freeman to campaign for Nathaniel Hezekiah III in his run for the Queens Assembly District 32 seat, work that laid the foundation for his own role on the district committee today.
That same instinct, using platform and presence in service of people, now extends to his work on the District 32 Committee. For a district that has long produced artists, organizers, and civic leaders in equal measure, Freeman’s presence signals a continuation of that tradition rather than a departure from it. Art and advocacy, in his hands, have never been separate pursuits.
As Queens continues to shape its political future, voices like Freeman’s, forged in creative industries but rooted firmly in community, offer a model for what representation can look like: informed by lived experience, driven by service, and unafraid to use every platform available for the benefit of the people.
