The Mike Loyd Report · Volume Two
About
A writer, a rapper, a coffee man. A Black man from the American South who never stopped paying attention.
Michael Anthony Loyd Jr., known on the mic as Creative Mike the Rapper, is a writer, rapper, and entrepreneur from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, born June 20, 1984, now building from Atlanta. He is the author of Enemies of God: The Holy Betrayal of Negro Jews In The Diaspora, the co-founder and CEO of Dope Coffee, a U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran, a husband, a father, and a son of the Black Church of Christ.
Eastside, Winston-Salem
He came up in Winston-Salem, the same hometown that produced 9th Wonder. He came up at Eastside Church of Christ, a Black congregation in the Restoration tradition, where the Bible is read close, sung loud, and argued with on the porch after service. The Black Church of Christ raised him to take scripture seriously and to take his own people just as seriously. That is the room every word of his work walks out of.
The Marine, the Demon Deacon, the Aggie
He served in the United States Marine Corps as a 1302 Combat Engineer Officer and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. Clear, hold, build, the framework he learned in the Corps, still runs every business he touches. Secure the position before you expand it. Know what you have before you reach for more.
He earned a BA in History from Wake Forest University, where he ran on the Demon Deacon Men’s Track and Field roster, and an MA in Education from North Carolina A&T State University, the largest HBCU in the country. The PWI taught him how the room talks; the HBCU taught him who the room belongs to. He has been moving between those two rooms ever since.
“I went to college, got the degrees, but that ain’t changed nothing as a Black man.”
Mike Loyd, Creative Loafing
Solar Cafe, Then the Storm
In 2016, while still active-duty Marine, Mike opened Solar Cafe near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Hurricane Florence destroyed it. He and Chel moved to Atlanta and started over. Dope Coffee was founded in 2018, and the same instinct that built Solar from a base town built it again, this time at scale. The 6,000 square foot Decatur HQ opened in February 2023. A second HQ in Stonecrest is planned for 2026.
Where Hip-Hop Meets the Coffee Shop
In Atlanta, Mike co-founded Dope Coffee with his wife Chel Loyd, a registered dietitian and the company’s roast master, and his cousin Stace Loyd, who runs marketing and the music side. Dope Coffee is a specialty roaster and an independent hip-hop record label in the same building. The tagline, where hip-hop meets the coffee shop, is not a slogan. It is the thesis.
The company sells bagged coffee, ready-to-drink cans, and a body-care line, runs HBCU collaborations, and signs artists to Dope Coffee Music. Seventy percent of the customer base is white. The brand transcends race through culture, psychographics over demographics. People do not buy in because they look like Mike. They buy in because they recognize what he is building.
Creative Mike
As Creative Mike the Rapper, he writes and records hip-hop the same way he writes prose: position-having, plain-spoken, Southern. The pen and the mic are the same instrument. Eight projects since the 2005 debut, from The Mike Loyd Report to SPINACH (2021) to Ghost Millennial Heroes (2025). It is all one body of work, and the book is part of it too.
Enemies of God
Enemies of God: The Holy Betrayal of Negro Jews In The Diaspora is his forthcoming nonfiction book on the destroyed Jewish communities of West Africa, the Bilad al-Sudan, the Touat oases, the trans-Saharan exile networks, and what their erasure cost the descendants who carry that bloodline into the American South without knowing it.
It is not a confession of faith. It is a reclamation of culture. It is the book that comes out of a Black Church of Christ pew, a Marine deployment, a graduate seminar, and a coffee roastery, all stacked into the same man.
Family Is the Engine
Mike and Chel are raising two sons, Jayden, class of 2027, and Michael III, coming up behind him, and the family runs its own recruiting hub at Loyd Sports. The book, the music, the coffee company, the boys on the field: same project. Black family building Black cultural infrastructure that outlives the people who built it.
The Through-Line
Hip-hop is the through-line. Culture is the product. Family is the engine. That is the whole map. Everything on this site, the books, the records, the cans of coffee, the next thing he has not announced yet, comes out of those three sentences.
Welcome to The Mike Loyd Report. Volume Two.