Got me breeding with dragons. I crack the
egg in your basket, you bastard. I'm Marilyn Manson with madness [inaudible]. Misusing your influence. I'm on the outside looking in. Now I run the game, got the whole world talking, King Kunta. That's the first time I heard Kendrick. After incorporating some of the songs into my lessons, I wrote a blog post, and it made its way to Kendrick Lamar and
his team in California. And right away, he said, "Kendrick read your post. He loved
it. He wants to come visit your school." [music] If our students and the demographics of our
country are becoming more and more diverse and our online classrooms are more and more diverse,
we have to start thinking about the nature of the canon and what we consider text and what we
consider worthy of study. Oftentimes in schools, the authors that they study are canonical European authors. In other words, old, dead. white men. So to have Kendrick Lamar come here not so much
as a rapper or an emcee but as an as a writer, as an author, as someone who produces text,
someone who produces literature, that's incredibly inspirational for students who look like him but
also anyone who is really engaged in in the arts. Man, this is a class. [Laughter] [Inaudible] I
can just see the energy. I can feel the energy. Yeah, I was a sophomore and I would come up and go
to Mr. Mooney and be like, "Yo, can I rap? We kind of teamed together and put together this class
called "Hip-Hop Lit." We dissect album covers, dissect advertisements, go through songs, and we dissect the literature of the songs. Teaching about, like, African-American struggle and just,
like, sexism, but through hip-hop music is really awesome. Both "The Bluest Eye" and "To Pimp a Butterfly" express the African-American struggle to adhere to white standards. People showed poems. People rapped. And he kind of gave us a space where we could just express ourselves. And that's really cool because we get to identify with it, you know, and, like, just identifying with other people's art and creativity. It's just, it's great experience, I think, overall. I'm from that small population of South Asian men who can't properly grow facial hair. I've got a tiny tribe of hair that sparsely populates the continents of my skin. Most people don't realize that we have the density to mark our own demographic. I think hip hop, in general, has given me a better idea of the other side of the narrative and the stories that we don't get to hear, which is kind of what makes hip-hop so beautiful. I can connect to it because it's in like, a language I can understand. You know, music is one of the universal languages and it's one of the best teaching tools you can implement in school. [music] So the cypher is, for those that don't know, is like when participants stand in, like, a equidistant circle and they participate, either poetry or a line of rap or something into the circle. And in a lot of ways, that exchange that's happening, like is teaching and learning. Like, dialogue is pedagogy and is teaching and learning. [ music ] And when people are participating in a cypher, you don't have to tell them, "Pay attention." Like, they are engaged. Like that's what a good classroom looks like when kids are sort of like calling response and they're listening to each other. Right? And so, like, the cypher is sort of a framework for teaching and learning. [music] Opens you up, I think, to be more than just a student. [music] So when he shows up and he's like I came here because of the work you're doing, that says to my students that their work is important, and ultimately what that means is that their identity is important. [cheering] [music] This album wasn't made for-- I didn't think I made it for 16-year-old, you know? So when a 16-year-old is intrigued by it, it lets me know how so far advanced as a society we actually are, you know? And that inspire me on a whole ‘nother level. I always get people like my parents or, you know, older adults, "This is great, you know, you have a message. You have themes. You have different genres of music," but to get a kid actually telling me this, this is a different type of feeling. I don't think nobody in the world can belittle, you know, their humor, their smarts. Nothing. Because they're highly intelligent, and walking into their classroom, [snaps] it just proved me right. [music] Make some noise for yourself, y'all. The way y'all look at my music, the way y'all broke it down, the way y'all articulate it, the way y'all put it together with everyday life, it's amazing. I couldn't ask for better accomplishments, no award, nothing. This is the best accolade this far. You dig I'm sayin'? So with that being said, I'll continue to do what I do. I'll continue to relate to you. You relate to me. With that being said, I will be back. That's a promise, y'all. [cheers, applause] Oh my god. This is so goddamn lit. Oh my god. [music]
