Its Bigger Than Hip Hop What Rap Music Tells Us Public Policy

what up y’all

my name is dope knife well my real name

is kendrick mack

i uh i’m the son of a diplomat and i

grew up and went to school overseas

afterwards i

moved to savannah georgia where i

attended the savannah college of art and

design

and i became a rapper after that and

that’s what i’ve been doing ever since

let’s try that a different way though

i’m a

mc known as dope knife when i pan a rap

but when i was born yo my mama named me

kendrick mac

went to school overseas my father was a

diplomat moved to savannah georgia

that’s when the brother went to scat

i just gave you my little brief bio but

i gave it to you in two forms

spoken formal way and then a wrapped way

um you know i’m willing to bet

that the wrapped version of my bio

probably is gonna stick with you at

least in some form or another

more so than me just standing there and

reading to you some

facts about my life um this is all

stemming from

you know what i like to think of as

being the power of the wrapped word

and the sort of poignancy that a wrapped

word

can have in terms of making people

retain information

or just having things stick with people

and having them have more

impact and more meaning with people i

want to stress

rap because hip-hop is a

broader thing hip-hop is a culture it’s

a lifestyle it’s a way of life

and rap is just one of the elements

within the broader culture of hip-hop so

i’m talking about

rap specifically right now a rapper can

mention a name brand and that can raise

a company’s bottom line

a rapper can even speak a whole new

business into existence

or give an obscure reference to a movie

that causes somebody to go and look that

movie up

and find out where that reference is

from a rapper can get kids in the comic

books

like it did for me rap you

there’s there’s rap just has the power

to peak people’s interest

and the power to stick with people in

ways that

i don’t think fully have been explored

outside of just the realm of

entertainment

in fact it was through rap that i was

able to learn

english as a kid i grew up

primarily as far as my childhood i was

in africa

west africa to be exact and for at least

the first four or five years of my life

i spoke

west african creole and

one of the uh first things that that

started

on my regiment to learn english was i

would listen to the dougie fresh

1989 song that he did for the

ghostbusters movie spirit

it went something like spirit some

people hear it some people fear it

spirit some people just won’t go near it

shows on me

and the skies are blue the ghostbusters

are back and now brand new

is a combination of the repetition of

the words

um associating meaning with those words

it being in a rhythm that stuck in my

head

so that i would keep repeating them over

and over again even when i wasn’t

necessarily consciously doing so

obviously rap wasn’t the

the only key in this

scenario you know there was school there

was tutoring

but i can’t downplay the impact that

hip-hop had and

it actually being presented to me in

that way by my older brother is

hey listen to this here’s here’s some

epmd

check this out here’s the fat boys check

this out you know i mean here’s some run

dmc

listen to this listening to those songs

over and over again

it just helped me retain the language

retain the language better and get a

better grasp on how to speak it and how

to play with it

think about it the way that you would

think about how a pop song will have

lyrics that gets stuck in your head over

time and

you can repeat them in a moment’s notice

you know damn near every word um it’s

this

same sort of thing that’s going on in

fact a

2013 study found that kids

retain science information better when

they rap dance or drew it

this is because obviously when

information is presented to you in a

more engaging way

you retain it better it sticks with you

you remember things more there’s an

example

in uganda with a artist politician named

bobby wine

who raps at his political rallies and

through using you know his rhetoric

in that sense he’s able to activate

millions

of young people in uganda to being

politically active

so why not embrace this concept and

apply rapping to things other than just

entertainment and instead of uh strictly

having rap be in the field of

instructing people to throw their hands

in the air and wave them like they just

don’t care

or to go and buy the latest shoe

that’s come out what if it was embraced

more

in public organizing and political

speech

i know it’s extremely easy for me to

just say

hey take the curriculum and wrap it

cause

you know it’s obviously not that easy

and

i’m just a rap dude i’m not an educator

i can only imagine with the amount of

things that educators across the country

already have on their plate

being hey why don’t you take your lesson

plan and make some dope bars out of it

isn’t necessarily

the priority that that they’re having

now how do you find that right balance

of making it cool and engaging

and not off-putting to young people and

kids

i don’t necessarily know that i’m

equipped to give a how-to

on how to do that but i do know that

most of us learn our

abcs by way of a song i think it can

it can be done in fact if you go on

youtube and you do a search for

educational rap or rap history or rap

math any subject you can find some

pretty well-made

well-produced engaging educational

rap content where people just utilize

the medium

the form of communication of rap

rhythmically speaking

over beats in rhyme i think people

find that it can open up a whole new

dimension to how

children and young people pick up

the information that we want them to

have i just want to see this get used

in classrooms more and you know i want

to see more

uh politicians and activists embrace

this technique of communication

in their day-to-day activities more um

so in closing if you don’t remember

anything i said yo with this talk you

didn’t know what you was facing

i’m talking about how raps a good way

you’re communicating you do it right you

got the power to go move the nation

and stick inside their head and have

their brains like contemplating i’m

saying

take history apply it to that you can

even find the format when it’s science

to math

so the youth won’t grow up lost and be

denying the facts but i’ma bring it to

an end so i’ll write us a rap

like that matt thank you