Hip-hop and Literacy

I chose this topic for article group for the same reason that hip-hop is being implemented into the classroom; it’s different and more interesting than your typical studies. Most people enjoy music and the hip-hop genre so why can’t it be used in school to teach literary devices to an audience who might be more inclined to learn the material? Most older generations feel that hip-hop has a bad name and teaches students about violence, swearing, and how to degrade women. This is true for some songs, and actually more true of the ‘rap’ genre which is commonly mixed and intertwined with the hip-hop culture.

Our article group discussed the differences between mainstream rap/hip-hop and ‘underground’ or ‘intellectual’ hip-hop and how different they can be. Most mainstream music does contain all the of the negative stereotypes that rap is associated with which is why 90’s hip-hop and more underground music not produced by major labels are better categories to gain your classroom materials from. Here, rap was more about the lyricism and messages that the artist could convert about his/her experiences with culture and society. There were some really cool ways in which to integrate rap into the classroom that we read about in our articles. Students can compare and contrast certain songs with classical lit poems and find literacy devices which both utilize. I think using hip-hop is a great way to get students more involved in their work, but I also don’t think that we need to limit the examples to specifically hip-hop. All genres of music can be used to teach in the classroom, and we thought that teachers should tell their students to bring in their own lyrics from ant genre to analyze. This gets rid of any stereotyping that people may feel especially in inner city schools, where students may be offended by the assumptions that they all listen to hip-hop music. I think music is general should be applied in the classroom not just hip-hop.