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A Cambridge native, Virtuoso attended the Fayerweather and Agassiz schools before graduating from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School’s Pilot House in 1997. A Cantabridgian MC through and through, Virtuoso maintains a steady cult following throughout the Boston area and beyond, notably as an original member of Philadelphia-based hip-hop conglomerate Army of the Pharaohs.
In the late autumn of 2012, I was lucky enough to sit down with Virtuoso, E’Flash of N.B.S., and producer Nikki Broadway of The Beat Bullies. Throughout our conversation, we explored Virtuoso’s career and the role schooling and Cambridge have played in his development as an artist.

On the early years of his musical development:
I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t making music. My dad was also an acoustic engineer – he designed a lot of studios and did a lot of electronics work for The Cars and Boston…he used to work at Electric Ladyland. Studios and professional musicianship was always something that was ubiquitous in my life, anyway. So, I think, from a very young age, I always kind of was like: “I might just be a musician.”
…
I grew up on Classic Rock mostly, and funky stuff. The first tape that I bought myself…was LL Cool J’s ‘Radio’ and Beastie Boys’ ‘License to Ill’.
…
And just the poetry of it all…I’d always been into words even since I was a little kid, and always into writing stuff, and writing very intricate stories and s**t like that, so it was cool to me the way they were able to just talk and lay it down.

On the early years of his education:
My parents were some pretty f**king serious hippies and they let me decide when I was gonna’ go to school. I was almost six. I didn’t go to kindergarten. I also didn’t go to first grade. All my friends on the block went to school for one year. My mom was like: “Do you want to go, or do you not want to go?” I remember that one of my main focuses in life was watching Mighty Mouse. And I remember after seeing it a bunch of times, starting to see the same ones, and being like: “This is bulls**t! There’s only a few of these? It’s not going to be a new one every day?” Soon after I went to my mom, and I was like: “I think I’m gonna go to school.”
….
When I was almost six, I went to Fayerweather Street School. It was like an alternative school – it’s still around. Do you know who Mighty Casey, the dude who did ‘White Girls’ is? He was the math teacher there for a while…It’s an ill school.

On the arts at Fayerweather:
In third grade, we were given the task of bringing in a poem or song that was special to us. Every other kid brought in, like, Mary Had a Little Lamb. I stayed up for two nights straight, memorizing Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys.
…
It was a school where there was definitely room to do your own thing. I was always somewhat of a performer. In third grade, I came up with a song called The Chicken Rap…Even back then, I was performing. In fourth grade we had a teacher who was only there one year. Her name was Nicki. I’ll never forget. [She] was totally in to hip-hop and all types of Caribbean history. Brought in KRS-One/BDP ‘You Must Learn’ and asked if anyone wanted to learn it and perform it. So I immediately volunteered.
So this woman put me on to BDP in fourth grade.

On the freestyle scene at CRLS:
Everyone was just kind of starting. K the I went to Rindge, graduated the same year as me [in 1997]. There was a group called Question that was K the I and just about – not to sound funny – but there was about eight black kids in the school who were good at rapping – and then there was me…It [also] involved Knuckles from N.B.S.
…
People would be rapping at lunchtime, and I started to show up on those scenes. There was definitely nobody else who could freestyle like me. So we would have a lot of cyphers at lunchtime. Afterschool, sometimes. This dude Zack Johnson, who made a bunch of beats for N.B.S. – he made ‘Devilish’ on my second album. He was also a frequent collaborator.

Particular CRLS hip-hop memories?
There was the Pilot [House] play…where if we said we wanted to do x or y…they would entertain. So people started to say: “I want to rap.” That was one of the first times I ever rapped in front of that many people. After that, I really gained a lot of confidence.

On the role of music in elementary and secondary education:
I think music is one of the last things that should be cut in education programming, personally. I think it’s one of the only universal things that exists. There’s nothing else that can transcend language and culture and race…I know, personally, that being involved in music – just analyzing it, performing it – even if you’re only listening to it…If you’re truly tapping into what’s going on, it’s a soul-opening experience. Quite often the people are amazing poets. Just trying to follow melodies and trying to pick apart what’s happening in a song – it’s certainly exercise for your brain…To me it’s by far the most powerful form of communication.
…
I would definitely urge anybody who’s involved in education and has influence over it who has the opportunity to present music in the school or anybody young’s life to do it at any turn they can. I definitely think it’s just good for the well-being of the universe. Whether you call it god, or whether you call it science, or whatever. Music is…it’s the vibrations of the universe. Everything is a vibration.

Can hip-hop be used in the classroom as a teaching tool?
I think there’s a role for any kind of music and I think especially hip-hop, considering that it’s so…There’s, in some ways, room to convey a more complex message in hip-hop. I think it’s definitely valuable in the classroom. Considering it’s the music that kids like nowadays, it’s obviously got to be the most useful.
…
The whole point is: who cares what some scholar thinks is useful? What are the kids gonna absorb? And if the kids want to absorb hip-hop, you might as well give it to them in the way that they find easy to understand.

Have you ever taught?
I did teach a hip-hop class to some pretty young kids at Agassiz summer programming. It was a good time.

Is there a specific type of humor that you find in Cambridge?
A lot of sarcasm…We’re really smug. I would say that. We’re cocky, we think we’re better than everyone else. We also generally tell it like it is. That’s another reason why people sometimes may view you as smug, or arrogant…People are very open here, too. People are very accepting. Of different races, of gay people. You don’t have to tiptoe around people as much here, as you do other places. It’s a little more: “Cut the bullshit.”

On being from Cambridge:
There’s no question, I think, Cambridge is a pretty unique place in the entire country and the world. Cambridge is a microcosm. There’s no other place in the country that can really replicate how much knowledge is stored in that small area. I wouldn’t say Cambridge has the magic formula like Brooklyn, for knocking out big rap stars, but we also live a whole different existence.
…
I think the main thing we’re blessed with, is we’re blessed with access to a lot of knowledge, coming from Cambridge. I think that’s the strength of Cambridge. I go to eat Indian food and I hear people talking about robotics, and I hear them talking about rocket science. Why do I rap with such big, complex words? Well, that’s just what was around.

ORIGINAL POST:
Two years ago, a small group of us started building weekly on Twitter about hip-hop and education. The chat has grown to include hundreds of people from around the world. Each week, we tackle a topic located at the intersection of hip-hop culture and education.

I’m honored to be a co-convener of these chats, along with my partners: Dr. Chris Emdin, Brandon Frame, Tim Jones, and Amil Cook.

This week the topic of the chat is Hip Hop Genius–a concept that I have developed over the last decade with my crew of hip-hop-ed-heads.

Peep the video and article below and join the conversation! It’s easy, just jump on Twitter at 9pm eastern on Tuesday, October 23rd. Punch “#HipHopEd” into the search bar up top, follow along, and join in by putting “#HipHopEd” anywhere in your tweet.

I have updated this section, because my gramma wants to join the chat and my explanation of Twitter was not clear enough!:
If you don’t have a Twitter account, it only takes a few seconds to create one. All you need to do is go to www.Twitter.com, look for the Sign Up box, enter your email address, a username, and a password. My username is @husslington, so if you’re trying to get started you can search for me and check out who I follow…

As “homework” for this week’s chat, check out this video:

And read this article:

Remixing Education: Hip-Hop Pedagogy, School Design and Leadership
in UnBoxed (High Tech High Graduate School of Education Journal) in Fall 2009

And, if you’re hungry for more, grab the book (you can get started on the ebook right away!):

Looking forward to building with you!

In March of 2012 a young writer and educator named Joseph Poirier submitted an essay to the Husslington Post. Through an email exchange it was uncovered that coincidentally Joseph and Sam Seidel, the Curator-in-Chief of the Husslington Post, had attended the same high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Joseph proposed conducting a series of interviews of hip-hop artists who spent time around Rindge, with a focus on how their educational experiences influenced them as artists. This piece is the second in that series–an exclusive on the Husslington Post.

Cousins V.Knuckles and E’Flash grew up together in Roxbury before moving to Cambridge for elementary school. Both artists, who are known together as Natural Born Spitters (or N.B.S.), graduated from the Tobin School, moving on to private high schools and colleges. Although they spent little time in the CRLS classrooms, both Flash and Knuckles were deeply involved in Cambridge’s extracurricular hip-hop scene.

I had the good fortune to sit down with Flash, Knuckles, and Kyle Morris (of their management team) in the Big Bang studios early this September, where we had a free-form and free-flowing discussion on their hip-hop careers, elementary and secondary education, and the role of hip-hop and music in the development of the contemporary student. Both Flash and Knuckles have taught in Boston area schools, and are beginning work with a Cambridge and Boston-wide anti-bullying initiative.

On their musical development in the early years:
Flash: Honestly, we went to Paige Academy, and that is a music-orientated school, in terms of performance and things. Kuumba drums, and dancing, and stuff like that.
Knuckles: That’s when we were really young.
Flash. Super-young. But that sort of embarked our passage into music. And plus, his [Knuckles’] older brother was doing music, and stuff like that. And we would just follow dudes around and they incorporated us in their talent shows.
Knuckles: Shout out to Black Rain – they were called Black Rain. We did a different type – a switch, from Kuumba drums and playing African songs, and singing African songs, to actually dancing. We were doing hip-hop dancing.
Flash: He [Knuckles] had more heart, he wasn’t scared to get in front of people and dance. We started doing that. We were signed to Maurice Starr, who was working with Perfect Gentlemen, New Edition, New Kids On The Block.

When was that?
Flash: Shoot, that was our elementary years…We used to do Massachusetts tours. We’d go from Boston to Rhode Island, to all over Massachusetts.
Knuckles: We got to a point where we re-named ourself from the Agent Crew, which we were a sublet of – which was my brother’s group.
Flash: The whole clique was called Agent Crew, but Black Rain was the focus.
Knuckles: And I was Agent Too Funky.
Flash: And I was Agent Too Smooth.
Knuckles: That was my first rhyme! I can still remember half of my first rhyme: “It’s the Agent Too Funky/Definitely not a junkie!”
…
Knuckles: After that, I was…I was not shy with the flows by high school. I used to go to different schools – Milton Academy – we used to do rap battles.
Flash: We used to battle outside of Rindge. Right in-between the field house and the tennis courts. And it used to be Coast vs. NC. And we used to go hard. We was the verbal vets!
Knuckles: We just all had our little crews from Cambridge.
…
Knuckles: At Rindge, there was such a strong hip-hop presence, that them dudes used to battle all the time.
Flash: Especially in Pilot.
Knuckles: They used to battle every day, pretty much. They used to have different battles. And then, like, while I’d be battling a couple dudes from Concord, who weren’t really on my level, they’d have a bunch of rappers on the freshman basketball bus, and they’d be battling. And these would be real battles. I’d be like: “Yo, these dudes are killin’ it!” They had a bunch of different rappers who were pretty good at battling. It was just an elevated…public school, with the kids from the inner city…it was more popular. Virt [Big Bang artist Virtuoso] had more competition in Rindge. Battle rapping, at the time, was really…was really what was in style. Now battle rapping’s not as popular as it used to be.

On their musical development in the high school years:
Flash: I never studied music, but my goal was to be an entertainment lawyer. So, in the aspect of wanting to do something pursuing music through education, yes, but in terms of playing an instrument, or studying an instrument, or studying how to write music – no. But Tobin School, obviously, I mean, back in the days, we had music. The xylophones, and the drums, and stuff like that.
Knuckles: We had more music in the elementary school. The people who did music at Concord [Academy] came in doing music. They weren’t teaching a lot of music. But I did get into acting, and that was a good thing for stage presence. Being able to control the ceremony, you know what I’m sayin’? Being the MC.

Did you ever study creative writing, fiction, or poetry?
Flash: Definitely poetry. Poetry – Maya Angelou – everything. That was something that was also sort of required. Poetry, Shakespeare, all types of stuff like that. In terms of creative writing, yeah, that’s one thing that I love doing. It actually comes natural, for some reason. You just let your mind explore. I had creative writing classes in Chapel Hill. It also went up through college, having creative writing.
Knuckles: In terms of my experience with it, we just had different writing classes. Then we got to choose some electives. I think I had a poetry class. It wasn’t rapping, but just writing in general, helped us a lot with our vocabulary. And just…[being] able to find words. Some people now say to me, ‘how do I rhyme this with this?’ Almost like I’m a human thesaurus. Because I’ve been rhyming so long, it comes kind of naturally now…

The writing you did in high school – do you draw on that while writing lyrics now?
Knuckles: Definitely.
Flash: I mean, education for lyrics in general. I mean, just reading books and just being knowledgeable about anything, makes your – not only vocabulary – but your rhyming scheme that much more, you know, “Oh shit, these dudes are nice,” or “they’re saying stuff I just saw on current events,” or…you know what I’m saying…Just being knowledgeable in general will always help an artist out. It’s great, you know what I’m saying, that we’re college graduates, it’s great that we also have taught, it’s great that we’re able to use our knowledge to have a bigger – or broader – spectrum on what we can talk about.

Do you think there should be more of an emphasis on music in schools?
Flash: Of course. By all means.
Knuckles: Yeah, definitely.
…
Knuckles: Music really wasn’t part of our curriculum, necessarily, but it’s definitely less a part of the curriculum today. That kind of…probably might be some of the reason that kids are labeled special needs, and most of them aren’t even special needs. More kids are given drugs and put on different medicines to control their, you know, “ADD.” All these different diseases, and whatever they’re labeling these kids with. But, at the end of the day, they’re not able to express themselves through creative outlets. And, that’s definitely a problem with schools nowadays.

What are some good creative outlets?
Knuckles: We used to have field day, we used to have a music class. We were able to get our energy out and express ourselves creatively. Nowadays, when I’m teaching in Dorchester, these kids don’t even have a field. They’re running around in a parking lot and they’re giving them like five minutes. We used to have, like, half hour or forty-five minutes.
Flash: You had time to get out your energy, and then get our your creative thought process.

Can hip-hop can be used in the classroom as a teaching tool?
Flash: Of course.
Knuckles: Hip-hop is just…this is just a big thing. Being able to write raps is being intelligent. Being able to write raps that either are creative or that have an influence on other peoples’ lives, like…this is powerful stuff. Yeah, it’s a tool to teach. It’s a tool to teach people how to read, people how to write, people how to make poetry, people how to have spoken word, people how to conquer stagefright…For that to be incorporated in schools is definitely always gonna’ be a good, positive thing. Especially with our, you know, inner-city youth in America. I’m not gonna’ say black, I’m not gonna’ say white, I’m just gonna’ say inner-city youth, in general.

On being from Cambridge:
Flash: Has Cambridge helped us? Of course. Cambridge has given us our education. Whether it be street, or…just growing up in a diverse environment. Where, you know, one of my best friends could be Eritrean, one of my best friends could be Asian, Haitian.
Knuckles: Peoples from different cultures. And it’s a small community, so, you know, we’re forced to interact with each other and most of it has been all positive, pretty much. So it’s given us, it’s basically given us a great perspective on life, in terms of knowing different people, and how different cultures work.

Is there a specific type of humor that you find in Cambridge?
Flash: I think we’re a little less serious. With Boston, I feel like we have something to prove. Especially with hip-hop, and just in general. We want to prove we’re not…
Knuckles: – That we’re the best, that we’re not soft…
Flash: – That we’re “gangsta,” you know what I mean? It’s an image thing with us in Boston. In Cambridge it’s a little less serious. We got a lot of stuff to offer that Boston doesn’t really get to offer kids. Diversity. I mean, everything that we have out here is just crazy.
Kyle: I mean, that’s probably the answer, though, right there. It’s like, with Boston and Cambridge the difference is we have so much more diversity within our city that it probably opens ground for more material [laughs].

Are there any particular artists from Cambridge that you were influenced by?
Flash: We were already doing music. But in our neighborhood there was Cantabridgians, the Starting Five…And we were the young dudes in the neighborhood spitting and dropping our first – ‘Black Ice’ and ‘Frozen Hearts’. Songs like that, where we really started writing our own music. ‘Black Ice’ was crazy and it took a lot of people by storm.
Knuckles: Yeah, ‘Black Ice’ was one of the most popular old songs that we did. But in terms of just artists in general, there was a couple of older artists that were really nice and even in my brother’s group. To this day – Doe Re Mi, Raymond Jordan, was probably one of the best lyricists. Shout out to my man Raymond! He was one of the hottest lyricists, he would be over my house like four days a week. It came kind of natural to me, but I was always around people who were nice. My brother and all his crew, pretty much, rapped, so we had older dudes around us that were always spittin’. And we’d go out in the neighborhood, and dudes who were just on our level, or even better than us, who were our same age, who helped adapt our flows too, you know? Just being able to try to come back with witty responses in a battle, or whatever. Like I was telling you, there was just a pretty strong hip-hop culture in Cambridge at the time we were growing up. So, we kind of learned from all different angles.
Kyle: There was more afternoon, evening type events to feature and showcase talent. There was talent shows – school vacation things – that people were allowed to do, that they don’t normally do anymore. Every vacation – there were three vacations a year, where…they had the Night Stop Talent Show. You’re talking three times a year when kids are always gonna’ be able to go in the city and just rap in front of all the kids in the city. Every vacation.

Cambridge or high school shout outs?
Flash: Not in particular… We looked up to everyone at Rindge. More so for sports rather than music influence. Though we never attended CRLS, we were connected with Pilot due to there being so many rap artists there who were our close friends. Larry, who taught African-American history, came to a few of our shows and photographed.

In March of 2012 a young writer and educator named Joseph Poirier submitted an essay to the Husslington Post.  Through an email exchange it was uncovered that coincidentally Joseph and Sam Seidel, the Curator-in-Chief of the Husslington Post, had attended the same high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin.  Joseph proposed conducting a series of interviews of Rindge graduates who make hip-hop music, with a focus on how their educational experiences at the school influenced them as artists.  This piece is the first in that series–an exclusive on the Husslington Post.

How long have you been making music?  How did you start?

Since ‘84.  I stopped breakdancing to start rapping for my breakdance crew.  I’m old school, believe it or not.

Tell me a bit about your music – how would you describe your hip-hop and where you’re coming from?

It’s music…life music with feelings, thoughts, inclusions, and fun.  Well, at least it is now.  Before, when I was younger, it just used to be fun.  I’d experiment and play with words just because.  I was into similes and metaphors early on, and I would just find creative ways to play with individual words.  I used to randomly pick words out of the dictionary just to see how I could use them in the next rhyme.  I was making kind of a nerdy attempt to expand my vocabulary, I guess.  That quickly grew to playing with thoughts, different languages, symbolisms, dialects, double, triple and sometimes quadruple meanings, etc.  In fact, I believe that it was one of Chuck D’s lines that prompted me to actually ‘grow up’ from the way I wrote – when he said: “I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddling.”  I was like: “then what the fuck am I doing?”  [laughs] ‘Cause that was CHUCK D – a man, in my opinion, [who] commands maximum respect.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t completely abandoned the ‘ways’ that birthed this craft for me.  Instead, I simply created a category to kind of justify what I’m doing, when I’m doing it…it’s exercise.  You know?  ‘Lyrical calisthenics’….yeah, that’s it.

Today, I’m all grown up, though.  I do a whole lot of ‘on purpose’ writing now.  I’m talking with adult themes, ideas and speech.  It doesn’t matter what type of song – party, battle raps, relationships, ideologies, etc. - I often say I keep [it] grounded like the third prong.  That’s because what I write nowadays are simply fathomable experiences conveyed artistically with the skills attained from many years of practice.  As far as where I’m coming from…would you understand me if I just said ‘within’?

How important do you think a hip-hop artist’s schooling is to their music?

Very.  But I’m coming from the standpoint that schooling in any life genre is mega-important.  Not just hip-hop.  Whether it’s academics or hard knocks, you’re a product of what you’ve been taught and your output reflects that.

What role did the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) and the Cambridge Public School system play in your development as a writer, an artist, a thinker, and a musician?

An encouraging one.  But I think that’s just growing up in Cambridge, period.  You’re exposed to the entire gamut, so to speak.  So much so that it ultimately becomes a matter of choice as to what direction you want to travel down.  As a writer, well, English class is English class.  You learn the technical aspects of the ‘word’…what’s a noun?  What’s a preposition?  The indirect object of a sentence? That’s just the automatics of ‘school’, I think.  The ill shit is recognizing its application and using it to your advantage.  That’s when the transition is made to artistry.  I can’t credit my musical development solely on CRLS or the Cambridge school system, though.  I mean, a lot of that came from the people and environments I surrounded myself with.  That being said, Cambridge is a scholastic city.  You kind of have no choice but to be influenced by that.

Why do you think CRLS produces so many rappers and producers?  Is there something about the school system?  The people?  The classes?  Teachers?

Today, it seems, everybody and their grandmother wants to be an emcee.  I’m not up on the numbers coming out of Rindge.  However, if it’s crazy, I think that’s just the result of how commercial this art form has gotten.  I think it’s like that almost everywhere and rarely has anything to do…specifically with the school system, classes or teachers.

Are there are any memorable hip-hop moments from CRLS you could share?

During my days at Rindge, most of those ‘hip-hop moments’ really occurred out of school, unless we’re talking school parties.  We weren’t really battling or breakdancing in the hallways, or nothing like that.  If anything hip-hop was happening, though, it was during B Lunch in the Media Cafeteria.  The Big Beat would be banging on the lunch tables and heads would set off freestyles crackin’ on everything from clothes to teachers.  In fact, those were THE only moments and cats would take that energy back to their respective hoods and keep it pushin’…outside of school.

Your music seems like it has some Caribbean influences – does any of that come from your Cambridge or CRLS background?

Nah.  Again, those were my influences outside of school.  I come from a West Indian family and I love West Indian music, but I was born here in the states.

Are there any other CRLS grads that made or are making hip-hop that have influenced you, or you’ve worked with?

As far as influence goes…not really, except for maybe a group called High Authority  – my mens DJ D, Crime Master D (turn[ed] Dred Manaflo, now Sickman and DJ Creation) – but we were peers and pioneers that worked together many times.  I tend to feed off of the energy of crew.  That’s what we did.  You coming with an ill verse made me have to come with one even iller than that.  It went back and forth.

Do you think hip-hop music can play a role in the classroom?  How and why?

I’m sure it can, in the sense of teaching technology and innovation – i.e. the advent of the mixer or fader in relation to the ‘potentiometer’ - or relative content to exploit points in subject matter – i.e. historical outcries of social groups relative to current events or politics.  Or even as examples of different styles of poetry.  However, NOT in the sense of guiding towards a career path.  I think the youth can do without a ‘teach me how to rap’ class.  Hip-hop to me is just one of those things you just simply get into and live.

Looking back on your public education, how do you wish hip-hop or music could have been incorporated into learning?

I don’t – talking [about] hip-hop specifically.  If it came up – as it has – it’s only because that’s what I used to express or contribute to an assignment – creative writing or presentations.  For me, it was to be used as a tool and was never the focus.  Now, music in general?  I say talk about it all day, as long as it [is] in the context of just that – music – which is inclusive of every other genre as well.  Make comparisons, document social change, stagnancy, or set backs, etc.  Let it spark debate.

What makes a Cambridge rapper different from a Boston rapper?

The same shit that makes rapper A different from rapper B.  I’m not them and they are not me.  Although, we are who we are and if that is – God forbid – absolute trash or straight up nasty with it, it is what it is.  To me, not everybody should pick up the mic, and Cambridge does have its share of the ‘not-so-nice’, as does Boston.  But that BS could never trump the level of artistry found in the best of both environments.

CRLS shout-outs?

No shouts…Rest in power: Erik “Eddie Bones” Brown, Sion Chambers, Dave Swinton, Leslie Kimbrough.

In this interview, Husslington Post correspondent, Amil Cook, goes in depth with journal/scholar/activist Daniela Gomes about her fight against racism in Brazil.  This is the first installment in what we hope will become a series of interviews by Amil.  Please leave comments below.

How influential is Hip-Hop and African American culture in Brazil?

For a long time Afro Brazilians didn’t have access to information about the black leaders in our history. The myth of the racial democracy created an important issue in our country, where a lighter skin person didn’t consider him/herself as black. So for many years for mixed people in Brazil to be black was a shame. In some cases this still happens. So after a long time we were without any understanding about black consciousness but during the 1970s some cultural and political movements started to be inspired by Afro American movements and heroes such as: the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others. And Hip Hop is a part of this because of its cultural influence.

What is racial democracy for those who may not be familiar with this term?

Racial democracy was a theory created in the early 1900s. The main creator was Gilberto Freyre, who used to affirm that Brazilian society was totally different from other countries because it was a racially mixed country and as a mixed country there wasn’t racism here. He taught that we should value our three races [indigenous (native), African and European] that formed our society because it made us better, made our slavery less painful and things like that. It is important to explain that before Freyre the theory that used to be adopted in Brazil, was the ‘whitening theory’, it was used to affirm that if we started to mix the country we could clean our race and it was believed that in little time black people would be extinct in Brazil. The main thinker of this theory was Nina Rodrigues, a doctor who used to see the black population as a shame. Gilberto Freyre was Rodrigues’ student, and “improved” Rodrigues’ racist theories when he decided to hide the racial issue in Brazil. These two theories are fundamental to understand racial thought in Brazil. The first one [Rodrigues], made Brazilians believe that if they are mixed they aren’t black and the second one [Freyre] made them believe that we are special because we are mixed; there isn’t racism in our country so we don’t need to fight against it. And although the black struggle in my country never stopped, ideas like that made our mission harder.

What is WAPI? How long have you been involved with WAPI or the Hip Hop movement in Brazil? What trends are you seeing within the Hip Hop movement?
WAPI means Word and Pictures and was a project involving Hip Hop created in Kenya and was brought to Brazil by a rapper named Panikinho, an important figure in the underground Hip Hop movement here. I wasn’t too involved in the event, but the main idea of the event was to mix different kind of arts that represent African and Afro Brazilian culture, as Hip Hop manifestations, dance, hair stylists, poetry, and others. I was selected to participate in the campaign “Eu Africanizo São Paulo”, it basically translates to I Africanize São Paulo, the theme of the event, on the Internet ‘cause of my work as an activist in my country.

I don’t know if I can say that I’m involved with the Hip Hop movement in Brazil, I’m not a rapper, singer, DJ, or a B-girl. I’m a fan of Hip Hop who decided to research Hip Hop’s influence in black peoples’ lives. What I can certainly affirm is the importance of Hip Hop in my personal life. It was Hip Hop which helped me when I was a teenager to understand that my ancestors made me a black woman, even if I have a light skin, that the issues that I was dealing in my life, like living in a ghetto community, and everything related with this, was also related with my condition as a black person as an African descendant, so in my life Hip Hop was a defining moment.

You recently attended a concert with the legendary rap group Public Enemy and other Hip-Hop groups and performers from the U.S. What was the response of the Afro Brazilian community to this concert?
The event was amazing but we have some issues involving it that are important to discuss. First, we are observing an impairment of Hip Hop in Brazil. As happened in the U.S., the media became interested in the movement early in 2000 and Hip Hop lost a lot of its protest intention. The new generation of black teenagers aren’t so interested in Brazilian Hip Hop, including poor kids. Those who like black music, prefer American Hip Hop or not so intense music, with less protests and more fun. And most of them don’t like traditional Hip Hop, they are more involved with Carioca Funk music. Despite this, groups as Public Enemy, Naughty by Nature and Wu-Tang Clan are still idols for older people who are fans of Hip Hop in Brazil, so for this group of Hip Hop fans a concert like this is really exciting. The big issue here is, usually the prices of the tickets for an event like this that are not accessible for the black community. One day of this event cost around R$150 for the cheaper ticket, what is around US$250. A Black person in Brazil usually doesn’t have US$700 to spend on things like this. And this is the normal cost for international concerts in my country so usually black people aren’t there and when they go they are really far from the stage. So it is more usual to see white people in concerts like this. But I can’t deny that as one of the few blacks who could go to the event it was a fantastic experience.

Do you think young Afro Brazilians identify with Hip Hop music and culture more than white Brazilians?

Certainly. Although as I had said before our kids aren’t so interested in Hip Hop as they used to be in the past, it still connects more with black people than with white folks. Of course the media made Hip Hop an accessible thing, and a lot of white guys like it, but it still talks about a kind of life that they can’t understand. It is really funny to be in a concert for a group like Racionais MC’s for example, the most famous Hip Hop group in Brazil, their songs are really intense, they talk against racism and they really talk about white rich boys and at the same time that they are singing about this, they are there repeating the sentence as if it weren’t about them. It’s crazy.

Talk a little about the state of racism in Brazil.

Racism in Brazil is a thing really hard to deal with. We are used to saying that is like a tick that everybody knows exists but nobody can see it. As I said before we first were raised by the whitening theory, after by the racial democracy theory, it was only in the 1950’s with the UNESCO Project, some sociologists, especially Florestan Fernandes started to talk about racism as an issue that Brazil should fix. But most Brazilians including Afro Brazilians, still think that there isn’t racism here. One of the most important things that keep things this way is because racism here is totally hidden, so people usually have a black friend, usually date a black person, like black culture like samba or religious things, or have a black idol like a soccer player, so when we talk about racism people usually have created a barrier that prevents them from seeing it as a problem in our country. Since 1988 racism became a crime in our country, but racists actions are still happening, every single day we receive information about a new case of racism, but nobody is going to jail ‘cause of this. Our State is still anti-black but nobody does anything, our people are still living in poverty, but people prefer to see it as a social issue. When we talk about affirmative action like racial quotas, they get upset as if we were trying to take something from them, so it is really hard to talk about racism in Brazil, especially in an Afro American conception. But I can’t deny that we have had some wins in these past few years.

Are you sensing that Afro Brazilians are asserting themselves more?

In some ways, yes. Nowadays our census affirms that we have 53.7 % black population in Brazil and this is really important because if the census says that it is because people declared themselves as black during the interviews. But daily it is still hard to see people asserting themselves as black, trying to fight against the racism, and talking about blackness. Especially in the middle of ordinary people they are still ashamed of being black.

You have studied race in both the US and Brazil. How important is the connection, contact, and interaction between African Americans and Afro Brazilians?

In my opinion it isn’t only about African Americans and Afro Brazilians, but about the Diaspora in general. I think we are connected for invisible links that remind us of our ancestors in Africa. We were spread by slavery but our souls are still connected in inexplicable ways and it is possible to see it in our culture, food, religiosity, body expressions, and many other perspectives. We also need to deal with the same issues like violence, segregation, poverty, etc. So I think we have a lot to learn from each other. In our country most of us still see African Americans as an example of a successful black society, and are inspired by your movies, TV shows, artists, and also by your history. Even nowadays I know that what TV shows represent isn’t necessarily true to all of the black community in America, I still believe these examples are important. I also know that some black people in America are interested to know more about Afro Brazilian culture. Some of them try to connect with me to learn more and to try to come here to see it and it is always a pleasure to be helpful.

Where do you see the Afro Brazilian and African American connection going in the next five to ten years?

I think this relationship has everything that is necessary to grow up, because there is a mutual interest in this. But one thing that is important in my opinion is the respect. Before coming to Brazil, African Americans need to realize that we are people with a similar history but in a different context. Most of them have a really sincere wish to help us and they try to teach us how to apply here a kind of American model of dealing with racism, but unfortunately it doesn’t work, because Brazil has it own particular way to do things. I think that to make this connection work for both people we need to be open to learn and to teach at the same time, in a real exchange experience.

The original title of Thomas Chatterton Williams’s book, Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd was Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture.  My father has a lot of love and a lot of books, but if he had peeped the original subtitle’s reference to “beating hip-hop” I doubt he would have gotten Williams’s book for me.  I’m glad he didn’t see the original cover.

My favorite parts of Losing My Cool touch on the tender and complex ways that fathers who care deeply about their sons’ development as intellectually curious and compassionate human beings negotiate their own powerful influence over their sons’ lives with the equally powerful influence of their sons’ peers and popular culture.  Williams does a great job of describing the sensation of maturing from a teenager who passes over his father’s books on a quest to be considered cool by his peers into a young man who finally picks up those books and begins to understand what has engaged his father so deeply and why.

At it’s best Losing My Cool is a contemporary coming of age story.  It tells the tale of a young man going from thinking “Charles Dickens was something that swung between your legs” to appreciating Dickens as the author of Martin Chuzzlewit.  At it’s worst, it takes valid personal experiences and attempts to draw broad conclusions about the value (or lack thereof) of a complex culture.

“For more than thirty years the black world has revolved around the inventors of hip-hop values, and this has been a decisive step backward,” Williams writes–a surprising statement from someone whose book jacket advertises him as “a true fan.”  Throughout the book Williams comes across as so smart and capable of critically analyzing details of texts, that it is surprising when he matter-of-factly states that “black, hip-hop-driven culture” deals “strictly with the surface of things–possessions, poses, appearances, reactions.”

“Strictly”?!

I mean, I understand that many of us went through phases where we only paid attention to the most materialistic music that hip-hop had to offer, but surely Williams is aware of the robust history of incisive political commentary that has existed since the birth of hip-hop and that directly challenges these same values.  It’s fine not to mention Public Enemy in your memoir if you never listened to their music, but before leveling cultural critiques like those quoted above, do your homework, acknowledge the large body of evidence that contradicts the sweeping statements you are making, and don’t let the phrase “true fan” be used to describe you.

Really, my biggest frustration about Losing My Cool isn’t with Williams though.  It’s with the jacket of the book, which besides referring to Williams as a “true fan” also claims he’s “lived through it all”–a silly statement to make about anyone, especially a kid from the suburbs who tried on what he perceived to be a hip-hop identity for a handful of years before choosing to abandon it.

He doesn’t “blend Dostoevsky and Jay-Z,” as the Booklist review quoted on the cover of the paperback suggests.  There are a few references to Jay-Z in the book, but they don’t engage Jay’s philosophical ruminations and blend them with Dostoevsky’s, they paint him as an unsophisticated posterboy for the “Money, Cash, Hoes” strain of rap music.  Even once Williams was in college and had developed a critical perspective on hip-hop culture, he chose to bump “Girls, Girls, Girls” on repeat, instead of the more introspective and less misogynist tracks off Jay-Z’s The Blueprint like “Song Cry” or “Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)…”  No wonder he thinks hip-hop only has misogynistic, materialistic narratives to offer–that’s what he chose to listen to and to describe to his readers.

As someone whose work in many ways romanticizes hip-hop, I appreciate Williams’s personal recounts of the negative influence he feels hip-hop had on his values coming up.  It is an important reminder for me of the ways that parts of hip-hop culture have negatively impacted some of the people who love it most dearly.  Over the years, I have had many conversations with young people who take their favorite rappers lyrics literally and the images these rappers project sometimes play formative roles in these young peoples’ identity formation.  This can be a good thing when their favorite rapper is Jasiri X, but it can be a cause for concern when it’s 50 Cent and instead of paying attention to his business acumen, they’re enamored by the “Get Rich or Die Trying” ethos that 50 embodies in some of his songs, videos, and acting roles.

Hip-hop culture–particularly the strands of it that have been promoted by large media corporations–has played a part in the negativity that Willliams describes.  And yet it has done much more.  I wonder whether Williams truly doesn’t see this or whether it just didn’t fit the narrative he was trying to create.

At his best moments in Losing My Cool, Williams comes across as a sharp, honest, and interesting thinker.  But when he admits (seemingly with pride) that he can’t see Jay-Z, Nas, Mos Def, or Talib Kweli as anything more than “entertainers and petty egoists,” he demonstrates a lack of knowledge and maturity.  As I put down the book I couldn’t help but feel that Williams must be aware of how dimensional and diverse hip-hop actually is and how much it has to offer.  But instead of letting it stand as a compelling memoir, Williams attempts to make Losing My Cool serve as his revenge on hip-hop.  Sadly, in the end he undercuts his own strength, honesty, and charm as a story teller and social critic to do to hip-hop what he feels it did to him–put it in a box far narrower than it truly belongs.

Jacob Delgado was 19 when he was shot and killed on Broad Street in Providence, RI.  He was an artist and employee at the AS220 Broad Street Studio at the time of his death.  We had met about a year and a half earlier at the Rhode Island Training School (RITS), where he was incarcerated for several of his teenage years.  The first time I ever went to the RITS I met Jacob.  He had amazing energy, a stack of notebooks full of writing, and was one of the best freestyle rappers I have ever heard.

The first classes I taught at the RITS were poetry classes in the maximum security unit and every class would end in a freestyle cipher at the back of the room.  We would all rhyme, but Jacob and Matthew (who was killed two months after Jacob) were the leaders and they would often battle each other for long stretches of time to see who could come up with the most creative ways of insulting each other.

But while his rhyme style was aggressive, not everything Jacob wrote was…  While he was incarcerated he drafted a 13 page “proposal for change” which prioritized education as the most important thing for his peers and outlined plans for peer mediation, a teen summit, support groups, mentoring, voter registration, a tribal council, and a gang peace unit.  When he was released from the training school, he pursued these plans, going back to meet with administrators and joining the staff of the Broad Street Studio.  On staff at the Studio, Jacob participated in many things including writing and interviewing politicians for the Muzine, a bi-monthly publication of the Studio.  He also went to area high schools and helped recruit young writers to get involved.  The energy he brought on those school visits was contagious and engaged students like nothing else I’ve ever seen.

Maybe because he was on such a positive path from anger and destruction to creativity and peace, he didn’t think the situation would lead to violence…  Or maybe because he was incarcerated in an environment without guns for so many of his teenage years, when he got into an argument with some dude at the chimi truck late on a Friday night, Jacob expected it to be resolved with words and fists.  But even though they were both on Broad Street, the other guy was on a different path.

This is the prescient poem Jacob wrote the day before he was murdered.  I found it on the floor of the Studio the following Monday:

My Life

my life what it izz, lost full of emotions

that’s ready to flip.

Holly spirits – trying to capture my live

do i lose it? na I’ll manetane still not

undersanden how theas streets captured my vaines

scary sight on every corner lay’s a stane

memorys of splader brianes, young souls

curpted by fame killing another nigga fa a

name dam what a shame

- Jacob Delgado  RIP

I’ve worked with Big Picture Learning in a variety of capacities over the last several years.  About four years ago, Big Picture took on the challenge of breaking the college mold to design a new institution that would offer young people experiences that were more educationally fulfilling and did a better job preparing them for successful careers and civic engagement.

I recently wrote an article for GOOD.is about what Big Picture’s new college has achieved in its first few years.  Here’s a preview, click on it to see the full piece…

Apologies for the stagnancy of this site.  I was wrapping up my book, Hip Hop Genius, which took all of my writing energy and time for the past few months.  The manuscript is now off to the publisher and should be out in the beginning of 2011.  I’ll, of course, keep you posted.

First Different, Then Better Education Innovation

While I’ve been pretty absent from this site, I did post a link to an article I wrote for GOOD about the interesting symposiums that Elliot Washor, cofounder and codirector of Big Picture Learning, has been putting together around the country.  Here’s a link to that page: First Different, Then Better

Elliot has invited me to a few more of these symposiums, which I hope to post some thoughts about soon.  A few weeks ago, we were in Detroit to look at how learning happens at Makers Faires and this coming weekend we’ll be in Portland, OR to look at how schools can play a stronger role in helping young people to Eat Smart, Play Smart, and Be Smart.

Inkie Well J Interview

Another piece on the horizon is an interview I conducted with a talented young emcee from Rhode Island, Inkie Well J.  I’ll be sorting through my notes and posting that article sometime soon.  In the meantime, here’s a clip from him to get you excited about that interview…

Some Things That Have Gone Down on the Tweets

While I haven’t been posting many articles, I have found a bunch of things worth sharing.  Here are some links I’ve posted to Twitter recently.  If you’re interested in following the Husslington Post on Twitter, click here: http://twitter.com/husslington.  In the meantime, check out a link or two…

Marilyn Buck was released from prison and passed away: http://bit.ly/bBRUgT

June 2010 was the warmest June ever recorded fourth consecutive warmest month on record: http://j.mp/aTaABM (via @calmo & @ericandersen)

The Gulfsouth Youth Biodiesel Project documentary video (from @OperationReach – an organization I’m on the board of): http://youtu.be/EDv7s_2YKwE

When it comes to schools, “Small is Still Beautiful” according to the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.toch.html

New York agrees to federal oversight for troubled youth prisons http://nyti.ms/9GrM3q (via @DroptheRock)

Handcuffing 6-Year-Olds in New Orleans? Seriously? http://tinyurl.com/26xoaxz (via @NewBlackMan)

Hip-hop test prep shows good results (and the article shouts out my girl Laura Rubin’s class!): http://bit.ly/dyhWl7

Laura’s school in hip-hop ed news again: School shows that hip-hop education is more than rap: http://is.gd/djdjg (via @chrisemdin)

More hip-hop education news:

2 recent articles on teaching math with rap music via Marcella Runell Hall: http://bit.ly/9rr2et & http://bit.ly/aXjHA6

LA teacher makes algebra cool with a hip-hop beat http://bit.ly/bRCaZF

Jim Jones turned a classroom into a record label at Campus High in Brooklyn (VIDEO): http://bit.ly/df0rZm

Pharrell speaks on ‘his mission to fix our nation’s schools’ and the school he is starting… http://bit.ly/bZZL6U

Publicity for Rap DataPacks/Hip Hop WordCount – this post invokes Dewey: http://bit.ly/93Sw5G (@street_therapy)

J Dilla Foundation teams up with Berklee School of Music to launch Education Initiative at Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival:http://bit.ly/acSRzu

50 Cent returns to South Jamaica, Queens to talk to kids about healthy living/exercise: http://bit.ly/aIspPA

Drake funds Jamaican Learning Center: http://bit.ly/aBPv1C

(In other Drake news: Drake experienced racism at his Jewish day school & rocked to Backstreet Boys at his bar mitzvah… http://bit.ly/cyQUPy [via @sonicrap])

And the world we live in could not be more ugly or beautiful…

Rest In Peace Oscar Grant and Marilyn Buck.

Happy birthday to Terra.

Have a great week and keep husslin.