Feb 17- Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis

In the article titled Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis by A.A. Akon, he brings up an exciting point that hip hop pedagogy touches on such important topics like race, class, oppression, sexuality, and so much more like mental health and all these problems people face nowadays and in the past. Hip-hop can talk about these issues to the youth that they can relate to and that is relevant to them. From personal experience, there is a strong correlation between critical consciousness and hip-hop for youth. What we observe and listen to dramatically affects our life I will use one of the newest examples of this with the enormous rapper lil baby. During the protests and riots that were taking place in America, he made a song called “The Bigger Picture.” It blew up super fast. Because he notices his wrongs and says some compelling lines within the music, like “It’s bigger than black and white; it’s a problem with the whole way of life.” Another critical point line is Lil Baby brings up the fact that not all cops are corrupted, which is essential because he is telling his supporters that not all cops are the same, and at that time, everyone thought all cops were the same. Lil Baby’s song is full of problems. It’s a great listen if you have never heard, but NWA is the pioneer of speaking up. They had a massive impact on American society in the 1980s and 90s. The music became the first forefront of the movement against police brutality. They sparked significant riots and gained insane awareness of poverty and crimes in Compton, Los Angeles. They have a documentary on them; it’s a fascinating watch; it also showed if they performed their famous song “F*** The Police” at their concert that, the police wouldn’t be their security and try to arrest them after. But to prove a point, NWA finished their performance with the song. But there are many more artists like Tupac Shakur or newer ones like Kendrick Lamar, who shine an ample light on these problems and use their music to touch and register with the youth to try and make the world a better place.