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AMY GOODMAN: ”DNA” by Kendrick
Lamar, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. This is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
We end today’s show with the announcement that shocked the world of music and
hip-hop.
DANA CANEDY: And
last, but certainly not least, for music, the prize is awarded to DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar, a
virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic
dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern
African-American life.
AMY GOODMAN: That
was Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy announcing Monday that rapper Kendrick
Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the album DAMN., making this man from
Compton, California, the first non-classical or jazz artist to receive the
honor. Kendrick Lamar has topped the charts with music that tackles issues of
race, politics, religion and even mental health. The Pulitzer follows the five
Grammy Awards won by Lamar in January for DAMN., his fourth studio
album. His previous album, To Pimp a Butterfly,
also won five Grammys. Kendrick Lamar recently produced and curated the
soundtrack for the Black Panther film
to critical acclaim.
For more, we’re joined by hip-hop educator Brian Mooney.
He’s a New Jersey high school teacher. After Kendrick Lamar learned Mooney was
teaching the To Pimp a Butterfly album to his
students in 2015, Kendrick visited Mooney’s class in New Jersey.
Welcome to Democracy Now! I’m
sure the kids could care less.
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.
Thanks for having me on, Amy. I appreciate it. Obviously, it was an incredible
day that myself and my students will never forget. And, you know, I’m part of a
collective of educators who use hip-hop in classrooms and educational spaces,
called the HipHopEd movement. And, you know, we’re educators and researchers
and professors and activists and community leaders who find ways to engage
young people, urban youth, using all the elements of hip-hop culture,
particularly rap music, but also other elements of hip-hop—knowledge of self
and turntablism and graffiti art. So, we’ve been thinking about ways to be
culturally relevant in classrooms and get young people excited about, you know,
rap music, that they’re already invested in.
You know, so when I saw Kendrick Lamar release To
Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, there were so many concepts and
themes that were relevant to novels that I was already teaching, like Toni
Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. So it
was a perfect opportunity to just kind of like enhance the curriculum that I
was already teaching. And my students responded really well.
AMY GOODMAN: I
mean, of course, I was kidding when I said they could have cared less. Could
you imagine Kendrick Lamar walking into the school? How did the kids act?
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.
Well, what was incredible about it was that he was really a student that day,
when he came in. You know, he was there to kind of really listen to our
students perform their work. And he, like a good teacher, was just really
leaning in, listening to what they were saying.
AMY GOODMAN: So
what was your response yesterday when you heard that DAMN.had won the Pulitzer?
BRIAN MOONEY: Just
thrilled and really just, you know, like humbled that my students and I were
able to, you know, play a part and bring some awareness to other educators and
teachers around the world that his work can be educational, and rap music and
hip-hop culture can be used to teach and learn. So, you know, I thought it was
a long time coming. It was well deserved. You know, while hip-hop, in many
ways, has been very anti-institutional, it’s nice to get the institutional
recognition that I feel like is very deserved.
AMY GOODMAN: The
Pulitzer committee said DAMN. was, quote, “a
virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic
dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern
African-American life.” So, talk about how he has changed the landscape.
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You
also have now Beyoncé, what, first headlining Coachella—
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah,
yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —the
first black woman to headline Coachella. This is really late in time.
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You
have Nina Simone getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of
course posthumously.
BRIAN MOONEY: Right,
right, in the same year when Black Panther is
breaking all kinds of records in the box office, too. So, it’s an incredible
year, I think. But with Kendrick’s music in particular, you know, I feel like
it’s part of a long lineage in hip-hop. And if you listen to that album, in
particular, DAMN., the masterful
storytelling and command of language, you know, it’s incredible.
You know, sometimes educators will think, “Well, how do
you use hip-hop in a classroom, you know?” And you think about people like
Shakespeare. Those people were incredibly versatile with what they did with
language. You know, Chaucer, they were inventing words. They were inventing
language. You know, they used the double negative. People don’t know that,
right? So, when you think about emcees, modern-day emcees—right?—these are
people with incredible linguistic versatility, like Kendrick Lamar.
AMY GOODMAN: I
want to go to a video from NPR of
Kendrick Lamar going to your tech—High Tech High School, where you teach in
North Bergen, New Jersey. After visiting with your class, he performed at the
school-wide assembly.
KENDRICK LAMAR: This
album wasn’t made for—I didn’t think I made it for a 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 inspired me on a whole 'nother
level. I always get people like my parents or, you know, older adults saying,
’This is great. You know, you have a message. You have—you have themes. You
have different genres of music.' But to get a kid actually telling me this,
it’s 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 that classroom, it just proved me right.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes,
there he was, at your high school, at High Tech High School in North Bergen,
New Jersey. What was his reaction to coming to the school?
BRIAN MOONEY: One
of the things that really made an impression on all of us was when he spoke to
the whole student body. He said that this was the best accolade he ever
received. And this was at the time when he just recently got the key to Los
Angeles and he was deemed a generational icon. And he’s telling a whole student
body of high school students, “This is the best accolade I could ever receive,
is making an impact on young people.”
AMY GOODMAN: So,
talk more about HipHopEd, Brian.
BRIAN MOONEY: Yeah,
so, for any teachers out there, educators listening, you know, we have a
Twitter chat on Tuesday nights from 9 to 10 p.m. with hashtag #HipHopEd. And we
talk about the intersections of hip-hop, education, pop culture. We share
resources, ideas, lesson plans. And we’re really, you know, just—it’s a
professional development every Tuesday night and a resource for educators, who
often can become very isolated in classrooms, you know, in the way that public
school works. So, it’s an incredible resource.
And, you know, the HipHopEd movement is led by Dr. Chris
Emdin from Teachers College, Columbia University, but also just teachers in
classrooms doing the work every day. And they just released a book, a
compilation, #HipHopEd, the first
part in a compilation, and it’s incredible. There’s just amazing teachers and
researchers out there, from Dr. Lauren Kelly at Rutgers to Mike Dando in the
University of Wisconsin, to Dr. Edmund Adjapong at Seton Hall and Dr. Ian Levy
at UMass—just incredible people who are doing great, great work. And that’s my
team, the HipHopEd team. We’re just some brilliant, brilliant people who really
care about kids and are trying to do good work in schools.
AMY GOODMAN: Your
kids’ response yesterday when it was announced that Kendrick Lamar won the
Pulitzer?
BRIAN MOONEY: You
know, I haven’t really talked to them much about it yet, because I haven’t been
in yet today. But when we—when I go in, you know, we’re going to talk about it
and discuss it, because, you know, this is what we do. We talk about these
recognitions and these accolades, that these are artists that they’re already
listening to, they’re already invested in. So, when we, you know, do this kind
of work in schools, it’s about being culturally responsive and culturally
relevant.
AMY GOODMAN: Brian
Mooney, New Jersey high school teacher. Kendrick Lamar went to his school in
2015, High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey, to perform for the
kids, as Brian Mooney participates in HipHopEd.
That does it for our broadcast. I’ll be speaking
in Lincoln, Nebraska,
on Friday night. That’s Friday night at the Rococo Theatre. Check our website
for more details, democracynow.org.
