Press
 
Hip hop's lessons
by Adrienne Sanders

San Francisco Examiner 08.20.02

If you want to understand hard-to-reach teens, slip on some headphones and pump up the volume.

Savvy San Francisco police officers and youth counselors are tuning into rap music, the core of hip-hop culture to understand teenagers and break down the barriers to their world.

Hip hop's baggy pants fashion, bold graffiti, break dancing and record scratching have been thumping across the country for 20 years -- and the music is more popular than ever. Rappers such as Eminem, Jah Rules and P. Diddy sell millions of records each year to young fans from the suburbs to the inner cities.

"When (rappers) flow, they are talking about things us kids can relate to," said Jasmine, a high school senior.

The things that Jasmine and her friends relate to are songs such as Eminem's "Cleaning Out My Closet" -- a thumping little diddy which explodes with anger toward the singer's abusive mother and derelict father. That's reality for a lot of kids, said 19-year old aspiring hip-hop producer Adrian Guillermo.

"If parents or teachers listen to rappers they 're going to hear how hard it is to be a teenager now," Guillermo said.

SFPD's gang task force Inspector Toney Chaplin listens to rap music to pick up clues about the groups he monitors. During house searches and drug busts, Chaplin listens to the music playing on their stereos.

"I want to listen to what they listen to," said Chaplin, who works with black gangs. "A lot of kids carry little radios. That's standard issue gear if you're going to be out there on corner selling dope."

Young San Francisco gangsters may hawk crack for their adult bosses, Chaplin has learned, but they're not smoking it.

"The big thing with black youth is ecstasy," he said. "In the rap songs they sing 'Pop a couple X' ... you'll hear a lot about the culture in the songs."

The City's corner grocery stores are stocked with CDs from local hip-hop artists Sugar Bear, Cellski and the wildly popular Ruthless By Law, or RBL Posse.

Two young rappers from the Hunters Point Harbor Road projects formed RBL 10 years ago. One of them was gunned down last year in an internal gang war. RBL's song lyrics explain the conflict -- a valuable history lesson for Chaplin.

He said hip hop is so fundamental to the lives of local youth that most would rather rap rather than do homework.

"When you open up their small backpacks," he said, "you don't find algebra equations. You see rap lyrics they are composing on the back of school binders, paper, whatever they can get their hands on."

That close relationship with rap inspired Jeff Feinman to start The DJ Project, an after-school program which uses hip hop to help kids learn about business, self-discipline and their own creative potential.

Teens from low-income areas of The City become songwriters, performers, sound technicians, producers, cover artists and salespeople. The group released its second CD two weeks ago.

In spite of its bad rap, many adults see the music as a positive force in kids' lives.

"It allows them to get things off their chests, "said gang prevention counselor Rudy Corpus, who works at United Playaz of the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center.

Legendary rapper Tupac Shakur, inspired much of Corpus' own community work. Before his death in 1996, Shakur was creating The Lost Tribe, a group to help inner city kids.

"That's what we are, an organized tribe to save lives," Corpus said.

Neither Corpus nor Feinman are fond of the pro-violence messages in some rap songs but agree they reflect the backgrounds of many of the artists -- and that the music is a good way to understand the kids.

"I don't know how much adults could learn from hip hop," said Guillermo, a staffer at The DJ Project. "But they could use hip hop to reach out to them."
 
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