Higher Learning Series: Hip-Hop and Technology

Meet Ilan Zechory, Mahbod Moghadam, and Tom Leham graduates of Yale University that founded Rap Genius website. Rap Genius is your guide to the meaning of rap lyrics.

You can listen to songs, read their lyrics, and click the lines that interest you for pop-up explanations – they have thousands of canonical rap songs explained (2Pac, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z – even the beginning of the Torah).

Their aim is not to translate rap into “nerdspeak”, but rather to critique rap as poetry.

Higher Learning is presented as part of the Schomburg’s Hip-Hop 4.0 Initiative to examine the ways educators are using hip-hop culture to engage and teach K-12 students in classrooms and the community. Hip-Hop 4.0 is curated by Martha Diaz, founding director of the Hip-Hop Education Center.