LOS ANGELES — The music of N.W.A represents the youth of Darryl Carter. His goal is to explain what the group meant in the late '80s to a new generation of students.
It's the second semester that he's taught the history of hip-hop to the kids at Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino. He pitched the idea to the school last year.
"There's a lot of things that actually went into actually creating hip-hop like Reaganomics or Rodney King or racial profiling." "I wanted them to understand the artists they love today, the Kendricks, the J. Coles, the Chief Keefs, they all came from the beginning," Carter said.“There’s a lot of things that actually went into actually creating hip-hop like Reaganomics or Rodney King or racial profiling.”
For years, Carter worked in hip-hop radio. Through this course, he's getting his students to better understand American history through the music.
"I asked a lot of the artists I interviewed, 'if we didn't have slavery or segregation or Jim Crow, would we have hip-hop as it is today?'" Carter said. "And a lot them say 'no,' because some of those trials and tribulations put us in the inner-city, put us in an environment which had us fighting back through our lyrics, through our content or whatever."
Crespi Carmelite, an all-boys school, is the first in the state to offer this class, and it's being taught to a diverse group of students. Some of them, like Heath Altman, have never listened to hip-hop until now.
"I just thought they were making music because it sounded good," Altman explained. "Now I'm realizing they have more of a meaning. They're not making it to just make money. This is the best way to bring out their message."
Carter said it's the conversations he has with his students like Altman that make it all rewarding.
"And he'll see African Americans and rappers in a different light and he'll appreciate the music in a different light," Carter said.
In the end, the purpose of the class has very little to do with music but is really about understanding each other a little better.