Back in March, a New Jersey High School teacher Brian Mooney wrote a blog about using Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly album as part of his curriculum. The post went viral, catching Lamar’s attention, and on Monday (June 8) the Compton rapper paid a surprise visit to High Tech High School to hear the students perform poetry.
Reports Rolling Stone:
Lamar’s day began in Mooney’s classroom, where the teacher’s poetry club and English class met their guest and displayed some of their work. The first student read a poem about the struggles he faces as a dark-skinned South Asian, and two others followed with a joint piece called “What the Media Taught Us.” Lamar laughed when they reached the line “You chose the wrong butterfly to pimp” and big-upped both works. “They got heart, they got intellect, they got punchlines,” he said, visibly moved.
After another performance, Lamar took questions from the class, the students asking about topics as specific the evolution of the rapper’s storytelling and as deep as his collaborations with jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington. Lamar spoke to the connections between different forms of storytelling and recalled his years as the quiet kid in the back desk: In elementary school, he was the first kid his teacher had ever heard use the word “audacity,” and at that point she predicted he would someday become a writer. Up front, the kids formed a circle and began to rhyme over a beat playing off Mooney’s cell phone.
All in all, Lamar was impressed with the students, even if the content of his album may not be for their age group. “I didn’t think I made [To Pimp a Butterfly] for 16-year-olds,” he said. “I always get, like, my parents or an adult saying, ‘This is great, you have a message, 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, ’cause it lets me know that their thought process is just as advanced as mine, even if I’m 10, 15 years older.”
K Dot closed out the day with a performance of “Alright.”
Check out the video below, and hit the gallery for tweets.
