TEXTBOOK
In many communities the lessons kids learn about guns come indirectly and with negative outcomes. Gun violence leaves kids with distorted views that make guns a must have token used to advertise their power. Teaching about guns in school and other learning environments is crucial in addressing the allure that surrounds guns. Teaching about guns in the classroom is a preventative method that can save live. Thus far, we've been late to respond, allowing school shootings and suicides to frame the coversation.
With that said, hip-hop provides the perfect framework for a lesson on guns. Not only does Hip Hop dominates the language of our youth, it also reflects their current reality and is more relevant than outdated textbooks. Such a curriculum pushes students to think outside the box, giving them the chance to develop critical thinking skills and engaging them ways that the normal curriculum does not. It's about using the culture that drive these young people to teach them traditional skills.
It's a meduims that students digest naturally, with lessons they can learn as they listen to their iPods. This textbook entry works in conjuction with the Bang* mixtape offered in our audio section. Here, we've selected tracks and provided ideas on how to use the mixtape as a sonic study guide to teach about guns in a learning environment.
2. G-Unit-My Buddy
In 1985, Hasbro released “My Buddy,” a doll marketed to young boys with the goal of teaching them to care for their friends. In 2003, 50 Cent’s G-Unit released a song by the same name, using the jingle from the toys Saturday morning TV spots to draw a powerful metaphor, likening one's gun to one's best friend. What seems like an offbeat comparison actually reflect a commonly held belief—the idea that guns are our most loyal companions. It’s a mentally derieved from the the secret nature, intimacy and physical proximty we have with guns, strapping firearms to our bodies like a mother does a baby. It comes from the protection a gun provides, the having of one's back like a friend would when in danger. It’s a friendship Llyod Banks details in the song’s first verse when he rhymes about his “tag-along" calling him reliable and even describring the closet space he dedicates to his friend.
Start this exercise in critical thinking by asking students to detail the charcteristics of friendship. Allow them to dissect the metaphor,
applying such characteristic to one's gun. Ask question on what makes a gun reliable, loyal and trustworthy. Once the connections are drawn, work to debunk this idea. What is it about this relationship that is inconsistent with friendship? Can guns betray us?
3. Dr Dre-Nigga Witta Gun
Straight from Dr. dre’s seminal record, The Chronic, "A Ni**a With a Gun" is an ode to the power that guns deliver. We all know it. It keeps us in check throughout our lives. It is exactly this power that gives police their authority, crooks their gusto, militaries their might. It’s the ability to move bodies, make grown men cry and play God by taking another’s life. The song’s call and response chorus details this when it asks: “whose the man with the master plan… a ni**a with a muthaf**kin’ gun.” Dre goes further rhyming: “I’m talkin’ about cockin’ a gauge in between your eyes/ and make you drop to your knees cause you realize that a gat a make any ni**a civilized.”
Get students out of their seat. Let them rehearse the feeling that come from weilding a gun, and the reactions that come from being held up. Get them to write about this experience and the power as they first experienced it with their own toys or real guns. Have them describe the transformation when playing with toys was no longer enough to provide this power.
5. Nas-I Gave You Power
“I Gave You Power “is arguably of Hip Hop’s most creative explorations of the gun. Not only does it match Nas with the Legendary DJ Premier, it also humanizes the gun, opening listerners imaginations to what a gun might think, its emotions, conscience and its own sense of purpose. Rapping from the guns perspective, nas delves into the psyche rhyming: “Beat up and battered/ they pull me out, I watch as ni**as scatter/ makin’ me kill but what I feel ain’t nevert mattered/ when I’m empty I’m quiet/ findin’ myself pheenin’ to be fired…”
Push students to explore this idea in your own classroom writing assignments. Start by encouraging them to explore the emotions that they would attribute to a gun. Make them detail what a gun might think after it takes a life, backfires or gets traded on the black market. Then go further by asking students to personify the other detremental things (drugs, pollution, etc.) that plague their communities. Conclude with students reading their words aloud so that the class as a whole can share in
on each individual's ideas.
6. Gangstarr-Tonz O Gunz
Guru starts the song with an apt analysis of the problem: “Tons of guns are in the streets now a days/ it’s big money and you know crime pays/ check your nearest overpopulated ghetto/ they greet you with a pistol, not trying to say hello./ mad kids pack cause their neighboorhoods like that/ want some shit that's fat catch a victim do a stick/ kids pullin’ triggers, ni**as killin’ ni**as/ Five-O they sit and wait and tally death tool figures.”
The song itself becomes a lesson by asking students to trace and illustrate the gun pipeline in the form of a graphic timeline. Students should include pictures and details at each milestone, from the manufacture of these firearms, to their transport and sale to merchants and individuals in the community. Make students research and think crtically about the details as they analyze the politics, economics and motivations that drive the gun trade.
9. Smiff N' Wesson-Bucktown
Smif and Wesson’s “Bucktown” is a unique record for its name alone. On the surface, Bucktown, the adopted moniker of Brooklyn, describes the burrough’s tough reputation for gun violence. Digging deeper, the song becomes a study on esteem as it played out in the hood. For instance, in the celebration of the moniker we discover the prestige one derives from living in such a dangerous environment. It's a pathology witnessed when a city's murder count is celebrated in rap lyrics. It's seen in the "stripes" one earns for serving time. It's the calling oneself a killer with a sense of pride. Debunking these ideas and others that value violence are extremely critical.
Start by asking students to share the many negative/prestigous ideas in their communities (things like being able to consume large amounts of alcohol and still being able to drive, or the amount of drugs one has sold). Next, create a list that contrasts the negative and perceived positives of each. On one side, drinking lots of alcohol may make you the life of the party. On the other side, it increases your chances of being killed in a car crash, not to mention the mental and physical toll it has on an individual. The goal is to get students to see that the negatives outweigh the positives.
10. Mobb Deep-Trife Life
Though “Trife Life” is not explicitly about guns, it’s a testament to the
ways in which gun violence is waged. The battle for territory and identiy is a dynamic with a long history, played out between tribes and families throughout civilization. In it’s modern day form, its a reality of our urban ghettos, where specific blocks declare us against them. Prodigy takes us on a ride from Queensbridge to Brooklyn, describing the conflict and anxiety that come with it when he raps: "Now we Bed Stuy bound/ far from home and on unknown ground/ but together we six deep, with five piece, nuttin’ sweet/ first ni**a frontin’ getting’ lifted off his fuckin’ feet." Havoc goes further, describing an outsider's visit to his projects, with the outcome ending in murder: “He tried to play tough so I put one in his brain/ even though I took his life, all I wanted was the chain.”
Explore this dynamic with students by eliciting their real-life conflicts with territorial viloence. Get them to share and detail the boundaries that define us versus them. Next, ask them to explore these boundaries in depth. For instance, what marks their own territory? Maybe it’s their housing project, maybe it’s their block or neighborhood. Whatever it may be, ask students to strip away these hypothetical lines with the goal of seeking common ground. Other than a claim to some territory what makes us different? The goal of the exercise is to answer a more important question: how are we the same?
12. Outkast-Red Velvet
While television promotes a Hip Hop culture of gloss and floss, the commuinties that breed our favorites rappers suffer from poverty and blight. It’s played out in real life when have-nots rob other have-nots, who work to look like they have. Outkast explores this phenomenon with an allusion to red velvet cake, driving home the metaphor of the bloodshed that often occurs when one gets “got” (getting robbed for flashing your valuables). On the second verse Andre 3000 raps: “Bill Gates don’t dangle diamonds in the face of peasants when he Microsoftin’ in the place.”
Use this songs to explore this culture, where displaying one's wealth amounts to clout. Debunk the perception of riches that exist in Hip Hop culture. Ask students to weigh in on the real-life consequences of their own appearances. Push them to imagine ways in which the culture of getting got can be attacked and defeated.
