D.C. Native Takes Hip-Hop to the Classroom

By Marcus A. Williams
Special to the AFRO

Music producer, Alex “Alleycat” Nesmith says he is very excited to show children just how fun learning can be. (Courtesy Photo)

(August 19, 2008) - It’s amazing how learning the lyrics to the most popular songs on the radio can be easier and much more enjoyable than learning the lackluster things that we need to succeed in everyday life.

But thanks to D.C. native Alex “Alleycat” Nesmith, learning the bare necessities will soon become just as fun as a Friday night party.

Nesmith is a respected music producer in his own right and in 2006 he co-founded Spark the Minds, a company that aims to harness the international power of hip-hop music to inspire kids to learn at every grade level.

Nesmith and his colleagues’ plan to put the excitement back into learning began with their newly released CD and workbook collection Shorties Hip Hop Multiplication.

The concept grew from a failed math lesson for fourth and sixth graders in a Toledo, Ohio elementary school.

Math instructor Christine Smith noticed that the students were more intoned with the latest music videos on MTV than they were with education and that’s when it dawned on her that music is the key to learning.

“I called up ‘Alleycat’ and I asked him to do a math song to a cool hip-hop beat just as a class project, to the 12’s and then the 8’s multiplication tables,” Smith says. “After we appeared on the ‘Good Morning America’ show, we were flooded with requests from all over the country from people asking how to buy the CD so we knew we had something big.”

The CD is a compilation of songs covering multiplication facts from 0 to 12 using the instrumental tracks of radio hits from artists like Chris Brown, T-Pain, Souljah Boy, Akon and Cassie, just to name a few.

The students performing the songs were chosen after they met the challenge of successfully learning their multiplication facts and displaying the ability to write their own lyrics.

 “We kept the lyrics that they wrote about the multiplication tables consistent with the flavor of the original song, because that’s how the learning bridge is created,” educates Nesmith. “Relating something very familiar with something not so familiar is what makes learning easier.”

As a result of the overwhelming response that Smart Shorties Hip Hop Multiplication received from the Washington D.C. Public School system, Nesmith and his colleagues were motivated to mold the musical CD into an educational movie.

The ultimate goal of the movie/music CD compilation is to provide “cool” and “hip” ways of learning. Nesmith and his team believes that the current leaning tools are “goofy” and just plain “corny” but with their “hip-hop” style of leaning students retain more and learn faster during a full day in the classroom.

To better bridge the gap between the popular world of hip-hop and the dreaded multiplication tables, the movie ––titled the same as the music CD–– will feature appearances by rappers E-40, Jim Jones, Souljah Boy and Mims.

Another positive side to the project is that the students, who mostly come from underprivileged backgrounds, will gain wealth as well as knowledge.