As a treat for my students in our last class before break, I hosted a panel of hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs from Camden. It was a pretty remarkable session, and a big shout-out to Joe White (@BigNoizeIncCMD) for organizing, and Rell Buc (@RellBuc) and Porta Rich (@PortaRich) for such an engaging panel. I have so many thoughts kicking around, but I just wanted to share some of the music and videos that my students got to see.

One of my students asked what made Camden hip-hop’s sound different. Porta Rich and Big Joe suggested that honest story-telling is a big part of the Camden scene, and that it differentiates them from many other artists who glorify street life rather than show their struggle with it. They interspersed their answers with music videos, and you can see a lot on this honesty and storytelling in Porta Rich’s “Trap Season” and Rell Buc’s “My City”.  

That story-telling was a big theme throughout the panel, and started to inject some “real life” into some of the policy concepts we’ve been reading about and discussing all semester. It’s one thing to talk about police, it’s another to hear a story about being a “suspect until they get to know you” and stories of being repeatedly pulled over. It’s one thing to talk about poverty, another to talk to entrepreneurs who say one income is never enough anymore. I can’t say thank you enough to these artists for sharing their passion and their stories.