Confucius MC is a rapper from south London. He has been a close friend of mine since we were teenagers, and has had a huge influence on my life, my character and my rhyme-style. For the past 14 years he has been working at a primary school in Lambeth teaching the art of lyricism to year 5 and 6 children, as well as writing and teaching bespoke curriculum-based rap songs to every year group from nursery upwards. He put out various mixtapes before releasing The Highest Order on Jehst’s label, YNR Productions, in 2014, followed by The Artform in 2017, on We Stay True.
What has the experience of teaching children about lyricism taught you about your own life as a rapper?
Ultimately it’s led me to be more thoughtful. Because children look at things so deeply. As we get older, we forget that in the journey to discovering what it was that held our attention, we gave everything the same scrutiny.
Has it taught you anything about our society in general?
Working in a school environment that’s very multicultural, all sorts of languages, all sorts of backgrounds, and watching children finding ways to inhabit the space together and support each other, it shuts down these ridiculous arguments about why we can’t live in peace together. The kids in my sessions have their difficulties, of course, but they are ultimately regarding each other as family. I’ve seen some unbelievable things that make me wish the whole world could see this. But there’s also an unspoken understanding between everyone involved that this is only happening because we’re in this space. We’re safe. The minute we leave the school, everybody’s life changes, whether you’re the adult working there or the child going home, you step out of that environment and suddenly everybody’s back to reality.
A reality that’s not safe?
Safety is an important word when you’re working with young children. Kids flourish when they feel safe. But when you’re talking about “urban London”, there’s an assumption made, when you refer to safety, that it’s about physical safety, about wellbeing on the streets. But there’s another way to look at these things: if you are not safe to express yourself, how you actually feel, or what you actually think about what is going on around you, that leads to a whole different type of danger.
Some of the kids that have been through your sessions have gone on to become rappers. How does that feel for you?
It’s a deep feeling! It goes a long way to have somebody introduce you to the power of words and not make you feel that words have a relationship to some type of quota whereby if you don’t read X amount of words in this book and finish it and understand it, you can’t progress to the next level. I think it comes from attempting to give people access to their own words. I’ve met other educators who haven’t been able to understand what I’m doing. They’ve been perplexed because these are kids who can’t read, don’t write, don’t have, as they refer to it in education, very good levels of retention, but they’re learning these raps word for word in 10 to 15 minutes.
What was your own experience of education like?
Very different to the one I attempt to provide for young people. I never want the kids I work with to look at me in the way I looked at some of the teachers that I had. A teacher gets the chance to stand up in front of 30 people, for a year, and all right there’s a curriculum, but the delivery of that is down to the individual. That’s a massive responsibility.
So how do you work with the kids?
We start with a conversation, talk about the world. Something might have happened, in school or outside school. We talk about it, then the conversation expands, and I put the beat on, and the beat starts playing as the backdrop to this conversation and slowly the books start to open and then essentially there’s just this kind of magical calm and silence that falls over the room, and every child is engrossed in their idea. Every single artist on whatever level they operate knows about that feeling. The peace! I always stop everything at that moment and I say to them – if you take nothing from what we do here, remember what this feels like. And identify with it.
You were born and raised in Peckham. Was it an inspiring place to grow up?
It had a lot of character. It had a reputation, and any area that’s got a reputation, whatever the reputation is… it creates something larger than life. But the whole gentrification situation is pretty messed up.
Can Peckham survive the changes?
It’s not looking promising.
How does that feel for you?
When you grow up somewhere that doesn’t really have anything going on, and then you see a new movement of people who are using its negative connotations as a marketing tool to add some type of edge to a brand, that’s difficult. But there’s another side to it, which is about the wider historical context, and just understanding that 30 years ago, there was another group of people in Peckham having a completely different conversation about a different set of changes. You had Only Fools and Horses, then X amount of years later you got Desmond’s. Although fictional references, they are both diverse cultural representations of a very small geographical space.
As a teacher and practitioner of the craft, how is lyricism in the UK doing?
We’re on the cusp of great things. We’ve got a beautiful situation that is starting to materialise. With artists like yourself, Loyle Carner, the level High Focus is starting to reach as a record label, kids like my guy Jesse James Solomon, out there earning respect as a lyricist with a very distinct type of delivery. It just feels like we’re creating a broader universe for lyricists to exist in, and when you’ve got a situation like that, it means the next people that are going to pop up, their pool of references are going to be so much more diverse and so is their belief in what they can achieve.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion