Khafre Jay, the founder and executive director of Hip Hop for Change, teaches students to use hip hop music, breakdancing, and graffiti art as ...

Turning a pandemic into an opportunity for educational and artistic empowerment is what Khafre Jay lives for, and his celebrated Hip Hop for Change network isn’t about to let today’s crisis (just the latest) short-circuit its mission . . .

The program is based on four principles from the Zulu nation: “peace, love, unity and having fun,” said Jay. Students learn about graffiti art, breakdancing, DJ’ing and, of course, lyricism. The workshops are very hands-on, but they always begin with the history and nuances of hip-hop culture, which have largely been left out of mainstream hip-hop, said Jay.

Peace, love, unity. Hardly the message of the gangsta rap so popular in the mainstream nowadays. And yet, a new generation is rediscovering the foundations of hip-hop, which run deeper than trendy, commercialized versions of the genre currently seen in movies and on TV.

Khafre Jay asks a classroom of seventh- and eighth-graders at Bancroft Middle School in San Leandro to name hip-hop artists that they’ve heard of. “Nicki Minaj. Drake. K Camp. Mase,” various students call out. Then he asks what they rap about. Hands shoot up. Violence. Sex. Drugs. Disrespecting women. “That’s all they pretty much talk about,” one girl says.

It’s Friday morning at Lighthouse Charter School in East Oakland, and the kids in Ms. Baumert’s ninth-grade class have a visitor. 

Khafre Jay and Hip Hop for Change, the non-profit he founded, are starting to make a name for themselves on the Bay Area’s Hip Hop, media and advocacy scene. Besides promoting dope independent shows, Hip Hop for Change is organizing the upcoming Environmental Equity Summit on Saturday, May 21, 1-6 p.m., located at the New Parish in Oakland . . . 

Hands up, don’t shoot. Pants up, don’t loot. Black lives matter. White lives matter. We live in a white supremacist culture. We live in post-racial America.

I can’t breathe
I can breathe
I can’t breathe

Khafre Jay of Hip-Hop for Change faces an uphill battle but keeps rapping anyway.

Hip Hop For Change is creating a grassroots movement to promote socially conscious hip-hop artists.

Hip hop came from the streets of the Bronx and Harlem, and has arguably never lost its connection to the context in which it was born. Speaking authentically about life "on the streets" is still a priority of rap and hip hop artists.