am heartened to hear that you use hip hop to teach literature/poetry to the students you tutor. It is a shame that hip-hop so often gets dismissed as an art, when it really is the modern equivalent of centuries-old genres of poetry. Ever read any medieval poetry, particularly troubadour poetry? Take Shlomo ibn Gabirol, a medieval, Hebrew court poet, for example:

“These people–their fathers I would despise to have as dogs for my sheep.
Their faces never blush, unless they paint them scarlet.
They are like giants in their own eyes, but like grasshoppers in mine.
When I speak my wisdom, they rebuke me as they would a Greek:
“Speak our language so we may understand, for this is gibberish.”
Now I shall stomp on them like dirt, for my tongue will be my pitchfork.

If your ear is uncircumcized, what good will my harmonies do?
Your necks are not fit to bear the gold of my jewels.
If these fools were only to open their mouths to my raincloud,
my fragrance would drip upon them, my cinnamon fragrance fill them.

Woe unto wisdom and woe unto me, for among such fools, I’m forced to be!”

Sound familiar in tone and theme? Yeah, but for some reason one is academically credible and the other not…

(My rough translation, of course, fails to capture the impressive rhyme, meter, and wordplay of the Hebrew.)