Reddit reviews Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Music / Culture)

I imagine a lot of these kids already listen to a bunch of hip hop. They'll have their own tastes and preferences and opinions, which you can definitely use to your advantage.

For some stuff they're probably not familiar with:

Scratch is a really great film about DJing. It's rated R for language so you might need parental permission. It goes over the significance of the four elements and includes a fair bit of history. Not to mention the dopest shit you've ever seen on turntables.

Black Noise is a great book. It will definitely be over their heads, but it could be great background for you and there are parts you could photocopy to put a lesson plan together about the modern cultural impact of hip hop. You can really challenge the cognitive dissonance of listening to music that seems to preach values you don't share.

Here are a bunch of NPR interviews with important people discussing hip hop.

I think a great exercise would be to assign one of the essential albums from HHH for them to listen to. Give them a 1-2 sentence description of each MC/album and let them pick one they haven't heard to listen to. Have them write 1-2 pages on what they think and then discuss them as a group. It would be a really cool place to start and it would be some guaranteed expanding of horizons. Of course, if your school has strict regulations about profanity etc, this might be a problem. I'd emphasize that this is not going to expose them to anything they haven't seen before...

Good luck!

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Music/Culture) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0819562750/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_s3aLybES3S24T

Really, you should go to the "Customers also bought" section for this one or for Can't Stop Won't Stop and see what jumps out at you.