To the amazing high school Class of 2016: ‘18 Years in Rap’

If you’re at one of the late-graduating high schools and still looking forward to an emotional rendition of Pomp and Circumstance or even if you’ve already taken off for beach week in the outermost banks of North Carolina, the hip-hop poets at Flocabulary want to confer upon graduating high school students a very special gift:  18 years in Rap.

From the creation of Google in 1998 to the launching of Facebook  in 2004 to the 2016 presidential campaign, the pictures inspire as the lyrics recall what it’s been like to grow up from one century to the next in a culture driven by social media and a world diminished by hate:

“Plus, one of the deadliest attacks that we know:

9/11 caused almost 3,000 coffins

U.S. invades Afghanistan, hunting bin Laden.”

18 Years in Rap comes to you from the same guys who do the weekly current events project, The Week in Rap.  They also maintain an online library of hip-hop songs and videos for grades K-12, used by teachers in more than 50,000 schools, on everything from vocabulary to life skills.  The Flocabulary team includes current and former educators, musicians, video artists, sound engineers and school administrators.

Flocabulary promises to be around all summer looking for more headlines and rhymes.  But in the meantime, they offer the following:

“There’s a lot we don’t know, but we know this:

The future’s unwritten, the time is now,

You can shape the world, the question is, how?
Congratulations!”

All the best to the amazing Class of 2016!