Gangsta Rap [Paperback]

"The authority with which the story is written leaves the reader no choice but to be drawn in - and indeed educated - into the world of gangsta rap, with all the appropriate vocabulary. Not for a long time have I read a book with such a 'pick me up again' factor" Independent on Sunday

Ray has given up school. He sees no point in education and despises authority. And then he has no choice about school as he is excluded. But Ray also has troubles at home, which means he has nowhere to stay and ends up sleeping in the local record shop, owned by his friend Marga Man. Ray and his friends attend a Social Exclusion Project which means they can develop their music skills. Marga Man gets a record deal for them, and they become local heroes. But another rap band takes a dislike to Ray's music and gang warfare is the result...Based on Benjamin's own troubled experience of school and the music business, his passionate, immediate voice will appeal to all his fans.

Why did I write Gangsta Rap?

I was fascinated by the amount of young people excluded from school who had loads of talent and who then went on to succeed in their chosen careers, usually creative careers. I was in a similar situation myself when I was excluded at 13 and the teacher called me a "born failure", so I wanted to go into the life of a young boy in a similar situation. Ray is, on the one hand, a bad boy, a boy you wouldn’t want your daughter to bring home, but actually underneath there is goodness and real talent. So I wanted to explore what could happen to him if he was given creative freedom and how he could be inspired by a head teacher who had the vision to recognise his talent.

I love Rap music. Many people say that teenage boys are not interested in poetry but Rap is simply street poetry. Why do kids get embarrassed when you call it poetry? I used to. I love poetry, but poetry reminds lots of kids of dead slow words written by dead white men. Rap tells it as it is. It might grate or upset you, but people who are studying youth trends should just listen to Rap music as that’s where it’s at. Rap is street poetry owned by young people. Nowadays every kid on a street corner is a rapper and that’s all good.

I also wanted to explore the gun culture. In some areas where black people live there are more guns than food. In many inner city areas kids no longer get into scraps and come home with a bloody nose or a black eye, now it’s a shooting or at the very least a stabbing.

Some studies have shown that black kids are highly intelligent when they start their education but by the time they’ve left they are at the bottom of the pile – why is that? I can partly answer that question from my own experience of school where I found the system far too rigid. When I objected to the teacher’s version of black history starting with slavery, I was told that that’s how she was told to teach the subject. When I objected to being told that infrastructure of civilisation started in Europe, I pointed out that Ancient Egypt had a social security system and a sewage system. I feel that everyone is taught a biased inflexible version of history and I know it’s not the teachers’ fault – they’re boxed in by the thing called the curriculum. My instinct says it’s based on a need to pass exams. Are kids failing school, or are schools failing kids?

Simply what do you do with talent that’s living on the wrong side of town?

Benjamin Zephaniah is probably one of the most high-profile international authors writing today, with an enormous breadth of appeal, equally popular with both adults and children. Most well-known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults and ground-breaking performance poetry for children, Benjamin also has his own rap/reggae band, and has appeared on desert Island Discs. He is in constant demand internationally to perform his work: he is (he thinks) Nelson Mandela's favourite poet, and is the only Rastafarian poet to be short-listed for the Chairs of Poetry for both Oxford and Cambridge University. His previous novels for Bloomsbury are 'Face' and 'Refugee' Boy'. He has also edited an anthology of poems 'The Bloomsbury Book of Love Poems' . Benjamin lives in East Ham, London.