Austen Martin x Rhymes with Reason
“[The Hip-Hop genre] is the world's most popular and equitable word bank.”
How does Generation Z learn vocabulary these days? For Austin Martin, the answer is by listening to their favorite hip hop songs. Martin is the founder and CEO of Rhymes with Reason (RwR), an online interactive educational platform that enables users to study vocabulary words through hip-hop lyrics. The program offers nearly 1500 songs from the past 30 years and a variety of curated playlists to students of all ages. Currently, the platform offers its services through over 100 educational programs.
You may ask… what inspired this idea? At Brown, Martin discovered that about 67 of the top 100 SAT words can be found in recognizable hip-hop songs. In other words, music can be used to enhance literacy, learning capacity, and retention. To date, Martin has collaborated with musical artists Chance the Rapper's SocialWorks to produce the Chicago Learning Playlist for 1,000 Windy City students.
Check out this playlist curated by Austin Martin:
Cardi B--Best Life
Kendrick Lamar--Feel
Drake--Diplomatic Immunity
Chance the Rapper--How Great
Beyonce--Ego
J. Cole--Love Yourz
Pharrell--Frontin
Rihanna-Hard
Migos--Big on Big
Lupe Fiasco--Paris Tokyo
Rhymes with Reason is about empowering students and giving them the agency to take control of their learning. More recently, Austin and his team have launched a comprehensive home study plan for students during the COVID-19 pandemic featuring a learning playlist creator that enables students to customize a personal playlists encompassing the specific words they want to learn.