"I think my initial motivations were um that I think if I, when I was in high school if I had that program, my, the decision-making I, well the decision I made about my schooling would have been different and I probably would have had a much better experience with high school because I had a really terrible high school experience."

"We did a scale – you know, because it’s usually excellent, good, satisfactory, poor? Instead, we did, ‘brap, brap’; ‘dope’; ‘aiiit”, and ‘wack’! They really responded well to that."

"I think a lot of the kids, like we said about hip-hop being so pervasive, they look at it and see this end product, and it’s so sexy. They’re like, “I want to make that!” It’s good for them to go through the production because they see that it’s not all that easy – it takes a lot of work and perseverance to make an end product that you’re satisfied with. "

"Why hip-hop? Hip-hop is it right now! I don’t know if you realize, everything out there, whether it be video, audio, print media, ads in magazines – the dancing; hip-hop is the craze right now. Why not use that as a way to engage these kids positively, because we know they love it."

"For them to take ownership and to know that they had an outcome of the project – a physical that they can show, and they were part of that process, and they created their beats instead of someone else doing it. It’s much more important to teach kids how to do that for themselves."