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Healthy Hip Hop With Local Rapper Roy Scott

KCUR

Roy Scott loves music. He was 12 when he first started writing lyrics, 15 when he started to produce his own beats. He became part of the underground “gangster rap” subculture. This is when Scott became “Macc James,” a member of the Chop It Up Clicc. But as Scott got older with kids of his own, he realized the power and influence music can have on young people’s lives.

He turned in the alias and gangster rap messages to have a more positive impact on his kids. Scott is now the president of the Lend a Hand Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that spreads educational messages to youth. He’s also an outreach specialist for Blue Cross Blue Shield.

But Scott is still making music. He’s replaced the gangster rap with “healthy hip hop,” something Scott describes as having positive lyrics with the same, hard-hitting beats. Scott is hoping that his songs can reach kids in a positive light, and make their lives more upbeat.

Interview Highlights

“As I grew and started my own family and had children, I was just realizing how influential and powerful music is, on me, on people, and our youth especially. So I just wanted to take my talents with the same hard beats, but everything is clean in it, so it’s healthy hip hop.”

“(Music) influences the way you think. If you take a second to realize what music you are putting inside of you, you’ll start to see, you’ll start demonstrating some of those things that you are listening to.”

“I’ve been watching (my kids) and seeing how they react to different things they see on T.V., or that they see or hear people doing. They were really my inspiration, you know, and what issues they are dealing with. Like my son in school is dealing with new age stuff like cyber bullying and stuff on the internet.

“Once the beat sounds good, and you start saying something real catchy, it starts to stick. When you hear that song on the radio, you may not even like it, but if it’s catchy and you hear it a lot, now it starts to stick in your head, and you catch yourself saying and displaying it.”

This story was produced for KC Currents, which airs Sundays at 5pm with a repeat Mondays at 8pm. To listen on your own schedule, subscribe to the KCCurrents podcast.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Susan admits that her “first love” was radio, being an avid listener since childhood. However, she spent much of her career in mental health, healthcare administration, and sports psychology (Susan holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Bloch School of Business at UMKC.) In the meantime, Wilson satisfied her journalistic cravings by doing public speaking, providing “expert” interviews for local television, and being a guest commentator/contributor to KPRS’s morning drive time show and the teen talk show “Generation Rap.”
Every part of the present has been shaped by actions that took place in the past, but too often that context is left out. As a podcast producer for KCUR Studios and host of the podcast A People’s History of Kansas City, I aim to provide context, clarity, empathy and deeper, nuanced perspectives on how the events and people in the past have shaped our community today.

In that role, and as an occasional announcer and reporter, I want to entertain, inform, make you think, expose something new and cultivate a deeper shared human connection about how the passage of time affects us all. Reach me at hogansm@kcur.org.
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