SHADY HILL GANG.(The Talk of the Town)

The hip-hop class for seventh and eighth graders at Shady Hill, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, takes place just after lunch on Tuesdays and Fridays. The class, a practicum in the basics of rapping, is taught by a Cambridge rapper, MC Kabir, known in civilian life as Kabir Sen, in non-hip-hop circles as the son of Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, and as Mr. Sen to the third graders he teaches earlier in the day. One recent Friday, the seventh graders were putting together a rap about Boston and its suburbs, and the eighth graders, who were graduating, were rapping about their memories of Shady Hill. Some of the students had written raps that were quite complicated and had trouble reaching the ends of their lines in time, and nearly everyone needed to stand up straighter and speak louder.

The eighth-grade group--four boys, plus a girl who was too embarrassed to rap but had agreed to sing the chorus--faced Kabir, who stood at the teacher's table behind his keyboard.

"You know, it's really funny how time flies," one of the boys rapped:

Three years and now it's time for my goodbyes., I remember my transfer in the sixth grade, And I'll never forget the impact that it made., It feels like the end of a dynasty--, A community--that's been so kind to me, 'Cause my family, friends, and teachers had my back., Thanks to this school I'm on the right track.

The next student picked up his cue:

All the times that I got in trouble,, I look at it now and it's all a bubble., All those teachers I thought I despised, But I look back and they made me wise.

"It's a good start," Kabir said. "But now you've got to focus on memorizing your lyrics."