TRUE Skool uses creative arts to empower youth
After-school program helps fine-tune passions
Every room in TRUE Skool’s office in the lower level of the former Grand Avenue Mall buzzed with energy.
Music reverberated off the walls in one small room, rimmed with shelves stacked with vinyl records. Two students tagteamed on turntables as an instructor schooled them on the art of spinning vinyl.
Four students sat at a table in another room, hunched over laptops and notepads, jotting down rhymes to accompany the beats created by another student.
And down the hall, another student, Cordarius Beasley, sat on the floor perfecting the rhymes to his latest song.
The 13-year-old Milwaukee Academy of Science student was putting final touches on a piece he performed recently at TRUE Skool’s fall showcase, held at Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery. The event was the culmination of a 10-week afterschool program that teaches creative arts that are rooted in hiphop culture.
Students learn the art of DJing, emceeing, breakdancing, visual arts, music and video production. The free program uses hip-hop culture to empower youth, develop leadership skills, advocate for social justice and encourage entrepreneurship.
“I’m practicing what I’m gonna say next,” said Beasley, who goes by the stage name XL or Xtra Love. He raps about heartbreak and urban life, especially the violence on Milwaukee streets, drugs and reckless driving.
“That’s what I do,” Beasley said. “I tell true stories.”
TRUE Skool organizers believe stimulating students’ creativity may also open other doors for them.
“It is getting them to understand that their voices are powerful and their ideas are powerful and that they can manifest whatever they want to,” said Fidel Verdin, co-director of the nonprofit that was founded 16 years ago. “Through the arts, we are building that confidence and showing them how to network and professionalize their passion.”
The program takes its name from the continual evolution of Hip-Hop culture.
“Old school plus the new school is true school,” Verdin said of the meaning of nonprofit’s moniker. “It’s an intergeneration
al evolution of the culture.
“It is taking the principles, the foundation and the origins of what the culture represents and bringing it to where the youth are at today.”
Finding a groove
There’s a fine art to spinning vinyl, and Jada Towns, 17, has just begun to find her groove. Towns, a Pius XI High School senior, worked on “beat juggling” on the turntables with another student to learn how to keep rhythm.
“Learning how to mix music the old school way is something that caught my attention for a while especially because of the music that I heard growing up,” said Towns, who listens to classics like Earth Wind & Fire and a lot of 80s and 90s Hip-Hop, rap and neo-soul music.
Towns’ taste in music comes from her mother’s job. Her mother teaches aerobics and often uses house music, which Towns said, involves a lot of mixing and remixing. She wanted to learn how to do that.
And she discovered that DJing is much more than dropping a needle on a record.
She learned how to find a snare or drum beat to come in on, how to match the speed of a song and how to use crossfades to go from one song to another. She also learned the art of scratching, a technique that manipulates sound by going back and forth on a turntable.
“I was like, ‘Wow!’ That’s like how that music is done,” said Towns, who hopes to use her new skills to create a side hustle selling her artwork, jewelry or DJing. But she wants to major in social work and possibly minor in animation when she heads to college next fall.
It was the art of emceeing that attracted 16-year-old Jalesa Young to the program. She always wanted to rap and would watch YouTube videos of her favorite artists Nas and Lauryn Hill to mimic their style.
“I was a basic learner, so it wasn’t that good, but it wasn’t that bad either. We all start somewhere,” said Young, who is homeschooled. “I kind of figured I could try to be an emcee.”
Now, Young says her skills have become more polished.
“I learned how to have a cadence and rap on beat and pick the right beat for my voice,” Young said.
She put her newfound skills to work for the showcase. She collaborated with two other student emcees to create a song to promote the after-school program. The lyrics, she said, focused on what she learned in the program, like breakdancing and the roots of hip-hop.
She also took up breakdancing. “It’s not just a form of dance, but more of an art to me.”
But her sister, Layloni Jackson, took visual arts. She began drawing at age 5 and mostly did sketches of her family.
At TRUE Skool, she learned new techniques such as contouring, creating texture, airbrushing, and the anatomy of organic shapes.
“Drawing was the only way I could express myself and give myself a voice,” said Jackson, who aspires to be an artist.
Judgment free zone
The program has evolved since its founding in 2005. The program first started doing “residencies” where staff members were contracted to do creative arts programming like teaching breakdance for other programs including Milwaukee Public Schools.
Seven years ago TRUE Skool became an independent after-school program with about a dozen students. Over the years, that has grown to 40. TRUE Skool still does residencies, during which instructors lead after-school or summer programming at partnering schools or organizations.
TRUE Skool serves about 500 students annually through its after-school and residency programs.
Part of TRUE Skool’s success comes from cultivating a family-like atmosphere. That starts with building a safe environment to allow students to be creative, ensuring they have skilled teaching artists, and providing them with the latest equipment and technology.
That has contributed to a high retention rate. A majority of students who walk through True Skool’s doors as high school freshmen stay until they graduate. The program, which Verdin called “grant struggling, ”serves students from age 14 to 19.
“It is a beautiful thing that a young person can start at 14 and really stick with us all the way through 19,” said Shalina S. Ali, who co-directs TRUE Skool with Verdin. “They can experience the diverse classes, determine what areas they are passionate about and want to excel in. But they have to see a goal for themselves in order to achieve anything at TRUE Skool.”
The idea, Ali said, is to eliminate barriers to success.
“The most prevalent element in hiphop is knowledge,” she added. “We have a learning environment where everybody is respected and regarded because they are all here to continue their knowledge, to get better at what they do and to challenge each other and to collaborate and to leave better than when they came in.”
Beasley appreciates the program’s family-like atmosphere. The program, he said, is very supportive, where students can be themselves.
“They don’t judge you by the way you act,” he said. “They don’t laugh at you when you mess up. They tell you to keep going. They are like family here.”
That support helped him overcome his nervousness.
“Every time I try to freestyle, I mess up my words,” he said, noting that a teacher offered a basketball analogy to help him overcome his anxiety.
“If you don’t freestyle, it’s like you are not holding defense in basketball, and that’s what I am trying to do — hold that defense while trying to keep going with my flow,” Beasley said. “It’s how you sound smooth, no bumpiness, and no robot sounds. It is just you going smooth with your verse and your voice.”
Beasley feels more comfortable freestyling and dreams of being a rap legend before he turns 30.
“It could be any age, as long as I’m a legend when I’m young,” said Beasley, whose music can be found on YouTube.
Whatever goals or aspirations students came here to achieve, “we want to help facilitate them realizing that,” Ali added.
The school already has an impressive alumni list. Nebiyah Jordan who performs under “Shadi” is making a name for herself on Milwaukee airwaves. She released her first single “Playground” in June. Two months later she dropped her EP “Mansion in the Sky.” She now teaches at TRUE Skool.
And street clothing company, Unfinished Legacy, founded by Brema Brema and business partner Jene Tate, was birthed from TRUE Skool. The two recently moved to California to meet their production needs.
That is an outgrowth of TRUE Skool’s focus on entrepreneurship.
Through its CEO Sessions or creative entrepreneurial opportunities, students learn the business side of hip-hop and how to turn a side hustle making music or art into a well-paying gig.
Students learn how to build off each other’s strength to collaborate on projects including starting a business. If one can rhyme and is a great poet and the other is a great visual artist, they should work together, Verdin said.
Or if a young person is serious about dancing and is disciplined, they can go professional and earn income from it, he added.
“Everything that hip-hop is, is in our DNA. We are not giving them nothing they don’t have. They already have it,” Verdin said. “We are just trying to bring it out.”
Chante Gayden is a Dominican High School senior who is working with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as part of the uKnighted Service Program at Dominican.
“The most prevalent element in hip-hop is knowledge. We have a learning environment where everybody is respected and regarded because they are all here to continue their knowledge, to get better at what they do and to challenge each other and to collaborate and to leave better than when they came in.”
Shalina Ali co-executive director of TRUE Skool