99 Problems and Public Speaking Ain’t One
How a high school Hip Hop class helped me get over my fear of public speaking.
As a youngster, I was usually the shy kid that kept to himself and would rarely raise his hand to answer a question posed by the teacher. I tried to avoid speaking up as much as possible and naturally, I came to fear a class activity that required students to take turns reading a paragraph from our textbook. In order to avoid mispronunciations or stuttering, I would figure out which passage was mine and practice it in my head to make sure that I could get through it without a hitch. But of course, I would find a way to mess it up and end up stumbling through the whole passage and relive the embarrassing moment for days to come. I was by no means a bad reader, I just felt nervous every time I had to speak up in front of the class.
Over time I got a bit better at public speaking since it was required during group presentations but I still felt pretty self-conscious every time it was my turn to speak. I made sure that everything I needed to say was written down and I even brought my notes up so I could use them as a crutch in case I started to stumble. However, once I entered high school there was a huge emphasis on public speaking, thus banning notes from presentations. This was also around the time that I started to really get into Hip Hop.
My nights would consist of hours upon hours of listening to different songs by old school and current artists like Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, NWA, Ludacris, T.I., Jay-Z, Kanye West, Eric B & Rakim, De la Soul, Common, etc. Naturally, I started to really admire rappers and I became really impressed by their seemingly fearless demeanor when it came to performing in front of thousands of people. I wondered how these performers got over their fear of public speaking and I realized that this didn’t happen overnight. These artists practice their craft just like an athlete trains to compete at a high level. Luckily, my school had a popular extracurricular class that directly appealed to me and I felt that this would help me get over my fear of public speaking. This was Hip Hop class.
Our class was made up of around 15 students and we were required to freestyle in front of the class on a daily basis and throughout the course of the session, we needed to record songs that we would then perform in front of an audience of about 50 people that included our parents, professors, and peers. This class was taught by a dope local emcee by the name of Rahman Jamaal. Rahman is an accomplished emcee and even starred in a Hip Hop movie called The Beat so he was the perfect person to teach us about not only how to record and perform songs, but also the history and four elements that make up Hip Hop (emceeing, deejaying, breakdancing, and graffiti). Needless to say, I was pretty nervous at the beginning of the session since I knew this was going to be a challenge.
On the first day, Rahman told us all to get in a circle to perform a cypher. For those of you that may not know what a cypher is, a cypher is when a group of emcees get together and take turns freestyling. Here’s an example below:
At this point, my heart started to pump so hard that I wondered if anyone else could hear it. My palms started to sweat as I tried to compose myself and stay calm. Accompanied by the nervous silence of the class, Rahman walked over to the stereo and shuffled through some CDs. His hands slowly reached for an instrumental CD and then he pressed the play button. This broke the silence with an array of drums at a steady tempo accompanied by a melody of strings.
Around the room, I could see that I wasn’t the only student trying to avoid Rahman’s gaze just in case he decided to call on us to start the cypher. To get us into the groove, Rahman began to rap with flawless cadence and complex rhymes that hypnotized anyone present and transfixed us in his words. After his freestyle, he “passed the mic” to the person next to him who also started to rap until they stumbled and decided to let the next person attempt their freestyle. When the person next to me started to freestyle, I couldn’t pay attention to anything they were rapping about, all I could hear was the quickening pump of my heartbeat. My unseeing eyes were focused on the ground as I started to wonder what I was going to rap about. Then all of a sudden, when my guard was down, it was my turn to contribute my freestyle. I listened to the beat, which helped me focus. Then an unprecedented number of simple rhymes started connecting into lines that started flowing out of my mouth and into rhythm. Every nervous thought was relieved and all I could focus on was the satisfying feeling of letting my mind speak without the slightest worry of what people would think. After a pretty successful attempt at freestyling, I felt free and proud of myself.
Throughout the rest of the session, we learned new exercises that helped us with our flow as well as thinking on our feet. One exercise that really stuck out to me was when we had to read out loud from a book. But there was a twist: we had to rap out the words of the books as if they were lyrics to a song. This was a challenge since we needed to flawlessly read out the words as well as stay on beat. Another challenging exercise we had to complete was to freestyle in front of the class for 10 straight minutes. Normally, I would’ve been terrified at the idea of going up and rapping for 10 straight minutes without a script but by this point, I was already pretty confident with speaking my mind and thinking on my feet. Eventually, I recorded a couple of songs and on the final day of class, I went up on the stage and wowed my friends and most notably, my parents. This experience made most of my future presentations seem like a breeze relative to being in a cypher, freestyling for 10 minutes straight, or performing in front of 50 people.
Today, I’ve been a college grad for 2 years and I am now an entrepreneur with my own company for organizing and discovering local pickup games. A big part of being an entrepreneur is being able to communicate your idea to others and try to convince people to be excited about your idea because it’s the next big thing. This includes a lot of presentations and preparation for important pitches to investors and pitch competitions. One way I love to prepare for a pitch is by creating a general script for my main talking points. I then take this script and lay down a Hip Hop instrumental and then rap out the words like lyrics. This helps me memorize my talking points and makes the presentation a whole lot easier.
I’d be lying if I said that I don’t get the occasional butterflies before a big presentation, but I can tell you that learning how to freestyle made it a whole lot easier for me. I still get nervous from time to time but it’s nowhere near to the anxiety I used to have when I was a kid and it was my turn to read out loud to the class. Looking back, that first Hip Hop class aided me in getting out of my comfort zone and had a lasting impression on my public speaking skills.
Thanks for reading! I hope that this post can inspire you to spit some rhymes or use my method for preparing for an important presentation. If you have a unique way of getting over pre-presentation jitters please share! If you’re interested in checking out Rahman Jamaal’s music click here. Rahman also teaches a Hip Hop workshop called Rap Force Academy.
