Shakespeare: Still current?

Written by The Reader, 9th October 2012

From Niall Gibney, Community Development Assistant

Hi blog readers!

I was shown this video by a colleague (our Volunteer Assistant Danny) and basically it is a young UK grime/rap artist - Akala - explaining the similarities between rap and poetry – in particular, Shakespeare. I feel it goes a good way to explaining away the stereotypes, all spoken eloquently in a non-condescending way. It's definitely worth a watch: he speaks about education and knowledge. He raps some of Shakespeare’s most famous poems over a speedy grime beat and also raps two different lyrics towards the end, one mentioning all of the 27 plays Shakespeare wrote and another mentioning his most famous quotes.

All in all, it's worth watching so you have our permission to put down the book and click play 😉

3 thoughts on “Shakespeare: Still current?”

Sue says:

10th October 2012 at 9:26 am

Hi Niall. I used parts of this clip in HMP Reading YOI last week – we read Sonnets 18 and 29 first and had some great discussion, but it was good to bridge the centuries with Akala’s hip hop version. It went down very well, as you might imagine!

niallgibney says:

10th October 2012 at 3:22 pm

yes! sounds like great stuff… 🙂

jennerous says:

10th October 2012 at 10:18 am

Inspiring! Thanks for bringing to our attention, worth seeing.