jineea butler
- empowering hip-hop; one citizen at a time
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photo by steed media service
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President and Hip-Hop Analyst, The Social Services of Hip-Hop
While playing basketball for New York’s Hot 97 radio station’s basketball team, Jineea Butler took note of the hip-hop community surrounding her. What she discovered would change the course of her life forever.
“I had studied psychology in college, but was hanging out in hip-hop. I started researching and realized that we needed specialized services in order for us to be a community,” she recalls. “It basically evolved and continues to become this great movement that is bigger than me.”
The discovery led Butler to found the Social Services of Hip-Hop, a nonprofit organization that identifies and addresses issues that affect the growth of the hip-hop community. “Our mission is to empower the citizens of hip-hop to their maximum level of functioning,” Butler explains.
One of the methods Butler is using to empower hip-hop’s citizens is to address their issues in the classroom through her “Hip-Hop Helps the Youth” music therapy program. “We’re basically trying to bridge the gap between the teachers and the students. One of the reasons that our kids are not learning, is because the teachers are not teaching them,” she says.
To help combat that problem, Social Services invites various hip-hop artists, entertainers and athletes into the classrooms to help appeal to students. “Anybody who is in the hip-hop generation or resembles them...” Butler specifies, “[can] generate a conversation with the kids that the teachers may not always be able to do.” –ivory m. jones
For more information about The Social Services of Hip-Hop and its initiatives, visit ss-hiphop.com.
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