The HBCU takeover of Apple Music continues with Clark Atlanta University occupying the latest episode of Rap Life.
Apple Music’s Rap Life Live Atlanta premiered on Friday. Like Howard Univerity’s inaugural Rap Life, this installment uses Clark Atlanta’s campus as the stage for chart-topping acts to perform some of their biggest hits. Moneybagg Yo, Saweetie, and Lil Durk make appearances while accomplished members of the student body were interviewed alongside community figures like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, LaTosha Brown, who’s the co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, and the university’s president, George T. French, Jr.
Rap Life Live Atlanta is focused on furthering the discussion about issues that impact the Black community by infusing music with valuable dialogue.
“Rap Life Live Atlanta is the crossroads of the most popular artists in Rap and the student body of Clark Atlanta University. A celebration of what is popular right now … the music and the academics,” Apple Music’s global head of Hip-Hop and R&B, Ebro Darden, said. “Our youth are not only supporting and celebrating music from the streets, but also supporting each other through scholastic accomplishments. The culture can be both! This is Rap Life!”
For artists like Lil Durk, who is molded by street culture, he thinks showing people an alternate route to success and self-worth is important.
“You can pick up a camera, you can pick up a microphone, you can engineer. There’s all types of ways you can do what you can do,” Durk said. “There were times I wanted to give up or be like I wanted to do something else but the fans just kept me the fans kept me 10 toes down and being able to be who I am today.”
Watch Rap Life Live Atlanta up top.
