Can ‘Clean,’ ‘Impactful’ Rap Music Help At-Risk Youth?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Rap music may not be known for its most uplifting content, but Berklee College of Music professor Roy Studmire challenges at-risk youth to create music without the profanity and sexually explicit lyrics often found in the genre.
“The majority of what we see online is very toxic to the point that I can’t even allow my 10-year-old son to watch award shows,” Studmire told WBZ-TV. “Clean content music is impactful and fun, as well sonically it sounds the same, but with a different message”
Studmire, aka International Show, says that his brand of music is always clean and that it has appeared “all over the place” including the NFL, MTV and BET.
Along with teaching hip-hop songwriting and production at the Berklee College of Music, he created TRIM (The Route Into Music), where he works with youth to help hone their songwriting and production skills.
The TRIM program was started at the South Bay Correctional Facility, where he worked with inmates to create music where the keep-it-clean policy applied.
TRIM recently partnered with MissionSAFE, a Boston-based organization that serves at-risk youth, where his clean-lyric policy can be, initially, met with some resistance.
“They were like, ‘Ah, we can’t do that,’ because that is what their society is,” Studmire recalled. “After they started doing the songs, they were like, this is the greatest thing we have ever done. It’s our job to show them another way to express themselves, and some may spill into their decision-making in life.”
One of his TRIM students Matthew Robinson says he was drawn to the program because he wants to use music to share the story of what “shaped me to be who I am today.”
“I want to give you all a gist of what I have seen so you can get a message out of my piece,” Robinson said.
“I hope people like me. I hope people rock to my music. I hope they connect to it because you have been through it,” he went on to say. “I hope it opens doors…I put my all into my songs.”
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Even though the music that the Studmire produces nowadays is clean, he says that wasn’t always the case.
When the Christian artist started his studio in 2010, he says the majority of his clients were producing music that was not God-honoring, and that caused a “weird sense of spiritual discomfort,” Studmire told Canvas Rebel.
“By 2014 I said to myself, ‘Something’s not adding up. If these clients are putting out these derogatory songs and I’m orchestrating it, that means I’m a part of the problem.’” He recalled. “The more I kept recording them, the stronger this feeling grew and the more revelation I got about what I needed to do. It took years to understand the purpose of this feeling but I eventually got there.”
His conviction eventually led him to let go of 95% of his clientele, and by 2021, he had to give up his studio. He eventually got hired on at Berklee and went on to start TRIM. Studmire said that God has restored what he sacrificed.
“Moral of the story is GOD PROVIDES,” Studmire said. “There are going to be uncertainties in life but when we keep God at the CENTER, no matter what happens, we can rest assured he will provide a way out. I’m living proof.”
Studmire often shares biblical tidbits on social media, one recent post, shared the relationship to what one feeds the mind, and how that feeds the spirit.
“I ended up looking at my YouTube history, it was all sermons, all spiritual, like, instrumentals,” he posted. “And I felt spiritually full and God was showing me it’s like, because you’re feeding your spirit more than your flesh. When you feed your flesh more, your flesh is full, and your spirit is depleted.”
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