Where Hope Meets Hip-Hop

Which is what Armah hopes to counterbalance, too. He is 28, grew up in Mitchellville and has spent the years since graduating from the University of Maryland working on "positive rap" -- a goopy-sounding term that nonetheless is fiercely based in reality.

When he does music programs with students, he mentions that, in the hip-hop world, seven of the top 10 artists will be gangbangers or drug dealers. He'll ask the kids, "Are seven out of every 10 of the people you know gangbangers or drug dealers?"

No, he says they answer. But when those same kids start making music for him -- though they may have just been talking about going to medical school -- when they start rapping, it's: "I'm gonna get a gun, and I'm gonna shoot you."

As he leans over the mixing board in his recording studio off Georgia Avenue, Armah narrows his eyes. "Why does it have to be that way?"

It doesn't.

Bacon has written about D.C. public schools:

We're turning young minds into fools

In DCPS schools,

By not giving them the funding

They need to improve.

And he has marveled at the luxury of a Chinese restaurant in Silver Spring compared with the bare-bones hostility of a Southeast carry-out. In Silver Spring, "Y'all got carpet on the floor," he raps. "Our carry-outs don't have tables and chairs." Most surprising, though, is when he notices that between him and the people taking his money and making his food, there is no bullet-proof window.

My order came up.