Voice of Youth

Hyphy Part 1

Welcome to Part One of the Hyphy show, or actually, the hyphy tour! Your tour guide is 20-year-old Laquoia Simmons, hyphy aficionado and native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where hyphy was born. Laquoia invites you to join five fellow travelers on our little excursion. There’s a lot on the itinerary…first, a local music shop, a store that has a very hyphy clientele…then you tune into a music theory expert who breaks down this brand of hip-hop…and another expert gives some straight talk on thizz, hyphy slang for the drug ecstacy…but don’t get too distracted by the talking heads…there’s a bigger mission at hand…you’re searching for the final resting place of hyphy’s godfather, rapper Mac Dre. Will you find it? Listen!

Daytime – February 22, 2007

This week: Our first “imported” term of teen slang… DAYTIME, n. What Chicago kids call a party during the day. Synonym : ditch party We start our show in Chicago, where this week's word comes from, and hear about what goes down when kids are supposed to be at school in Chi-Town! Next, our local youth paint very vivid pictures of the days when they’ve ditched school… Going across the globe, a Comparative Education professor in Hong Kong explains why kids where's he's at don't skip class... And, a veteran truant officer shares the counseling he’s offered parents with truant kids… Listen!

Crib – February 8, 2007

This week’s word – “crib” – slang for the place you call home, your shelter.  This hour you’re going to be touring the broadest range of cribs we could think of… For example, one of our gang-involved correspondents goes on the road with a local realtor to hear about the challenges of buying a house (in the rival gangs’ neighborhood!)… And then, our hosts get in the studio wtih a young man just back from prison and ask what it was like to call prison home… And next we got all the way to New Orleans to hear what it’s like when your crib turns into a trap. All that in this hour dedicated to defining the word “crib”. Listen!

Hood – January 25, 2007

Hood – just an abbreviation for neighborhood? or something else entirely? This question is at the heart of this week’s audio dictionary entry. In this hour – our local California kids join Chicago teens to describe the drama of their hoods. Plus we get on the line with Mr. Kevin Eps, who, as the maker of “Straight Outta Hunter’s Point”, is the pioneer of the “hood” documentary. Listen!

Transformer – January 11, 2007

This week on Voice of Youth – Where every week we take a different term of teen slang and define it as only youth can – The word, “Transformer”, slang for someone who “defects” from one gang to its rival. But that definition is just the beginning of this audio dictionary entry. Kids tell stories about “transformers”, full of dramatic twists and turns, one young woman reaps the benefits of a dramatic transformation in style, and a gay teen talks about the transformers of his everyday life. And of course, our three hosts give you an earful of sagas and situations, questions and comments, all about the word “transformer” Listen!