While rap music has often been denigrated for being misogynistic, nihilistic and sexist, Bonnette-Bailey asserts that many hip-hop songs include political messages that can be empowering. In this talk, she shares her criteria for identifying political rap and encourages us to consider how this music can uplift. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University with research interests in Hip Hop culture, political behavior, political attitudes, African-American politics, political psychology and public opinion. Her current research examines the impact of political rap music on racial attitudes. In 2015, her book, Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes, was published. In 2018, she was a Nasir Jones/ W. E. B. Du Bois fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Later that year she completed two talks in Ingelheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany discussing the relevance and importance of rap music, activism and social justice and she received her certificate in psychoanalysis from Emory University’s Psychoanalytic Institute. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx