An article in the Metrotimes profiling a few female Detroit DJ’s includes one enrolled in a masters program the the University, “Agile 1”:

“… The female hip-hop DJ just might be the rarest of the species. Having moved from St. Louis to Detroit last June, Agile 1 may very well be the top female hip-hop DJ in Detroit right now. And that’s not because there isn’t a lot of competition — she’s damn good, often cutting up doubles of her favorite tracks, and dropping the jaws of onlookers. During Agile 1’s debut Flow performance, she even received a couple of marriage proposals from strangers. But, regardless, the bottom line is this: Agile can hold it down with any male hip-hop DJ in the city — and in Detroit, that means something.

Currently, she’s getting her master’s at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is student teaching at Mumford High in Detroit. The kids don’t necessarily know who they’re dealing with as they’ve never seen her DJ — they’re too young to get into the club — but it’s easy to see that her drive for hip hop stems from the same place that’s kept her in school to be a teacher. There’s something deeply political about the way she lives her life.

“The reason I got into hip hop and became so passionate about it,” she insists, “is because of the message of social justice behind it. Basically, I feel like there’s a lot of kids in the city schools who don’t get the chance to think critically. … “

> Metrotimes: “The Vinyl Monologues”

Author: Rob