With the burgeoning awaking of classical music hitting youth around the nation, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, one of the world’s leading music conservatories, has just admitted its first rapper, according to Noisey.
The student is Jack Derbyshire, 25, who began rapping around age 14 under the solo moniker Jakaboski and within a collective called Strangelove.
“I heard about Guildhall and the Leadership program through a friend,” he said. “I then met the course leaders for a chat and it went from there. The audition was tough. I was insecure about my lack of musical training, but it must have gone all right because I'm here now, right?”
After impressing the examiners, Derbyshire was invited to join the Masters in Leadership program, a two-year course which encourages musicians to work with aspiring performers in their local community.
"I remember going for the first audition and thinking how ridiculous the whole situation was, sitting in a room before you go in with opera going on in the room next door and this girl was polishing her violin and wishing me luck,” he said.
In his audition, Derbyshire told examiners he was passionate about working with teenagers who had been excluded from the school and helping them through his music.
"When Jack applied, we became excited about this fantastic opportunity to pilot the presence of another discipline within the student cohort,” course director Sigrum Griffiths told The Telegraph. “There is nothing in the structure of the course which prohibits a rapper existing and flourishing within it. What made Jack stand out to the panel was his ability to articulate the important of his art in a larger context."
A spokesman for Guidhall said Derbyshire was "in some instances more confident with beats and rhythms than the instrumentalists in the group, who come from a broad range of musical backgrounds."
Check out Jakaboski in the video below:
