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Public Enemy's Chuck D inspires at LI school

BY KEITH HERBERT | keith.herbert@newsday.com

9:15 PM EDT, March 27, 2008

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He had the microphone in his hands, and the crowd seemed to hang on every word.

But for Chuck D, rap music star of Public Enemy fame, yesterday wasn't about wowing concertgoers with his pointed rap lyrics.

As part of career week, Chuck D spoke to 800 Lawrence Road Middle School students in Uniondale, delivering a message about staying in school and out of the streets.

Dexter Hodge, principal of the school, mostly made up of black and Latino students, said he wanted the kids to see the music business as a possible career choice.

However, there was no thumping baseline or staccato rhymes, just an old-fashioned values lesson.

"You always hear about people being a thug," Chuck D told students who filled the school gymnasium. "You don't know what it's like to look at a 25-year-old person and see tears coming up out of their face because they're locked down.

"Get your education. Treat each other well, and treat people like you want to be treated. We don't want to be doing this speech while you're on the other side."

To the rest of the world, Chuck D is the man behind Public Enemy's politically charged poetry, and the baritone that pushed the group to the forefront of rap during the 1980s.

But around Roosevelt, Hempstead and Uniondale, he's just Chuck, and father of Djira Ridenhour, an eighth-grader at Lawrence Road Middle School. That gave school administrators the inside track on getting Chuck D for career day.

"You've got to be straightforward with them," Chuck D said of middle-school children. "You have to give them everything that their parents and teachers are telling them."

Chuck D speaks to students around the country, most recently March 19 at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

"I'm trying to tell them the truth -- the thing they think is corny is the thing that's going to protect them for the rest of their life," he said. "They've got to be smart and get their schooling."

Also speaking to the students were Andreaus 13, a former rapper who runs an African-American news network, and Sensei Aaron Allen, a security specialist. Like Chuck D, both men are from Roosevelt and have children in local schools.

"We're undercover bookworms," said Andreaus 13.

Allen, who ripped a phone book in half and twisted a steel bar for students, said he was there to teach them how to protect themselves.

"The streets are full of gang members, peer pressure, bullies, pedophiles," Allen said.

Tommie Hobson, an eighth-grader, said he understood Chuck D's message about not getting diverted from education.

"Don't be stupid and follow your friends," Hobson said. "Follow you."

Another eighth-grader, Tyler Hairston, said Chuck D taught him about life and "how it's going to be in the future. It was good," Hairston said.