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Precious Eshiet is tired of what she calls “the matrix.”
The 17-year-old student at Germantown Friends High School is the winner of Chalkbeat’s first-ever back-to-school rap contest, which aimed to uplift youth perspectives on education. It grew out of interviews with local teen rappers confronting a culture of violence in the hip-hop industry.
In Eshiet’s contest submission, “the matrix” refers to young people feeling pigeonholed into a certain future based on their race or economic backgrounds. It’s been front-and-center for her while selecting her demographics on college applications.
“They’re putting people into certain boxes, and based on the boxes you click, they already have a perceived spot for you,” said Eshiet, who goes by the artist name Presh so Fresh. “It’s like everything’s a fixed destiny, and you can’t really fight.”
Here’s a sample of her lyrics from the winning entry:
Corruption in society, but check it like a list/ When they giving like a matrix I ain’t really gotta miss/ I’ve been blessed with a mission, I’m getting to the hit/ Talk about intelligence I’m gonna let it hit.
— Precious Eshiet
Eshiet has been writing verses since immigrating to Philadelphia from Nigeria at age 11.
“That was primarily when I started rapping,” she said. “I started writing poetry because it was an easier way for me to comprehend English.”
At Germantown Friends, Eshiet co-leads the Black Student Union and sometimes performs at school events. Her rap reflects her personality: positive and polite.
“I never learned to curse,” she said. “In Nigeria it’s not a thing. I only started hearing curse words when I was like a freshman in high school.”
She hopes her winning entry will have a positive impact on younger students :“They need something that inspires them to do right, to do them, not something that could end up hurting them.”
And she tries to confront realities that she says many Philadelphia students contend with daily.
“Every day when I wake up, I hear on the news that there’s always another shooting,” she said. “There’s always another this or that, and it generally makes me so sad that there are so many students who are trying to get educated, but there’s so many things inhibiting them.”
In the future, she’s considering writing lyrics about the local and national political climate. For now, she’s excited to be starting her final year of high school.
Marsten House Studios, Audeoboi Studios, and Power 99 and WDAS radio stations were partners on the rap contest.
This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.
Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.
