ALPHABET ROCKERS make music that makes change.
'Our families need content that is healing, that reflects who we are and empowers us— that embraces Black liberation, Queer liberation, Indigenous rights, immigrant rights, and intersectionality. Alphabet Rockers curates this content with the community, centering children’s voices. We amplify authentic stories and interrupt the patterns that got us here. Witness how we do this collective work — Join us in the embodiment of real change.' I am so excited to post this interview with four-time Grammy-nominated group, Alphabet Rockers! I am a HUGE fan of theirs and it was truly an honour to ask them some questions about their journey and their most recent project, The Movement, which has been nominated for Children's Album of the Year at the Grammys. Their music strikes me as something that you would hear on the radio along with the likes of Lizzo and Drake. They do such a great job of incorporating the voices of kids to tackle some serious topics. Their songwriting is a breath of fresh air and they do an amazing job of articulating some very big emotions. Each song catches you and sucks you in to the heart of the story they are telling. Their new album is among my favourite albums released in 2022 and I hope you'll take the time to listen to it if you haven't already. 
As soon as I heard your new album (The Movement) I knew it was going to be a hit. I even texted my producer right away and told him to go listen to it cause I got so excited. The production quality and the unique sound that you have created are next-level. Where did you record this project and who was involved?
Beppie - thanks for that love!!! And as a sidenote- we do the same when we hear great music - it pushes us all to go bigger with our sounds and production. With the Movement, we actually built a home studio to record it, because we wrote and recorded the whole album in the pandemic. We have worked with various producers in depth over the last few records, and for this one, a few of them pitched us music for songwriting. The real fun of that was watching the youth Rockers select the tracks they wanted from the producers’ libraries. They each picked a song that spoke to them, and wrote their verses and choruses after that. Some of it was written quickly and some needed baking. Oh! And we gotta shout out our engineer Kevin McCann who has worked with us on the last four albums. He’s got a great ear for it all, and is fiercely aligned with our aesthetic. Your album and your work with Divinity Roxx are up for Grammy nominations this year! Congratulations! What was it like being nominated for a Grammy for Children's Album of the Year? Yo… it was BANANAS!!!! We were screaming at home, on a zoom with the 1 Tribe Collective family, and soon after were texting the kids while they were in school (they are all Freshmans at Oakland School of the Arts). This album is music we really FEEL. And it paints a world we know we can create. Getting nominated meant that people would actually walk with us into that reality. The Alphabet Rockers have been making music since 2007. The messages in your songs are so powerful and inspiring. Was there a specific event or person that inspired this group to start 'making music that makes change'? There were so many moments, people and conversations that led us to really focus on our mission to make music that makes change. We’ve always been a hip hop collective - rooted in our individual ways of expression, our diverse cultures and our joy of connection. What we realized after touring for seven years was people - our community, our audience - needed us to write about the topics we talked about backstage and with our own families and kids. We needed to bring conversations about racial justice to the forefront. And here we are, still in dialogue, still listening to what our community needs and unapologetically speaking up about it.. What advice would you give to young people who want to learn more about anti-racism and creating positive changes in their communities? It’s not an overnight thing, learning about anti-racism. It’s in the everyday actions and choices. It’s in the willingness to stop practices that are harmful, and be okay letting go of things that don’t include everyone. And its okay if not everyone likes you for what you believe in. We do have a starter course on anti-racism called “We Got Work to Do” and we’ll give Beppie readers access to that. In a time when we all have cause to need someone not privy to your experience to have your back, the question to ask yourself is, Whose back do I have? What was it like working with fellow Grammy Nominee and social justice artist, Fyütch? Fyütch is for real our brother. When we met, we flexed - we got real about our values, what makes us laugh, and how we wanted to write the impactful song that is “Juneteenth.” The work of writing that song was also about us shedding some of the things we learned about the emancipation proclamation, and digging deeper into the truth of who fought for the end of slavery and how it actually came about. It was always Black people. And we wanted to honor the many ways Black people strategized, protested and advocated - defining truly what freedom is - at that time and always. 
When you're not championing change, what do the Alphabet Rockers do to unwind and recharge?
We love playing games. Word play. Silliness. And Tommy has been making some ridiculous AI videos - which you can catch on our Instagram. Hilarious.
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