Smino Encourages St. Louis Students to Express Themselves With a Talent Show

St. Louis rapper Smino hasn't forgotten his roots. He recently hosted a multi-faceted field trip for some high school students from around his stomping grounds and documented the experience.

In the video, the blkjuptr creator takes the students of Sumner High School in Missouri on a trip to St. Louis' City Museum, a place he describes as an "indoor amusement park, art museum, historic museum." Throughout the clip, students make their rounds in the festive museum, and about a quarter of the way through, some of the lucky teens appear to receive free backpacks.

All of that is well and good, but the best part of the day might've been Smino's talent show for the students. More than a few stepped up to the plate to do some singing and dancing, and before the day was over, Smino even sang the hook for his Monte Booker collab, "Kolors."

Smino seems to indicate that the goal of this field trip and talent show was to get students to feel more comfortable expressing their creative side. "I hope that the students just feel more comfortable expressing themselves," he says in the video. "Expression just really can take you far and really keep you in a good head space. I hope they know that it's people out here that care about them. It's people that wanna see them prosper."

The rhymer is one of the Midwest's fastest rising rap stars. Get to know more about this emerging talent in XXL's The Break in here.

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