Q-Tip Teams Up With Michelle Obama to Honor Nation’s Best Student Poets

Q-Tip is teaming up with Michelle Obama to celebrate some of the country's best young poets. This Thursday (Sept. 8), the A Tribe Called Quest member and First Lady will honor the fifth annual class of the National Student Poets Program.

Five students will join Q-Tip and Michelle Obama at the White House this week for a special ceremony commemorating the works of these young poets. Q-Tip is participating in this event as part of his role as The Kennedy Center’s Artistic Director for Hip-Hop Culture, a new gig he began earlier this year.

The National Student Poets Program is America's highest honor for 10th and 11th grade poets. Each year, the program selects a handful of standout poets that represent a different geographic region of the country. This year’s honorees are: Stella Binion from Chicago (representing the Midwest Region); Maya Eashwaran from Alpharetta, Georgia (Southeast); Gopal Raman from Dallas (Southwest); Joey Reisberg from Towson, Maryland (Northeast); and Maya Salameh from San Diego (West).

Q-Tip's involvement in this ceremony comes just a few weeks after it was revealed that A Tribe Called Quest secretly recorded a new album before Phife Dawg's untimely death. Epic Records Chairman and CEO L.A. Reid let the news slip on the Rap Radar Podcast.

"[It is] a brand new album that they recorded before Phife [Dawg] passed away," Reid said. "I’m really happy about it man, it’s really something special. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about over everything we’re working on."

A Tribe Called Quest's last album, The Love Movement, was released in 1998 on Jive Records. The group's only releases since then have been compilations of rare material and greatest hits albums.

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