S. Samuel
[After invading Baltimore, Maryland's New Era Academy as the day's celebrity principal this week, rapper Diggy Simmons gives SOHH readers the inside on his experience, dropping some gems on the students and how Nicki Minaj fueled his inspiration to do something positive.]
Even before I was approached about this opportunity, I saw what these schools were doing and I think I saw Nicki Minaj when she went to a school for them having perfect attendance and improving what they’ve been doing in school.
I saw that and a couple months went by and then I was approached about doing the same kind of thing and my management team asked me, “Is this something you would want to do?” and I told them this was the same exact thing I saw and thought it was cool.
There were schools lined up that we were going to do the competition for, it’s actually me coming to the school and doing this [celebrity principal for the day]. The kids actually didn’t know I was going to be there, it was a surprise. They had the schools and then I think toward the end of the process, once they knew who was going to win, we were hit up.
But this isn’t the only thing I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing wake up calls for kids, for them to wake up on those early mornings like, “Yo, wake up. This is Diggy, wake up.” After that, that’s when we came to do this, going to the New Era School Academy out in Baltimore.
We had a big assembly and pep rally. It was crazy. I’m their age so we just had a lot of fun. It was them in their auditorium. It wasn’t all of the students, but it was a certain amount of students and they all came.
They sat and I answered all sorts of different questions. They asked personal questions like, “What’s your favorite subject?” and “What do you do in your spare time?,” “What influences your music and what inspired you to do what you wanted to do and what things were trying to pull you back?”
It was some great questions and they were really receptive. I was really excited about that. The fact that they came there. The whole thing, in general, them coming to school, them doing well, it was great.
There was even a deejay there who did the music for the dance competition we had. It was turned up and crazy. Like I said, they’re me age so it was just dope to be around them.
On Wednesday of this week, Diggy Simmons served as Celebrity Principal for the Day to the students of New Era Academy in Baltimore, Maryland. While their peers across Baltimore were hitting the books, the New Era Academy students received a special visit from hip-hop royalty Diggy, Rev. Run’s son, as he surprised them in their classrooms and hosted a school wide assembly where he judged a dance contest and took questions from a lucky student. The New Era Academy students won a visit from Diggy by significantly improving their attendance in the Get Schooled Foundation’s National Attendance Challenge.
