“I’m a big fan,” she said. “Their music is definitely revolutionary. It’s real to say the least.”

MSU’s Young Democratic Socialists, or YDS, invited political hip-hop group Dead Prez to speak and perform a short concert for an audience of more than 100 students in the Erickson Hall Kiva. Dead Prez is composed of rappers with stage names M-1 and stic.man.

The event was in collaboration with groups including the Black Student Alliance, James Madison College, the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives.

Taylor Davis, an executive board member of YDS and a Residential College in the Arts and Humanities sophomore, said Dead Prez conveys the messages her group hopes to promote through music.

“They discuss issues of race and class, and those two are intertwined,” she said.

“We brought them in to educate the public, so they can make informed decisions when they’re voting.”

During the discussion, M-1 said other countries have been home to many social revolutions, and he believes the U.S. has all the means to follow suit.

“We have the technology in a way we’ve never had it before, so we can enact or re-enact some of the things that are happening all over the world,” he said.

Along with encouraging equality in both race and class, stic.man emphasized the gravity of maintaining physical health to compliment mental health.

“Lifestyle consists of (consuming) not only food but thoughts and everything else we consume,” he said.

Biomedical laboratory science junior Raechel Bayma said the show was enlightening.

“It’s taking a while to digest; it was a lot of information in a very short time,” she said.

Bayma said this wasn’t her first time watching Dead Prez speak and perform. Although the group has performed several times on campus, Bayma said she noticed a positive change in its discussion techniques from their visit more than a year ago.

“It was a lot more organized,” she said. “A lot more ideas got brought up this time.”

After Dead Prez answered a few questions from the audience, the hip-hop artists took the stage.

Students quickly left their seats and gathered in front to watch Dead Prez rap lyrics about politics and equality to an enthusiastic crowd.

The group transformed Gucci Mane’s popular song “Wasted” into their own version — “Don’t Waste It.” Dead Prez changed lyrics to address issues such as, “If I get wasted and you get wasted, what we gone do by the next generation?”

For Haynes-Hogue, she said the concert was nothing short of her expectations, and Dead Prez’s revolutionary words rang strong.

“To do it through music — it is just so powerful,” she said.