And the Winners of Rap Competition to Boost Financial Literacy Are…

The winners of a new rap competition intended to increase the insight of young African Americans about the finance world are in.

The victorious recipients were announced this month after the launch in July of Stock Market Tracks, a rap contest collaboration by Invstr and STEAM16 that aims to “teach the world about finance one bar at a time.”

After receiving more than 100 song submissions, the shortlist was trimmed to 25 tracks from which the winners were picked. A robust 22 of the 25 tracks were from black artists.

The public has voted for the top 3 tracks — which can be found at @StockMarketTracks on Instagram, or below:

First Place ($1,000) – Topic: “Stock, Shares and Sectors” – @_bo_jackson – Lawrenceville, NJ

Second Place ($500) – Topic: “Investments vs. Savings” – @Qmoshyn_Rhymebook – Willingboro, NJ

Third Place ($200) – Topic: “Investing in Yourself as a Business” – @LadysLuv Cook – Manhattan, NY

The criteria for selecting the top 25 tracks included staying on topic, using clean language, following the guidelines of 16 bars per one minute, along with video and lyric quality.

While most similar competitions are about finding the best singer/performer, the goal of Stock Market Tracks is to educate through entertainment and promote financial literacy. Organizers leveraged the competition to make the stock market something young people talk about.

As some progress has been made in recent years, the event comes as African Americans under 40 are investing in the stock market at lower rates than their white peers. The data showed the investment patterns for blacks in other age groups were also less than for whites. Another survey revealed that only 23% of millennials aged 18 to 37 report that the stock market is the best place to put the money they won’t need for 10 years or more.

Kerim Derhalli, founder and CEO of Invstr, a fantasy finance and mobile investing app aimed to educate the next generation of investors, commented on the winners.

“We wish a huge congratulations to our top three Stock Market Tracks Winners. The competition has proven that music can be a powerful medium to get youth excited about investing, and that can translate to financial literacy overall. Invstr is proud to be at the forefront of encouraging this movement as the wealth transfer to the younger generation begins.”

Ron Livingston, the founder of STEAM 16, a New York City-based youth group that educates youth in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) fields by using rap music, told Black Enterprise last month that the competition is just one way that the organization plans to get young people interested in the stock market.