Mon & Wed · 4:15–6:30 PM
Beat Lab
Twelve laptops with Ableton, two MPCs and a keyboard that has survived nine years of teenagers. You leave your first session with an eight-bar loop you made yourself.
Beat Lab: chords before drumsMon 4:15 PM 
Selah Crew warm-upTue 5:00 PM 
The Word, ten minutesEvery session, 4:00 
Booth B, first takeWed 6:10 PM 
Cover art for Volume 4Wed 4:30 PM
West End, Atlanta · ages 13 to 19 · free
Bring the notebook.
We've got the mics. A free hip-hop arts studio in an old tire shop on Abernathy Boulevard: make beats, write, dance and record with mentors who rap, pray and show up on time, four afternoons a week.
Crew on Lee StreetSat 11:40 AM 
Choreo for First FridayThu 5:20 PM 
Booth A, before the takeThu 6:00 PM 
Freeze practiceSat 12:15 PM 
First Friday closerFri 9:30 PM
What happens here
We teach the craft, and we open the Book every session
Verse & Rhythm started in 2014 with one laptop, a borrowed keyboard and six kids from the courts on Lee Street who wanted to make a beat. Rashad Mabry was their youth pastor. He was also the only adult on the block who knew how to chop a sample.
Twelve years on, the Lab fills an old tire shop on Abernathy. Teens come four afternoons a week to make beats, write, dance and record. Every session starts the same way: ten minutes with a passage of scripture, read out loud and then written about. Some of what gets written ends up on a track. Some of it stays in the notebook, and that's fine too.
Everything is free. Laptops are on loan, headphones are clean, and supper is at 6:30.
Four rooms
Pick a room. Switch whenever you like.
Most teens start in one room and end up in two. Mentors move between them, and so can you.
Tue & Thu · 4:15–6:00 PM
Writing Room
Bars, poems, hooks and spoken word around one long table. Kiana runs it like a workshop: write, read it out, take one note, write again.
Tue & Thu 5–7 PM · Sat 11 AM
Selah Crew
Breaking, popping and choreography for the First Friday stage. Knee pads on the shelf by the door.
Wed & Thu · 6:00–8:00 PM
Tracking Room
Two vocal booths and an engineer who will tell you the truth about your second verse. Book a slot once you have a finished track.
Since 2014
Twelve years of afternoons
Counted from the sign-in binder and the hard drive, not guessed.
September 2014 to September 2026
3121
finished tracks on the Lab hard drive
- 1Mixed, mastered and with cover art. Unfinished ideas would be about four thousand.
- 2We missed three: two ice storms and one burst pipe.
Figures checked by the board in September 2026.
From the Lab
Said out loud, then written down
I came for the beats. Then I read a verse about my grandmother to eighty people.
He comes home at seven now and plays me what he made.
Kiana made me cut my favorite line. She was right. I hate that.
Dates
On the calendar
Oct17
Selah Crew open practice
11:00 AM · Main floor
Parents and little siblings welcome to watch. We'll run the November set twice.
Nov6
First Friday: Lament
7:00 PM · The Lab
The theme is Lamentations 3. Twelve slots, three minutes each. List opens at 6:15.
Nov14
Instrumental beat battle
2:00 PM · Beat Lab
Same sample pack for everyone, ninety minutes on the clock, judged by the room.
Dec4
First Friday: Holiday cypher
7:00 PM · The Lab
Bring a cousin home for the holidays. Hot chocolate from the supper crew.
Dec12
West End Psalms Vol. 4 listening party
6:00 PM · Tracking Room
Fourteen tracks, all written in the Lab this fall. Every artist gets a printed copy of the cover.
Nothing in that category this month.
Got three minutes of something true?
Put your name on the First Friday list. Twelve slots on the first Friday of every month, clean lyrics, any style, anyone 13 and up.