Inside the Rappers Studio

Are you a young man with star-studded dreams of Hollywood? Well, what are you doing in drama school? The Rap Institute of Acting offers a quick, inexpensive avenue into the world of television and movies.

While it's true a little pigmentation helps, even pale-faced homeboys like Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark have parlayed their minimal rap talent into fame and riches (respectively), and you can too!

Just as athletes use their on-field exploits as a stepping stone to the broadcast booth, you can leverage hip-hop into a more reliable, better-paying career. Ice Cube, Ice-T, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah and Will Smith are just a few of the artists to trade their dwindling musical relevancy for their name in lights and the occasional Oscar nomination.

We'll show you the way! It begins with intensive introductory classes that will instruct you on all you need to know about rapping. We'll train you to talk about how hard you are, how big your rep is, and to suggest the same about your "steel." We'll also school you on the construction of familiar, thinly drawn characters and a preposterous backstory to establish your street cred.

Later courses focus on source material including slinging drugs for fun and profit (hosted by The Wire's Stringer Bell, aka DJ Driis), concocting the purple drank, faking a beef to draft on the success of other rappers, and the finer points of costume jewelry and grills (with special guest Paul Wall). With our instruction, you'll find there's nothing to it!

Whether you're a sheet-metal worker or a corrections officer, we can teach you to affect the impenetrable cool, overweening ego and dismissive manner of a true rap star. No experience necessary, just enough brash attitude to sell your version of "the real." And we'll teach you that as well!

Those suffering a fundamental distaste for gangsta braggadocio need not despair. We'll hone your soft-spoken seriousness into conscious patter, affording you a gravitas that lets everyone know you're above simple escapism. You want them to think!

You'll transform banal sentiments and dog-eared wisdom into humorless testaments to your intelligence. You'll discover the art of turning your commercial failure into a badge of honor with which to bludgeon more popular artists. Though rarely a path to mainstream musical success, that hasn't prevented Common and Mos Def from forging prosperous movie careers with little more than a cult following.

The RIA's graduate-level coursework will demonstrate how to convert your rap visibility into movie and television roles; it's as simple as exchanging one stereotype for another. You're already comfortable with the stage, inventing stories and embellishing the truth — now acting's just an agent away!

With our help, you'll soon be able to land parts as a criminal, drug addict, cop or amusing, streetwise fish out of water stuck in some middle-class or upper-crust milieu. As with rapping, skill is less essential than the ability to broadcast a presence.

Look at Snoop — he's the same larger-than-life pimp onscreen as he is on record. D'ya call that acting?

Best of all, when you're an actor, the studios provide the props, freeing you from the expenses of all that bling, cars, shiny suits, top-shelf liquor and legions of women and hangers-on, not to mention the label's cut of your sales. Acting is like hip-hop's retirement home, providing a better living than you could ever expect from any release beyond your sixth album.

Don't swim against the current of rap's youthful tide — visit the Rap Institute of Acting and build your better future today!