Kendrick Lamar arrived at High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey, on Monday morning (June 8), right after he headlined Summer Jam 2015 (June 7). The Compton rapper went to the school for a day of listening to poetry, freestyling with students and leading a forward-thinking assembly.

K. Dot’s visit wasn’t just a random — in March 2015, one of High Tech’s teachers and poetry club organizer Brian Mooney had written a blog post about using the rapper’s critically acclaimed album To Pimp a Butterfly to analyze Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. The next month, he posted a follow-up featuring responses written by his freshman English students. Both posts went viral, eventually reaching Kendrick, who then asked his manager to reach out to Mr. Mooney and arrange a visit.

“I was intrigued that somebody other than myself can articulate and break down the concepts of To Pimp a Butterfly almost better than I can,” Lamar explained, referring to Mooney’s original blog post. “That let me know he’s a true lover of music.”

Kendrick continued to express how impressed he was by the High Tech students. “I didn’t think I made [To Pimp a Butterfly] for 16-year-olds,” he continued. “I always get, like, my parents or an adult saying, ‘This is great, you have a message, you have themes, you have different genres of music.’ But to get a kid actually telling me this, it’s a different type of feeling, ’cause it lets me know that their thought process is just as advanced as mine, even if I’m 10, 15 years older.”

K. Dot started his day off with Mooney’s poetry club and English class who welcomed met him and displayed some of their work. The first student read a poem about the struggles he faces as a dark-skinned South Asian, and two others followed with a joint piece called “What the Media Taught Us.” Kendrick shared, “They got heart, they got intellect, they got punchlines.”

To see that Kendrick Lamar took the time out of his busy schedule, to listen to these teens, is pretty awesome. Check out the rest of the story available in Rolling Stone Magazine.