If "Pass the Cavassier" becomes "Pass the course with As" and "Shake your ass" becomes "Shake your math," it's been flipped funkamental style, deems Funkamentals co-founder Wade Colwell.

Funkamentals takes the "School House Rock" concept up a few notches, playing live sets for primarily adolescent audiences, with up to 13 people on stage at a time, hip-hopping through grammar, geography, science and even test-taking skills.

"The idea is to perform hip-hop music to teach young people academic subjects that were traditionally maybe boring, inaccessible, irrelevant and unappealing. We wanted to repackage it in a way that would be fresh and exciting," gushed Colwell, appropriately oozing with the enthusiasm and dedication of both a parent and a teacher.

About 10 years ago, Colwell collaborated with Ranson Kennedy and formed Funkamentals after heading social action projects in Tucson and Los Angeles. Years later, the duo's Funkamentals sports a full band led by Joel Gottschalk, and the Tucson-based Funkamentals has attracted national attention, including recognition from Harvard University and the National Academy of Education.

The group's strategy in both method and skillful audience targeting count for a couple reasons their educational endeavors have seen such explosive success. As far as method goes, Funkamentals uses urban music to appeal to the younger generation. Funkamentals believes that the adolescent age group in particular would respond the best to their education through hip hop music concept.

"Our motivation lies in reaching that group of young people. It's really the point where education becomes a lot more sterile. It's the point where teachers stop reading to their kids, stop singing to their children, stop using the arts as part of the methodology and it becomes a separate entity," Cromwell thoughtfully and sensitively assessed.

"What we're trying to do is re-integrate music and creative expression into the traditional, academic disciplines. You can utilize the arts to teach mathematics and science, very technical subjects," he said.

Funkamentals aren't all talk ÷ or rap ÷ they've produced some serious results. At one school, after only a few days of listening to a track about the nearly 200 countries of the world, students' knowledge of world geography increased significantly.

With the Funkamentals flip, even the Periodic Table of Elements becomes poetic in the track, "I Want Your Elements."

"Actinium stare with aluminum glare, astatine attitude with americum flair. Antimony lips like the grey arsenic. Your argon gloss is looking boron slick."

Besides rapping about nouns and verbs, the quadratic formula, Zimbabwe and Fiji, Oxygen and Helium or Juneau and Alaska, Funkamentals educate their audience by sharing life experiences ranging from sexual abuse, drugs, health and violence.

"[We say] things that might even be considered inappropriate in certain settings, but we found a way to make it appropriate by being real about it, by being authentic, not trying to place judgment, but expose people to it. These are the things that happen in life," Colwell explained.

Even if the parts of speech are as familiar as the back of your hand or you don't need someone to tell you that Sacramento hails as California's capital, it doesn't mean you should skip their performance Wednesday night at the Rialto when they will open for Saul Williams.

Beyond the technical facts found in the track of their cd, Education by Any Means Necessary, in listening one participates in the growth and evolving as a human being ÷ and that can reach adolescents or adults, according to Funkamentals. Pushing lyrics aside for a moment, Funkamentals can find a groove and engage an audience in the music, too.

This Wednesday, the University of Arizona Poetry Center hopes to engage the literary community and hip hop community alike with the Funkamentals and Saul Williams Show.

"Funkamentals was a real find for me. I didn't realize there was such an incredible hip hop activist group in Tucson," said an excited Frances Shoberg, literary director for the UA Poetry Center.

But they may not be in Tucson too long. Funkamentals hopes to spread their words and educate more people in more cities. This is your chance to see the quickly evolving and ambitious group in an adult venue here in Tucson. So pay very close attention this Wednesday and maybe you'll ace that next TRAD midterm or rock the MCATs.