Using Critical Race and Latino Critical theories, this study examines 20 in-depth interviews conducted by the author with Mexican and Puerto Rican youth from the Chicago area. The author contends that youth utilized hip hop music in multiple and overlapping ways, engaging hip hop music as both a pedagogy that centers the perspectives of people of color and a framework to examine daily life. Specifically, youth used hip hop discourse to make sense of the ways race operates in their daily lives; to more broadly understand their position in the U.S racial/ethnic hierarchy; and to critique traditional schooling for failing to critically incorporate their racialized ethnic/cultural identities within official school dialogues and curricula in empowering ways. Succinctly conveyed by one youth, the theme "Music fit for us minorities," explores the ways that students link hip hop music to the disempowering cultural identities they encounter about Latinas/os, the structures that marginalize them, and to broader systems of inequity. In doing so, youth use hip hop music as pedagogy and an interpretive lens to negotiate and challenge their racialization in schools and society. (Contains 11 notes.)