This article explores the impact of a global youth work project that aimed to engage young people in social issues through the medium of hip-hop. We discuss the literature on education for social justice and then give an overview of the hip-hop project we analysed. We go on to explore the qualitative findings, asking what practices were most successful in engaging 'marginalized' young people and whether the project met its aims in terms of the perceived outcomes for and of the participants. We consider how the project built self-esteem and draw conclusions about the implications of such projects for developing positive attitudes to learning and for consciousness-raising regarding global social issues.