When 13-year-old Steven (King) Ayala strides confidently down the hall at South Bronx Preparatory, students follow.
When he enters Rosaleen Knoepfel’s sixth-grade classroom, people notice.
When he freestyles in her after-school program, his rhymes ring.
“Think twice,” he raps. “Wrong or right, think twice, day and night, think twice, death or life.”
King is one of more than 40 students in the after-school Urban Art Beat program at the middle school at 145th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven.
