The condition of African-American children is in a state of grave danger. Though scores in reading and mathematics have increased for all students, there remains a significant gap between African-American children and their European American counterparts (NAEP, 2007). Though many have taken a stance against this obstacle, there remains a substantial amount of work to be done in regards to solutions being made. The work of the likes of Boykin, Ellison, Albury and others has shown strides in the use of African-American children's culture to enhance their ability in their classroom settings and the assertion that all children can learn and achieve at a high level if the schooling institution focuses on their assets rather than what they lack. This paper proposes to not only bolster the arguments of those who have previously conducted research on the achievement of African-American children, but to forge new ground on methods to close the achievement gap. Using Boykin and Ellison's (2009) Talent Quest Model and Boykin's (1986) Triple Quandary model, the author attempted to increase the mathematics achievement of African-American elementary school children by using communalism and popular culture and explore possible differences in engagement through this same combination of factors. It was hypothesized that students mathematics performance would increase with the combination of communal and familiar music contexts, and also engagement would be higher in this context than in more traditional, individual and no music contexts. these hypotheses were analyzed using a 2 (communal vs. individual) X3 (familiar music vs. non-familiar vs. no music) factorial design. Participants were 83 3rd and 4th grade students who attended public school in the Midwestern United States. Results showed that students placed in a communal learning context performed better than those in an individual context. However no effects we found for the popular culture variable. Also, no significant results were found for engagement, however, through correlation analyses, the was a relationship found between total engagement, cognitive engagement, and post test performance.