Hip Hop culture has been seminal to pop culture and all other aspects of life. From our music, films, fashion, and state of being since it's conception. Being raised with the golden era it brings me joy to see Hip Hop being incorporated into academia. I'm proud to see one of my favorite MC's classic albums be put into a curriculum.
Kendrick Lamar's Noteworthy good kid, m.A.A.d city is now a subject of discussion in an English course at Georgia Regents University in Augusta.
The class' instructor, Adam Diehl, spoke to XXL about incorporating the album into his lectures.
“I was given the opportunity to create my own theme for the class,” Diehl says. “I decided to center the class on good kid, m.A.A.d city because I think Kendrick Lamar is the James Joyce of hip-hop–i.e. in the complexity of his storytelling, in his knowledge of the canon, and in his continuing focus on the city of his upbringing—Compton.”
He continued, “The course is a freshman composition course, so I am teaching these works (i.e. [James Joyce's] A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Selected Poems, James Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man, Boyz N The Hood, and good kid, m.A.A.d city) in the context of writing a research paper about one of the issues involved in the texts (e.g. gang warfare, police brutality, racism, incarceration rates, human trafficking, etc.). The class will hopefully produce much discussion about the issues that Joyce/Baldwin/Brooks/Singleton/Lamar raise, and hopefully the content of the class will inspire students to find an outlet to bring some sanity to our own mad city–Augusta.”
This is great news coming in addition to having an short film debut at the Sundance NEXT Fest a few weeks ago.
Who said you couldn't learn anything from hip hop these days.
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