This week Kanye West began his 250 hours of community service teaching fashion, music and general Yeezus knowledge to students at different colleges across America.
Inspired by Yeezy becoming a lecturer, we decided to compile a list of the most interesting university courses dedicated to some of our favourite musicians. From subjects teaching political readings on Miley, looking at rock stars as religious icons and comparing rappers to Shakespeare, there’s some truly weird and wonderful courses on offer.
If you think you’re pretty well read when it comes to music, it’s time to take your knowledge to the next level.
Kendrick Lamar: Good Kids, Mad Cities – Georgia Regents University
There’s no arguing that Kendrick Lamar made a huge impact not only in the rap game but on popular culture in general with his sophomore album, good Kid, m.A.A.d city.
Despite being snubbed by the Grammy’s, it’s one of the most acclaimed rap records of all time. Professor Adam Diehl at Georgia Regents University has called Lamar “the James Joyce of hip hop”, drawing parallels between good Kid and Joyce’s 1922 modernist novel Ulysess for the way they both provide detailed commentaries on young urban lifestyles.
“The songs are all coming from a place that happened to him 10 years ago… And this is next to Shakespeare, it’s next to Joyce,” Diehl has said. “In 100 years, people are going to be wanting poetry or drama or short stories to be as good as good Kid, m.A.A.d city. It’s of extreme literary value.”
Sociology of Miley – Skidmore College, New York
Miley’s progression from “Disney tween” poster girl to the post-VMAs “twerking machine” 21-year-old she is today has sparked countless think pieces on the internet, so it’s only natural there’s a course that analyses Cyrus’ existence in social terms.
The course creator at Skidmore College, Carolyn Chernoff, says Cyrus is “a surprisingly complicated cultural moment” who offers the ideal “lens into cultural conflict” and “core issues of intersectionality theory”.
Sociology of Miley looks at the pop star in terms of cultural appropriation, queerness, gender, and the “hyper commodification of childhood”.
The Theology of Springsteen – Rutgers University, New Jersey
It’s no secret Bruce Springsteen includes a lot of religious references in his lyrics, which has naturally made him the perfect
subject of an in-depth theology course at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It looks at the Springsteen’s motifs of “redemption – crossing the desert and entering the Promised Land – and the sanctity of everyday,” says course professor Azzan Yadin-Israel.
“Springsteen tries to drag the power of religious symbols that are usually relegated to some transcendent reality into our lived world. In his later albums he also writes very openly about faith.” If you think listening to The Boss is a religious experience, this is next level.
Politicising Beyoncé – Rutgers University, New Jersey
Not many people can say they’re a Beyoncé professor. Brooklynite Kevin Allred can. He teaches all things Queen B at Rutgers Unversity, looking at her Heiness from a political perspective that encompasses her role and impact as the world’s highest-profile black feminist.
Remember that time at the VMAs this year when she stood in front of a giant screen that said ‘FEMINIST’ before she sung ‘***Flawless’, a song that quotes fellow feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche? It was an iconic moment that became the most obvious, GIF-able representation of Beyoncé’s important place in discussions about race, gender and sexual politics in 2014.
But don’t get confused – this isn’t a class to learn the ‘Single Ladies’ dance. “The biggest misconception is that I’m teaching dance moves,” says Allred.
English 2169: Jay Z and Kanye West – University of Missouri
English 2169 inspects Jay Z and Kanye West with a three-pronged approach: “1) Where do they fit within, and how do they change, the history of hip-hop music?; 2) How is what they do similar to and different from what poets do?, and 3) How does their rise to both celebrity and corporate power alter what we understand as the American dream?”
Course instructor Andrew Hoborek told Consequence of Sound he believes Jay and Kanye’s music is “warming up to the level of major poets” whilst calling the rappers the “painters and novelists in the 20th century, moving beyond the confines of the art
form’s boundaries.”
David Bowie – New York University
“My David Bowie course just opens up so many fields of exploration. As you study a lot of his work you learn a lot along the way. He’s quite the existentialist so we study the Beats Movement, the Commedia dell’Arte, the whole Ziggy thing with gender and other subjects. Bowie is so rich mentally and conceptually, and it’s great when you put it all together,” professor Vivien Goldman told Pigeons and Planes, adding that one of the main aims of the course is to look at how Bowie has remained culturally relevant over the years.
Bob Marley and Post Colonial Music – New York University
NYU’s Bob Marley course was created by the same mastermind behind the David Bowie one, Vivien Goldman, who quite literally wrote the book on Bob Marley.
Goldman is the author of The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century, and formulated this university course to take students through the history of Marley’s career from a socio-political perspective “as a free man of color in the West Indies post independence and post colonialism.”
Critical Inquiry on Radiohead – Pomona College, California
Pomona College English Professor Kevin Dettmar was inspired to begin a Radiohead class because he’s toying with the idea of writing a book on the band.
“I thought the full-immersion experience of [a course] would be a great way for me to do all the reading, think through the questions and issues,” says Dettmar, who said the experience of listening to OK Computer for the first time “was powerful enough to convert me back into a rabid music fan.”
His Radiohead subject discusses the band’s lyrics and music, their meanings, and how they impact listeners. It’s unsurprisingly popular amongst students at the college, one of them saying Dettmar “knows how to lead thoughtful discussions—and I really
want to own his entire discography.”
