Kendrick Lamar’s Music Is The Subject of a New Temple Course

Kendrick Lamar’s music and cultural impact is the focus of a new course Temple University will be offering this fall. NBC10 Philadelphia reports that Timothy Welbeck, a professor for the Department of Africology and African American Studies and the Director for the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University, is launching the course. Welbeck has taught at the university for 14 years, including classes on hip-hop, Black culture, and urban Black politics.

“My current department chair was very open to the idea and received it almost immediately,” Welbeck explained. “In a lot of ways, our department at Temple specifically, and Temple more broadly, has embraced the study of hip-hop in academic spaces.

“Kendrick Lamar is one of the defining voices of his generation, and in many ways, both his art and life is reflective of the Black experience in many telling ways,” Welbeck told NBC10. “Being able to discuss his art in the environment that helps lead him into being the man that he is in a lot of ways can tell you him as an individual, but can also talk about the journey towards self-actualization particularly as it is related to the Black experience.”

Welbeck’s course will focus on how Lamar examines the evolution of Black expression in America. Welbeck hopes the course will help students see the power of hip-hop as a form of art and storytelling.

This isn’t the first time Kendrick’s music has made it into the world of academia. In 2014, Georgia Regents University announced a course focusing on Kendrick’s debut major label album, good kid mAAd city. 2Pac, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z have also all had courses taught about them at the university.

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