The University of Missouri is offering a course on the influence of Kanye West and Jay Z on hip-hop music and popular culture.
Andrew Hoberek, the course instructor, said it is designed to teach students about “the emergence of rap as a major new art form.”
“When I was trying to come up with courses I was listening to a lot of Kanye and Jay Z music and thinking . . . that they are major artists working in an art form that started out as mass culture but had come of age,” Hoberek said via email.
The course, which is open to students from all faculties, focuses on how Kanye and Jay Z are influencing the genre.
Hoberek said the two rappers are “highly accomplished verbal artists,” who “seek to make challenging art that goes beyond the accepted rules of rap.”
He compared their work to writing and painting in the early 20th century, and to jazz music in the 1940s. Hoberek said the course enjoys a “high level of student engagement.”
“I liked teaching this course because students come into it already . . . critics of the subject matter,” he said. “It makes for a great learning opportunity to occasionally ask students to look at something on the border between mass entertainment and art and to ask them to think about the kinds of social and aesthetic judgments that go into calling something art.”
In 2012, Rutgers University began offering a course called “Politicizing Beyoncé,” while the University of South Carolina offered one about Lady Gaga in 2009. Kevin Allred, the instructor of “Politicizing Beyoncé,” said the pop star has always been a role model, not only for feminists but also for mothers, black women, and other minority groups.
“I think she’s shown what it means to be an independent woman today. She has taken control of her own career,” Allred said via email.
He said Beyoncé “has been able to define exactly how she wants to be seen by the world” and that “her career is really a roadmap to debate feminism over the years.” Like the course in Missouri, Allred’s class uses the well-known artist as a starting point to discuss further issues.
“It’s really a class on the history of black feminist writers and thinkers,” he said.
William Echard, a Carleton University associate music professor, said he isn’t surprised such courses are being offered. Echard said Kanye and Jay Z are obvious choices to “open up the whole history and repertoire of hip-hop, along with various contemporary issues.”
Echard said Kanye stands out due to his “inventiveness in terms of finding a really unique soundscape for each of his albums,” and the development of his “compelling anti-hero persona.” For Jay Z, he said the rapper’s image as a “public intellectual” makes him influential.
Hoberek said the study of rap music reminds him of how the famous poet Walt Whitman was initially criticized for his unconventional poetry.
“Only time will tell if I’m right about Jay Z and Kanye,” Hoberek said. “But I’m willing to make that bet.”
