Chicago native Lupe Fiasco announced that he’d been chosen as a Saybrook Fellow at Yale University. The Society of Spoken Art founder took to his Twitter account to share the good news.
“Proud to announce I’ve been chosen to be a Saybrook Fellow at my OTHER favorite school in the whole wide world outside of MIT…@Yale
“Shout to Tom Near for nominating me to a place where against all odds two Chicagoans found a home in the Ivy League,” Super Lu tweeted.
According to Saybrook’s webpage, the fellowship enables students and fellows to discuss topics in non-formal spaces.
“The Fellowship is intended also to provide students and Fellows with opportunities for discussion in an atmosphere less formal than the classroom,” the webpage reads. “They represent a considerable potential for informal discussions of your interests, academic or otherwise, but you must seek them out and make your interests known. You will find that they are eager to meet you.”
The Saybrook Fellowship comes after the Westside Windy City-bred rapper taught a class at the prestigious MIT titled Rap Theory & Practice: an Introduction.
Last year, Lupe spoke with Andscape about his MIT class.
“[T]he MIT relationship was formally initiated through someone who had a connection to one of the professors at MIT, Dr. Nick Montfort. I mentioned my interest in studying computational poets and trying to look for somebody who worked in that space,” Lupe said to Andscape.
He continued: “The connection was made, and all of a sudden, I was at MIT. At first, it was, ‘Come for a day.’ Then ‘Come see the school, get a tour.’ Then to, ‘Come speak at a class.’ Then it’s, ‘Oh, yo, come be part of a research group.’ Then it’s, ‘Oh, come be an artist-in-residence.’ Then it’s, ‘Oh, come be MLK Visiting Scholar for a year.’ It was just incrementally building over time, so it’s a result of a five-year engagement.”