Hip-hop recording artist, Lupe Fiasco will teach a college course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 2022-2023 academic year.
The “Daydreamin'” artist announced the news on his Twitter account several days ago.
I been holding this for a while. I’ll put together something more sophisticated later that really captures the nuance and gravity but for now I’ll just say it straight and raw:
I’m going to teach Rap at @MIT
🥲
— “DRILL MUSIC IN ZION” JUNE 24th (@LupeFiasco) May 20, 2022
According to Complex, Lupe will teach this fall semester. The Chicago rapper will take part in its MLK Visiting Professor Program for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Lupe will teach with associate professor of theater, Eunice Ferreira and documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah.
MIT’s MLK Visiting Professor Program has announced their 2022-23 appointments! Three have expertise in the arts & humanities: associate professor of theater Eunice Ferreira, Grammy-award winning rapper @LupeFiasco, & documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah. Congrats all!🎊 pic.twitter.com/vN2nuZwXHl
— Arts at MIT (@ArtsatMIT) May 20, 2022
This is not the first time the Food and Liquor emcee has been involved with MIT. Lupe previously ran the “Code Cypher” programming competition a few semesters back. He had been teaching rapping ciphers in a “computational way” alongside professor of digital media Nick Montfort.
Lupe’s last recorded album, Drogas Wave, was released in 2018. He plans to release his latest project, Drill Music In Zion, June 24.
HipHopDX reported that someone on Twitter reacted to the MIT that attending his course would amount to a “useless” degree. But, in a since-deleted Twitter response, he wrote, “Syllabus isn’t built yet but I’m thinking [there’s] fruit to be had in looking at neuromorphic computation through the lens of rap as a lossless data compression model with a dash of energy efficiency via refining Landauer’s principle applied to cytoarchitectonics. And some rapping…”