Lupe Fiasco Joins Faculty of Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute

Lupe Fiasco continues his faculty run.

Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University has announced it will launch the first-ever Bachelor of Music in Hip Hop program, bringing the first undergraduate hip-hop degree to the first conservatory in the United States. Lupe Fiasco has joined as faculty at the prestigious university as a visiting artist.

According to the press release, “the new program will combine the resources and strengths of Peabody’s industry-leading Music Engineering and Technology (MET) programs with the Conservatory’s long history of innovation and excellence in performance training.”

The Hip Hop curriculum will center on the skills of rapping, beatboxing, turntablism, and producing, alongside classes on the cultural history and evolution of hip-hop style, technique, and technology. The inaugural faculty is led by composer, producer, beatmaker, pianist, and professor Wendel Patrick.

“With Wendel Patrick’s thoughtful leadership, a burgeoning interest in programs at the intersection of music and technology, and Peabody’s dedication to expanding the definition of 21st-century artistic training, this is an important opportunity to direct Peabody’s strengths toward an essential American cultural movement that has been a driving artistic force for more than half a century,” said Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein. “Peabody has been a leader at the intersection of art and education for over 150 years, and we couldn’t be more excited to foster and support the talents of future generations of hip-hop artists in collaboration with those who are pushing the art form forward, and to do so in a city, Baltimore, that itself has long been fertile ground for the voices of hip-hop.”

“I’m honored to be joining the faculty of the prestigious Peabody Conservatory doing what I love most, rap,” said Lupe. “I look forward to advancing the study and practice of rap and hip-hop into the upper echelons of higher education within a program that will surround the core performance training with coursework in the cultural history and sociopolitical environment that gave rise to hip-hop and the genre’s popularity and influence.”

Lupe is currently a visiting scholar and professor at MIT as well as a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.