Kendrick Lamar’s layered lyricism has long made listeners tap their temples, but now his entire discography is being tapped by Temple University in Philadelphia for a new course beginning this autumn.

The course, titled “Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of M.A.A.D. City”, lands in Temple University’s renowned Africology and African American Studies department, which was previously the first to award a PhD in African American Studies back in 1989. The department has previously offered courses on Tupac Shakur, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, exploring the significance of these artists’ careers in their wider American and sociological contexts.

“When people first heard about the course, they were wondering whether this would just be gushing about Kendrick and what he does well,” explains course convenor Dr Timothy Wellbeck. “Absolutely, we’ll talk about him being one of the greatest rappers of all time and being a leader of his generation, but it’s really about the broader context that his life and art give us a lens into.”

“We’re going to look at the societal factors and urban policies that turned Compton into the place that Kendrick Lamar raps about in Section 80 and Good Kid, m.A.A.d City,” Dr Wellbeck continues. “We’ll also look at the broader context from which hip-hop emerged and how it continues various forms of African cultural retentions. We’ll look at how Kendrick Lamar is a part of a massive legacy of rappers from the west coast who have transformed the culture in meaningful ways and then do a deep dive into the man himself, covering four of his albums.”

And, while Dr Wellbeck is keen to emphasise that this is a traditional college course with assessments and formal credits, he also hints that there will be a few surprises in store for students. “Without giving too much away,” Dr Wellbeck teases. “I’m going to bring some guests in, too, some of whom have worked with him personally in addition to people who’ve written about and covered him.”

Below, we dive deeper into the values behind “Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of M.A.A.D City”, including Dr. Welbeck’s expert opinions on the Drake beef and his favourite Kendrick album.

What sort of lessons do you think people can take away from this course?

Dr Timothy Welbeck: My hope is that people come away with, one, an understanding that hip-hop didn’t just fall out the sky 52 years ago – it’s a part of a broader continuum of Black expression in which Kendrick participates. Hopefully they’ll also come to understand the makings of an environment like Compton, how it shaped a person like Kendrick and how a lot of policies that we talk about in the abstract have impacts on people. When we talk about housing discrimination, mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, the war on drugs – they all have an impact on people. Lastly, they’ll get a better understanding of Kendrick Lamar himself and his art, and hopefully have some fun in the process too.

Given the wider political climate in America right now, it feels quite a pertinent time to acknowledge the profound contributions that African Americans have made. Is this something the course touches on?

TW: Absolutely, a lot of my scholarship deals with those ideas both in a historical sense and a contemporary sense, and this is just another way to document that. Much of what we do with hip-hop is talking about how it is a vehicle into an understanding of Black life and Black expression. It’s certainly the most dominant cultural expression of the last half century but, even beyond that, it can show the evolution of Black culture over time. We’re going to do the same thing in this class, just with a particular lens on a particular person’s art and life.

Hip-hop and my old car have a lot in common: they both make a lot of noise and they’re both vehicles.

– Dr Timothy Wellbeck

Over the years, hip-hop has repeatedly come under fire for its association to violence and supposed vulgarity. I feel like you might have a good response to these arguments?

TW: What I have said in the past is that hip-hop and my old car have a lot in common: they both make a lot of noise and they’re both vehicles. Hip-hop is going to give you a ride into a better understanding of the life that people have lived – the culture is not inherently violent, it is a vehicle. People use it as a means in which to communicate various norms and encounters and experiences that they have. Even what people are looking at and calling violent is just one fraction of the broader canon of hip-hop itself.

Beyond that, to the extent that it covers unsavory elements of society, I think what T.I. once said is very true: ‘If you don’t want the music to be profane, you should change the profane conditions that people are living in.’ A lot of this objectionable content is a response to the conditions that people are living in, and then the corporate sponsored mainstream iterations of hip-hop have been exalting that in disproportionate ways because they have found that it was lucrative. For every person that you would deem violent, you could find several dozen who are not.

Will you also touch on the Drake beef?

TW: We’ll probably spend a class period or two talking about the beef in particular. We’ll talk about how it started, what transpired, and also analyse some of the more prominent songs within it. We’ll also look at the beef within a larger context – rappers have been beefing with each other publicly since Busy B and Kool Moe Dee, so we’re literally talking about decades of history encapsulated within that. Even battle rap is a thing to the point that we have leagues and people whose professional careers are centered around it.

In addition to all of that, we’re also going to talk about the lawsuit that Drake brought against Universal Music Group and I'll bring in some of my legal analysis and talk about the merits of the suit.

What is your professional opinion on the lawsuit?

TW: So, for context, Drake is making two main arguments with the lawsuit against Universal Music Group. There’s an allegation of collusion – that they did things to artificially inflate Kendrick’s success in terms of streaming. That’s going to play out in court, but I don’t think there’s evidence of that to the point that it’s going to be definitive. Most of the other parties that have been implicated in Drake’s original suits have already been withdrawn or had it dismissed and, if anybody has benefited from the industry machine over the last 15 years, it’s Drake. It’s ironic now that his career is not what it once was, that this is the argument he makes.

The other allegation that he’s making is defamation – that ‘Not Like Us’ was defamatory and that Universal Music Group should have known that releasing the song was defamatory. Defamation is notoriously difficult to prove. It requires that the defendant made a false statement about the plaintiff that harmed the plaintiff’s reputation, and the court needs to have the ability to remedy the harm that was caused by it. Beyond that, public figures have a heightened standard and that comes from a Supreme Court case called New York Times v Sullivan.

Drake did many of the things that he’s accusing Kendrick of [in the lawsuit] and, had Drake won the battle, he would have wanted us to believe that Kendrick Lamar’s child is not biologically his and that Kendrick Lamar engages in intimate partner violence. It’s rich to basically say, ‘You defamed me by calling me a paedophile, but I’m going to say that you abused your spouse, that she cheated on you with your best friend, and use the same tactics to do that.’ I think it is unfortunate that this is the first time in a major rap beef that someone’s called the lawyers up because they got their feelings hurt in a battle. I don’t think this lawsuit has much to stand on, and a lot of Universal Music Group’s responses have demonstrated that.

Finally, what’s the best Kendrick album?

TW: Wow, that is a very difficult question. It’s actually one of my essay questions – ‘What is Kendrick’s magnum opus?’ I go back and forth between To Pimp A Butterfly and Good Kid, m.A.A.d City.

I think that Good Kid, m.A.A.d City is one of the most brilliant pieces of artwork put together – the way he’s able to tell his story and then also to do so within the context of this broader album and still make compelling music. Around the time that he released it, there was still this formula that major labels expected an artist to follow. You were supposed to have what they call a ‘girl record’ that appeased to the woman demographic, and you were supposed to have a lead single that was supposed to be relatively universal. Kendrick was able to do all of those things successfully without deviating from the album’s core theme. The lead single was ‘Swimming Pools’. Rather than doing something that sounded like everything on the radio, he talks about substance abuse and escapism and how it impacted his family and peers. The ‘girl record’ is ‘Poetic Justice feat. Drake’ but, within the context of the album, it’s not something that’s done arbitrarily.

To Pimp A Butterfly is just incredible – it has such an ambitious task that it’s trying to accomplish both with its sound and its content, and I think it weaves it together so well. It’s got some of his best songs, particularly the sequence from ‘Mama’ to ‘Hood Politics’ down to ‘Complexion’. That sequence is really extraordinary.