​Lupe Fiasco launches rap course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chicago’s Lupe Fiasco is set to launch a brand new course teaching rap at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The rapper announced the news on Twitter on Friday: “I been holding this for a while,” he told fans.

“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.”

The course will take place on the 2022-2023 syllabus where the rapper will join two other new teachers as part of MIT’s MLK Visiting Professor Program.

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Joining Fiasco on the new teaching programme are theatre teacher Eunice Ferreira, and documentary maker Louis Massiah.

“MIT’s MLK Visiting Professor Program has announced their 2022-2023 appointments,” Arts at MIT tweeted. “Associate professor of theatre Eunice Ferreira, Grammy-award winning rapper Lupe Fiasco, & documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah. Congrats all!”

Complex reported that the rapper has made plans for the new syllabus, and in a now-deleted tweet, said that he was looking at “neuromorphic computation through the lens of rap”.

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“Syllabus isn’t built yet but I’m thinking its 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,” he said in the since-deleted tweet.

Born and raised in Chicago, Fiasco has a history working with the Massachusetts university, particularly with the launch of a programming competition named Code Cypher.

Lupe Fiasco recently announced the launch of his next record, ‘DRILL MUSIC IN ZION’, four years since his last album. The record lands on June 24.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter