Rap’s reigning champion Kendrick Lamar is currently on tour in Europe with SZA for their joint Grand National tour, which lands in Paris today before heading off to the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland.
For any American fans who failed to get a ticket for the US leg of the tour, there’s a recent piece of news that might come as some comfort – one which will need them to head back to university.
Indeed, Kendrick Lamar’s cultural legacy is set to become the subject of a university course in the US.
As reported by NBC10, Temple University in Philadelphia will offer a course in their Fall 2025 semester titled "Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of M.A.A.D City" - a reference to both his albums 'Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers' and 'Good Kid, M.A.A.D City'. The course will be available to all students.
It will be overseen by Timothy Welbeck, a professor for the Department of Africology and African American Studies and the Director for the Center For Anti-Racism at Temple.
Welbeck, who has previously run classes based on the work of Tupac Shakur, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, said: “Kendrick Lamar is one of the defining voices of his generation and in many ways, both his art and life is reflective of the Black experience in many telling ways.”
He went on to explain that he believes the rapper’s “journey towards self-actualization” is related to the Black experience.
“My current department chair was very open to the idea and received it almost immediately,” he added. “In a lot of ways, our department at Temple specifically, and Temple more broadly, has embraced the study of hip-hop in academic spaces.”
That’s all very well and good, but what about any eventual branching out with regards to European university courses?
Lamar is far from the first musician to have a university course centered around their work. The likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift have been the focus of uni courses in the US, while The Beatles and Bob Dylan are regular topics in various European universities.
In 2022, the prestigious and highly-selective French school École Normale Supérieure (ENS) announced its students were going crazy in love with seminars on Beyoncé. Titled “Beyoncé: nuances of a cultural icon,” the seminars aimed to reflect on the notions of culture and representativeness with a focus on the “artistic orientation in a multidisciplinary way, through art history, contemporary literature, history and philosophy.”
Similarly, the Belgian University of Ghent launched Europe's first Taylor Swift-inspired literature course in 2023, an elective course highlighting the themes, styles and techniques of famous historical literary writers like Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Margaret Atwood – all from the US pop superstar's perspective.
While courses on celebrity musicians are rarer in Europe, there are other initiatives available, like last year’s Taylor Swift course offered by Glasgow Clyde College (GCC) in Scotland, to better educate parents who were accompanying their children to the singer’s record-breaking The Eras Tour.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s Grand National tour is in Europe until 9 August. The two stars then head to South America and Australia, where the tour ends on 10 December.
Lamar’s most recent album, ‘GNX’, made our Best Albums of 2024 list last year. In our review, we said: “(‘GNX’) may not be his most ambitious release, but it’s a more directly accessible and less conceptual collection of songs compared to 2022’s ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ – more akin to ‘DAMN.’ in this sense. It’s cinematic (‘squabble up’), anthemic (‘tv off’), lacerating (‘wacced out murals’), slick (‘luther’, featuring SZA), and moving (‘gloria’). The immediacy of the album doesn’t mean that there isn’t depth behind the bops, and Lamar's penmanship continues to be as precise and as ferocious than ever."
Check out our full list of 2024’s Best Albums, as well as our Best Albums of 2025... So Far.
