Jay-Z 101: Georgetown sociology course focuses on rap star

Michael Eric Dyson is the perfect Professor to pull this off. I have a love/hate appreciation of Jay-Z's music. However, I would love to be in Dr. Dyson's class to hear him dissect the life and times of Jay-Z. I have to admit that his book is on my list to read.

It’s Monday morning at Georgetown University, and Michael Eric Dyson is on Page 176 of “Decoded,” the memoir of rap superstar Jay-Z.

Pacing the classroom in his boxy, Hoya-blue suit, the sociology professor pushes his glasses up his nose and dives into the rapper’s musings on race and self-image: “Jay-Z is speaking about the imagistic conception of blackness that is evoked in a white world thinking about black culture.”

Students crammed into Dyson’s classroom jot this idea into their spiral notebooks, click-clack it into their laptops. It’s one of countless bullet points that cascade from the professor’s mind during what has become one of the most popular courses on campus — SOCI-124-01 or “Sociology of Hip-Hop — Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z.” It might be the only Georgetown course ever discussed on MTV.

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