Lupe Fiasco turned a quiet Thursday at the Walters Art Museum into a live hip hop clinic, opening Peabody Institute’s new rap curriculum to the public with a free master class that packed Graham Auditorium. The Grammy-nominated rapper and songwriter, who has joined Peabody as a distinguished visiting artist, walked a cross-section of students and local fans through delivery, figures of speech, and the musicality of rap, treating the room like an extended studio session. He continues to teach at MIT and will work one-on-one with students enrolled in Peabody’s new Bachelor of Music in Hip Hop.
The session, titled “The Current State of Rap Practice: Process & Pedagogy,” drew roughly 150 people and played out like a crash course in how pros actually build verses. As reported by The Baltimore Banner, Fiasco urged students to think beyond basic rhyme schemes and to focus instead on delivery, phrasing, musicality, and the different “scales” of rap that can shape a performance long before a punchline lands.
Peabody's new hip hop degree
Peabody has launched what it calls the nation’s first Bachelor of Music in Hip Hop, led by composer-producer Wendel Patrick, with majors in rapping, production, turntablism, and beat-boxing built on Peabody’s signature one-on-one studio model. The conservatory named Fiasco a distinguished visiting artist as part of the program’s inaugural faculty, folding a marquee emcee directly into its core teaching roster. As detailed by Peabody Magazine, the degree pairs private lessons with ensemble performance and deliberately plugs students into Baltimore’s music scene rather than keeping them sealed inside a conservatory bubble.
How Fiasco teaches
Inside Peabody’s hip hop track, Fiasco says his focus is on the nuts and bolts of rapping: sharpening delivery, tightening figures of speech, and training students to feel the relationship between voice and beat. He told The Baltimore Banner that he “directly works with one student” in the program’s small cohort of five, essentially giving that rapper a private apprenticeship while also helping polish performances in ensemble settings. Asked if he plans to extend his time in the role, Fiasco brushed off the question with a deadpan reply: “None of their business. I’m teaching.”
From MIT to AI tools
Fiasco arrived in Baltimore with a résumé that already included campus residencies and classes at MIT, where he has worked with students on computational and language-driven projects that treat rap as both an art form and system. MIT’s arts program documents his visiting scholar work and a special subjects course on rap that blended code, performance, and public art, according to MIT Arts.
He has also collaborated with Google on TextFX, a 2023 AI experiment that helps songwriters and rappers explore linguistic techniques using machine-generated prompts and tools. The project’s design and toolset are laid out on the Google Developers Blog, which frames TextFX as a way to expand, not replace, human creativity on the page and in the booth.
What this means for Baltimore
For Baltimore, Peabody’s new degree ties heavyweight conservatory resources directly to the city’s long hip hop history and gives local artists something that has not always been available in rap: a formal academic pathway that still speaks the language of the streets. Wendel Patrick, who introduced hip hop classes at Peabody and now directs the program, has described the curriculum as a bridge between traditional conservatory training and contemporary practice, according to Baltimore Magazine.
For now, the program is intentionally small, with just a handful of students, but having a high-profile emcee on faculty gives the experiment extra gravity. If the first cohorts click, Peabody and Baltimore’s hip hop scene could find themselves growing side by side, with the next generation of local rappers earning degrees in the same halls where classical symphonies are rehearsed.
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