Course on religion and hip-hop generates discussion on campus
Rapper Bun B co-teaches religious studies class

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Religion, said Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies, “is the quest for complex subjectivity.” It involves “the effort to make meaning, to wrestle with the huge questions of life — who, what, when, where, why we are.”

With that expansive definition, Pinn suggested that students of religion should be open to “a wealth of resource materials.” While some aspects of the search for life’s meaning may be captured in familiar institutions like churches, mosques and synagogues — and their respective doctrines and creeds, Pinn said, “There may be ways in which the popular culture we produce also serves as a way to wrestle with these sorts of questions.

	BUN B AND ANTHONY PINN

“Mindful of that,” he said, “why not religion and hip-hop culture? It’s one of the most significant cultural developments of the past 40 years.”

Pinn’s decision to co-teach Religious Studies 331, Religion and Hip-Hop Culture, this spring with Houston-based rapper Bun B quickly sparked interest across the university and beyond. Bun had spoken to Pinn’s class in the past as a guest lecturer, but Pinn wanted more. “It was clear to me that an hour and 20 minutes was insufficient to capture it,” he said. “We had to come up with a way to get him in the classroom and allow our students a greater opportunity to learn from him.”

The class quickly maxed out, with some 250 students signing up to participate in the course designed to explore hip-hop culture’s religious dimensions through the musical language of rap. “Being a part of this course allowed me to show the public, starting with Rice students and Rice University people and then spreading out hopefully to a larger audience, that everything that has been portrayed about hip-hop in the public eye is not all that hip-hop is,” Bun said. “This gives me an opportunity to let people into the hip-hop world, let them become a part of the hip-hop community and show them that hip-hop is bigger than just the music that is created by the artist.”

Pinn also teaches a course on the African-American church (RELI 270). He said he often brings in ministers whose firsthand accounts are integral to the subject. He expects the same level of expertise from Bun. “If I’m talking about hip-hop culture — and rap music in particular — why wouldn’t I turn to an artist who has played such a significant role in shaping what we even mean by ‘rap music’?” he said.

Bun described his contribution as offering an inside view of hip-hop culture to students taking the course. “It gives me a chance to pull people inside the world and take the curtain off the wizard, so to speak,” he said. “What goes into the creation of the art? What is it that is taking place in the mind? What do we take into account before we create? Who are we creating for? And what is the message that we are sending through the creation? All these things come into play when artists create a song. For the listener, you’re often left out of that process.

“A lot of people don’t give hip-hop enough credit as far as the connection that we the artists have to our own religious or spiritual base,” Bun said. “And again, this just gives me the opportunity to tear down these walls.”

In the first two weeks of Religion and Hip-Hop Culture, students have responded enthusiastically, Pinn and Bun said. All the questions in class have been relevant to the material discussed and evenly divided between religion and music, they said. Only one student asked Bun if he would accept a demo tape; Bun said he told the student the demo could be turned in along with the final exam at the end of the semester.

“It’s clear to me that the students see the value of this sort of investigation,” Pinn said. “Students are looking for ways to critically engage their world, to critically engage the cultural production they’ve claimed: hip-hop culture.”

The course also seeks to broaden Rice students’ awareness of life beyond the hedges. “We encourage our students to engage the way in which this music has developed within its context,” Pinn said. “And we offer our students an opportunity to be in the conversation with the larger Houston community — and offer an opportunity to the larger Houston community to engage us.” The class will meet at two off-campus locations during the semester to interact with other members of Houston’s hip-hop community.

Pinn founded and directs the Houston Enriches Rice Education (HERE) Project, aimed at promoting such interaction. “We started HERE because we wanted to give legs to President Leebron’s call for greater community engagement,” he said. “And we wanted to do that in a way that extended Rice beyond its comfort zone — to take it into communities that were not really a topic of conversation on campus.”

“This class offers (students) a chance not only to experience the culture here on campus,” Bun added, “but also to go out into the community and take it in as well.”

Bun was keen to let his many fans know that teaching Religion and Hip-Hop Culture won’t mean he’s forced to abandon his music. “I still have another career that I’m obligated to,” he laughed. “Even though I’m teaching at 10 o’clock in the morning here at Rice, it’s still not my ‘day job.'” He also pointed out that the fact the classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays didn’t impinge on his work, since “the reality is there’s not a lot of rap concerts happening on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Pinn said he’s not surprised at the students’ positive reaction to having a rapper co-teach the course on hip-hop and religion. “We don’t indoctrinate them. We provide them with the skills and the tools necessary to unpack, interrogate, explore and explain this significant development,” he said. “Why wouldn’t that appeal?”

Asked about his first impressions of Rice, Bun recalled coming to campus in the early 1990s to publicize his music. He was concerned that the insularity of the institution might translate into a pompous conservatism. But his early experiences convinced him otherwise. “It only took one toga party for me to realize it was really going down at Rice,” he said.