Nas to be Honored By Harvard University

Nas is to be honored by the prestigious Harvard University; they plan to establish the Nasir Jone Hip Hop Fellowship in his name. It's always great to read news like this. He might not be the most commercially successful rapper of all time, but which other rapper has delivered the art of rapping in its purest form (without gimmicks) for 20 years consistently?







"Nas will be honored at the Hip-Hop Archive and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, to establish the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship. The Fellowship will provide selected scholars and artists with an opportunity to show that "education is real power," as it builds upon the achievements of those who demonstrate exceptional capacity for productive scholarship and exceptional creative ability in the arts, in connection with the genre. The mission of the Hip-Hop Archive is threefold: to seek projects from scholars and artists that build on the rich and complex hip-hop tradition; to respect that tradition through historically grounded and contextualized critical insights; and most importantly, to represent one's creative and/or intellectually rigorous contribution to hip-hop and the discourse through personal and academic projects. Personal projects of fellows may include manuscript projects, performance pieces, album work, curriculum planning, primary archival research, and exhibition preparation, among others." (The Grio)




Nas released a statement in relation to this news-

"In my rollercoaster of a life I've endured good and bad for sure, and I've truly been blessed to have achieved so much thru art in my short life thus far," he states. "But I am immensely over-the-top excited about the Nasir Jones HIP-HOP Fellowship at Harvard. From Queens, N.Y., to true cultural academia. My hopes are that greed for knowledge, art, self-determination and expression go a long way." (Statement)