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Describing my 2017 appointment as a faculty member, the University of Virginia dubbed me the school’s “first” hip-hop professor. Even if the job title and the historic nature of the appointment might have merited it, the word was misleading.

Kyra Gaunt, a Black woman who is a foundational figure in the study of hip-hop, worked as a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Virginia from 1996 to 2002. Her book “The Games Black Girls Play,” which focuses on Black music practices, was published in 2006. I cited her in my work and in the interview I gave before accepting the job.

Also cited in my doctoral work, presented in my interview with the University of Virginia, was scholar Joe Schloss, who worked at the school from 2000-2001. In 2009, he wrote “Foundation: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York.” And in 2014 he wrote “Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop.”

After pushback from readers online, UVA Today amended its original headline documenting my appointment and added Gaunt’s contributions to the article.

As a rapper and scholar, I have experienced and seen misleading hip-hop stories that highlight an impulse to inaccurately document the genre’s history and present. I raised this issue recently in a TikTok “office hours” video – part of a series in which I respond to audience questions from the vantage of hip-hop art and research.

Misleading hip-hop stories

After Johns Hopkins University announced that Lupe Fiasco had been hired to teach rap there in fall 2025, some online platforms, including The Root, incorrectly reported on his assignment.

They described his upcoming job as the first instance of a rapper ever hired as a professor at a university.

This is obviously incorrect. I’m a rapper who since 2017 has worked as a professor of hip-hop while releasing music, which was part of the basis........

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