Now That Kendrick Lamar Is The Subject Of A Course At Temple University, Here Are Celebrities Who Should Get Their Own College Classes
KTLA 5 – Los Angeles’ own Kendrick Lamar will be the subject of a new class taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The fall 2025 course will be taught by Africology and African American Studies Assistant Professor Timothy Welbeck. It’ll be called Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of M.A.A.D City.
Welbeck, an artist himself, has also taught courses like Hip-Hop and Black Culture and No City for Young Men: Hip-Hop and the Narrative of Marginalization.”
“Kendrick Lamar is one of the leading voices of his generation and has a keen ability to articulate various dynamics of black life and the quest towards self-actualization and particularly also capturing the narrative of marginalization and rising from that,” Welbeck said in a post on Instagram.
There's certainly worse people to have classes about. Kendrick Lamar has done a lot for the community. I'm sure of it. He also called the most famous rapper in the world a pedophile on stage at the Super Bowl and everybody laughed and applauded. In general, I kinda like the idea of teaching a class that studies the life of a highly successful individual. There must be some good lessons to learn in studying their lives. This particular Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of M.A.A.D. City class at Temple University doesn't necessarily seem to be about that. Sounds like it's going to be more about his keen ability to articulate various dynamics of black life and the quest towards self-actualization and particularly also capping the narrative of marginalization and rising from that. But if you're a college out there looking for some creative new classes... here's a list of people who's lives would be worth studying (for various different reasons)
Dave Portnoy – Obligatory mention of the media empire my boss built. Turned a free Barstool Sports newspaper into a whole ass lifestyle brand. Sold the company for $500M and bought it back for $1. His dog is a member of the 1%. I couldn't possibly think of a better business mogul to study than that.
Donald Trump – I mean regardless of what you think about the guy, his rise to political power is fascinating. No matter how the Donald Trump story shakes out, they almost certainly will be teaching classes about him for the rest of eternity. They could build a whole major based around his influence on America, the way he played the political system, the way dominated debates, the way he could line up a litter of golden retriever puppies on the White House lawn and murder them one-by-one executioner style and it wouldn't effect his image in the slightest. No matter which way you slice it, it's remarkable stuff.
The Kardashians – Kris Jenner is one of the greatest businesspeople of our generation. And all it took was being a tertiary character in the most enthralling public murder trial in the history of the world, and having her hottest daughter star in a grainy footage sex tape where you can barely even see any of the good stuff with a kinda popular musical artist. Now her kids can snap their fingers and make a billion dollars off beauty stuff.
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Taylor Swift – There's gotta be enough there to teach a class. Next to Donald Trump, I'm not sure anybody in the world has that much influence over such a massive group of people. I mean she just re-recorded four of her old albums, resold them to her fans, then got the rights back to her old music anyways. Someday we're going to look back on that as one of the most genius and innovate marketing moves of all-time.
Mr. Beast – Sometimes I hate the guy's face, but what he's been able to build from the ground up is damn impressive. He also seems like a pretty genuinely good dude. I'm obsessed with the infinite money loophole he's found where he can make a video in which he gives away thousands and thousands of dollars, then that video earns him twice the amount of money he gave away. Kinda feel like he could singlehandedly dig the world out of poverty if he just went down the line and filmed himself giving $100k to every poor person in the world.
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Jake Paul – The man has really been getting on my last nerves lately with his whole boxing thing. For the love of god, Jake, just fucking fight somebody worth a damn. I gotta think people would respect him so much more if he stepped in the ring with a legitimate boxer and got the shit kicked out of him. So we can actually get somewhat legitimate sense of how good he's gotten, and he would actually have a meaningful benchmark to work towards. But as I'm sure they will teach in Intro to Jake Paul, that will never happen. That's not how you build a boxing brand on the internet. There's far more money in being a painfully cocky villain who claims to be a top tier professional boxer. That's how you get all those hate views every fight when people convince themselves the 40+ year old ex-champion he's fighting might actually be worth a damn still. But then he's not. Then Jake Paul claims he beat a world champion and angers the boxing community even more. Then it's rinse and repeat for as long as the world is still inexplicably paying attention. But as Dave has plenty of times before, there are no better marketers in the world than the Paul brothers.
Catch Me Outside Girl From Dr. Phil (Bhad Bharbie) – Honestly I probably shouldn't have her on here anymore. The other day it was revealed that she's $700k in debt to American Express. That kinda makes everything I'm about to say null and void. But before that, Catch Me Outside Girl did a hell of a job capitalizing on her 15 minutes of fame. She was a bitch to her mom on Dr. Phil one time when she was 13-years old and made a whole career on the back of it without possessing a single marketable talent.
Again… she's apparently $700k in the hole now… so I guess her "success" might have been all smoke and mirrors. I suppose it's POSSIBLE she never really had a net worth of $75 million in the first place.
Also when you go the OnlyFans route, I feel like that should maybe exclude you from having a course taught about you. It doesn't take a college course to explain that sex sells. But when it comes to people who have zero business whatsoever sticking around in any capacity after their 15 minutes of fame is up, Catch Me Outside did manage to keep her name in the "news" WAY more than it ever should have been. And if it turns out she is in fact broke as shit, well that would also be a great lesson for the undergrads out there.
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Hawk Tuah – Hawk Tuah girl is a more modern day version of the Bad Bhabie story. Except the way Hawk Tuah got famous is VERY repeatable. After gaining overnight fame via a viral blowjob joke, she immediately surrounded herself with people who knew all the bullshit internet tricks to help her grow a brand. It all seemed so calculated and overly managed, but for a while there it was working.
Then of course the final chapter of the Hawk Tuah class will cover how to know when it's time to blow the whole thing up and allegedly scam your fanbase for millions of dollars via crypto currency rug pull.
I really would be interested to see an expert in the field of Hawk Tuah run the numbers on the alleged $1.3 million dollar profit she allegedly made from her alleged $HAWK coin pump-and-dump scheme. Based on how much money she was bringing in from her Talk Tuah podcast, her "LET ME SEE YOUR BEST MEMES" tweets, then factoring in her projected career trajectory, was torpedoing the entire thing for a $1M+ payday (allegedly) a sound financial decision? I'd take that class. But only if it was taught by two people and two people only.
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IShowSpeed – Sorry I'm stuck on internet celebrities right now. I'll move on to something else after this, but IShowSpeed is so interesting to me. I don't remember when he got famous. I don't know what he does other than challenge people to races. His rise to fame seemed so instant. I don't get it. I know he's for a younger audience, but I don't know of a single person who watches his content. But then I see videos of him in [insert any foreign country here], and it's like The Beatles are in town.
I really just want the IShowSpeed class to exist so someone can explain to me what exactly he's done that makes people so unbelievably desperate to get even the slightest glimpse of him.
Snoop Dogg – As far as rappers go, and probably all celebrities in general, Snoop Dogg seems to have enjoying his fame down better than anyone. He slowly but surely won over the whites. All the whites. Even old white ladies at nursing homes sitting in their rocking chairs perk up and smile when Snoop Dogg pops up on their screen making a surprise guest appearance on the Antiques Roadshow. He's won over the entire world. That silly little murder trail he skated back in '96 isn't even a blip on the radar anymore. I'm pretty sure Snoop Dogg just wakes up every morning and asks himself, "What random bullshit do I want to do today?", then calls up whoever's in charge of that and they pay him a fat appearance fee to show up and smoke 1,000 blunts as he just kinda wanders around doing whatever the hell he wants.
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The evolution of Snoop Dogg is truly one-of-a-kind. Well… I guess Flavor Flav is actually running the same playbook… just on a WAY less famous level.
Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, LeBron James (Combo Class) – I may have kinda lost the plot on what exactly makes for a good college course, but comparing and contrasting these three athletes is always compelling to me. They're all three about equally famous. They all have massive personal brands. But all three have handled their fame in vastly different ways. Tiger Woods' demise was that he never learned how to be a normal human being. Michael Jordan's insane competitiveness made him insanely successful, but has also crippled him in his personal life. LeBron James by far and away seems like the most well-adjusted of the three, has never had a serious misstep in his whole career, has totally lived up to the impossible standard he set for himself high school, yet there's something about his personality that makes the general public dislike him SO MUCH MORE, and respect him SO MUCH LESS than the other two. The similarities and differences between the three of them are super intriguing.
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Chris Brown – The theme of the whole class would be, "If you are [this much] talented, you can get away with [this much] stuff". I've wrote a whole blog about this before. Probably multiple blogs. But Chris Browns failure to be cancelled despite his most earnest efforts to do so needs to be studied. Honestly for that class, Chris Brown might not even be a good example. Chris Brown still getting work defies all logic. He's not THAT talented. He's not THAT good of a dancer. And his rap sheet is absolute fucking lunacy.
- Assaulted Rihanna. Pictures and everything (2009)
- Angrily stormed off the stage of Good Morning America, and shattered a dressing room window with a chair (2011)
- Dressed as a terrorist for Halloween (2012)
- Fought Drake at a nightclub (2012)
- Punched Frank Ocean (2013)
- Arrested for felony assault (2013)
- Kicked out of rehab for "violent behavior" (2014)
- Assaulted a different woman, a Brazilian model (2016)
- Pointed a gun at a woman while in his home, proceeded to get in a 9 hour standoff with the police (2016)
- Bought an illegal monkey, was permanently banned from owning primates (2018)
- Accused of rape (2019) ¨C29C¨C30C¨C31C
When is the last time he's even made a hit song? How am I still seeing Chris Brown doing shit like this on my Twitter feed every god damn day?
People with way more talent have been cancelled for way less. But with Chris Brown, it just doesn't matter at all. I don't get it.
Alright I have to stop there before this gets too out of control. That's the list. Pound off in the comments.