Although they haven’t linked up on wax since the early 2010s, Drake and The Weeknd are two artists who changed the Toronto music scene forever, and next year, their groundbreaking careers will be the focus of a full collegiate course at the University of Toronto.
According to HipHipDX, Toronto-based writer, podcaster, and Hip-Hop scholar Dalton Higgins will be lecturing on Drake and The Weeknd’s record-breaking careers as well as examining the Toronto Hip-Hop and R&B scene that they both helped shape.
Joseph Okpako/Redferns/Getty Images
In his announcement of the course on Instagram, Higgins wrote, “I’ll be teaching a course about two Toronto-born music titans; Drake & The Weeknd in early 2022.”
Higgins, who notably published the Drake biography Far From Over: The Music and Life of Drake in 2012, reveals that he felt it was important to shine a light on Drizzy and Abel’s cultural contributions after the emergence of higher education courses on “rock, folk and pop stars like Miley Cyrus, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga.”
“It’s time to get our Canadian rap & R&B icons recognized & canonized academically or otherwise,” Higgins continued. “And it is CRITICAL for scholars, historians, to examine the Toronto music scene that birthed Drake/Weeknd and helped create the conditions for them to become mega successful.”
If you were a student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, would you enroll in RTA 950: Deconstructing Drake and The Weeknd?
[via]