Although the primary goal of this blog is to investigate the meaning of Kanye West and Walt Whitman’s artistic and iconic relationships, the blog also intends to call scholars’ attention to Walt Whitman as a precursor to American hip-hop and to recognize hip-hop as a multifarious responsive art form to Whitman’s poetry. While this blog is focused on the pictorial image of Whitman, scholarship surrounding Whitman and hip-hop can take many forms. Future possible studies on the topic could include, but are not limited to:

• Song of Myself: Self-praise as the standard voice for hip-hop artists

• Whitman’s poetry and hip-hop: genres for the common people

• Whitman’s bars: Whitman and hip-hop pushing poetry into new conventional territories

• Who you reppin’? The various personalities represented in Whitman and hip-hop

• Emerson to Whitman to Biggie: Building a culture of discipleship

Thus, this blog would like to serve as a springboard for in-depth scholarship surrounding Whitman and what has become modern poetry in its most popular form. To broaden our scope, the conversation essentially involves our understanding of poetry as a transformative art form. What is the relationship between poetry and hip-hop? What is poetry in its most organic form, and what cultural, political, and economic factors influence its evolution? These questions will certainly be entertained by this blog moving forward, and we call for other scholars to join in the conversation.