Sep 02, 2014 12:34 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Kendrick Lamar has enjoyed critical acclaim for his "good Kid m.A.A.d city" album, but now it is the subject of study at Georgia Regents University (GRU).

Professor Adam Diehl's "Good Kids, Mad Cities" English course may not be the first one to incorporate hip-hop, but it does compare the young rapper to the likes of James Joyce, Jamed Baldwin and Gwendolyn Brooks. On the surface, Lamar's album offers a look into life in Compton, Calif., a city that is home to prominent gangs like the Bloods and Crips.

"It's a little surreal because, of course, we don't live in the situation Kendrick Lamar grew up in, but it's almost like he's telling a story and then you have to step outside of that and realize he's not telling a story," Lauren Ringel, a sophomore history major who had never listened to Lamar's music before, told USA Today. "He's telling about his life."

Diehl said "good Kid m.A.A.d city" touches on several important issues, none of which are confined to Compton, Calif., but issues that Lamar had to grow up with. He also said albums like Lamar's are the reason hip-hop belongs in academia.

"With Kendrick's album, you've got gang violence, you've got child-family development in the inner city, you've got drug use and the war on drugs, you've got sex slavery, human trafficking - a lot of the things that are hot-button issues for today are just inherent in the world of Compton, California," Diehl told USA Today. "I think the main thing that hip-hop brings - it's the more journalistic art form within pop culture.

"Whether it's White Lines, which is about the cocaine epidemic in the '80s, or J. Cole's new song on the Mike Brown situation, hip-hop is about immediate feedback to the world people observe around them."

Diehl told the Augusts Chronicle that Lamar's work will last the way Joyce's and Shakespeare's did. The literary community is now starting to take a look at hip-hop through an academic lens, as schools such as Harvard, Rice and Georgetown already have courses on the subject.

"The entire album describes a day in the life of 16-year-old Kendrick Lamar growing up in Compton," Diehl told the Chronicle. "The songs are all coming from a place that happened to him 10 years ago... And this is next to Shakespeare, it's next to Joyce. In 100 years, people are going to be wanting their poetry or drama or short stories to be as good as good Kid m.A.A.d city. It's of extreme literary value."

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