Professor Josh Ehrig, Professor James B. Peterson - Hustle Hard: Hip-Hop Culture & Entrepreneurship Course Introduction lyrics

Here at Lehigh University, we hustle hard! Professor Josh Ehrig & Professor James B. Peterson have come together to create the course: Hustle Hard: Hip-Hop Culture & Entrepreneurship. Over the length of a semester, these two professors have critically engaged students about the past, present, and future of Hip-Hop's entrepreneurial endeavors. The course description is as follows: This course critically examines the interface of the cultural and entrepreneurial developments of Hip Hop Culture. In the last 40 years, Hip Hop culture's emergence (from being a relatively unknown and largely ignored inner city culture into a global phenomenon) has shaped a wide range of entrepreneurial strategies and approaches to culturally competent marketing. The foundational elements of Hip Hop Culture (DJ-ing, MC-ing, Breakdance, and Graffiti/Graf) are manifest in youth culture across the globe, including Japan, France, India, South Africa, Cuba, and the UK. Considering its humble beginnings in the South and West Bronx, the global development of Hip Hop is an amazing socio-cultural movement. Its current popularity suggests and reflects its culturally rich origins. Moreover, the presence of rap music and other elements of the culture in television, film, marketing and advertising signal American mainstream acceptance (or consumption) around the world. “Hustle Hard...” explores the entrepreneurial ethos in Hip Hop Culture and investigates the wide variety of cultural commodities that have been deployed in the corporate world from the streets of the inner city to the board rooms of America. Course texts include: Dan Charnas' The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop, Steve Stout's The Tanning of America: How Hip Hop Created a Culture that Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy, and Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. Taken at the graduate level this course will require additional reading, in-cla** presentations, and a seminar research paper for the final project.