In popular music education, we often ask our students to engage in real-world creative practice—writing songs, producing tracks, recording albums, and releasing work publicly. Yet within higher education, those same activities have rarely been recognized as legitimate forms of faculty scholarship. Books, journal articles, and conference papers remain the dominant currencies of academic validation, even in disciplines where sound—not text—is the primary medium of inquiry.
Recently, I began recording The Maturation of Mr. Wagner II after receiving university publication support that recognizes the album as a form of faculty creative scholarship. If fully realized through this process, the project will become only the second rap album to be formally published through a university-supported publication program. While this milestone is personal, its implications extend far beyond a single project. Hip-hop and popular music have always been research-based practices. Artists analyze culture, document lived experience, experiment with technology, and respond to historical and social contexts. Producers engage in iterative design processes. DJs refine performance strategies through observation and feedback. These are recognizable forms of inquiry—yet they have often existed outside the language and structures of academic research. For popular music educators, this moment invites us to reconsider how scholarship is defined and assessed within our field. A professionally produced album involves clear research questions, creative methodology, revision, peer input, and public dissemination. It contributes knowledge through sound, narrative, and production choices. In this sense, recorded works function much like monographs or creative research portfolios—only in a medium that aligns more closely with our discipline.
In the classroom, recorded scholarship offers powerful pedagogical value. When faculty engage in active creative production, students gain access to transparent workflows: songwriting decisions, production techniques, publishing considerations, and professional problem-solving. Rather than separating theory from practice, recorded projects integrate both, modeling how artistic inquiry operates in real time. Institutional recognition of albums and recorded works does not dilute academic rigor. Instead, it reflects a more accurate understanding of disciplinary knowledge production in popular music.
For a field rooted in Black, diasporic, and global traditions, expanding definitions of scholarship is also an equity issue—one that acknowledges forms of knowledge that have long been marginalized in academic spaces. For APME members, this shift matters. It creates space for faculty to pursue meaningful creative work without having to translate it into formats that do not fully represent the inquiry. It also strengthens the case for popular music programs within institutions that still rely on traditional metrics to evaluate research productivity. Ultimately, this moment is not about one album or one institution. It reflects a growing willingness in higher education to recognize multiple ways of knowing, creating, and disseminating knowledge. As popular music educators, we are uniquely positioned to lead that conversation—advocating for scholarship that sounds like the work we teach, study, and live every day.
Kenrick Wagner is the Director of Contemporary Commercial Music at the University of South Florida and a recording artist, producer, and educator working at the intersection of hip-hop, popular music pedagogy, and creative scholarship. He is the founding director of USF’s Contemporary Commercial Music program and the founder of Project GameTime LLC, a youth-focused arts and leadership organization. He is also the conductor of the Trap Orchestra. Wagner’s work centers on legitimizing recorded music—particularly hip-hop—as a form of scholarly inquiry, while creating real-world learning pathways for emerging artists and producers. You can listen to his latest single, “The Get Down”, here.