Bun B will soon be trading his Source Magazine 5 mics for the professor podium as he recently confirmed in an interview with NPR that he will be teaching a “Religion & Hip-Hop Culture” Course at Rice University starting in the Spring of 2011. Excerpts from the interview include:

How did you first become involved in this?
I was guest lecturer for the hip hop and religion class in fall ’09 and I got to talking with Dr. Anthony Penn, the teacher of the class and head of religious studies at Rice. We found out that we shared a lot of the same ideas and it occurred to us — well him primarily — that me being an addition to this course in a teaching aspect could be an opportunity to create something very new and very real in higher education.

What’s the course going to include?
We’ll be reflecting on the nature and content of hip hop as a religious experience. As well as religious expression. We’ll discuss the history of rap music and find the different parallels and correlations between religion and hip hop. People will be surprised at how many instances there are. Just the Five-Percent Nations presence in hip hop alone during the late ’80s and early ’90s — we could teach for days just on that. And other different things — we have Jewish rappers now.

You can be sure Rice students will be waiting in line to enroll in this class.