November 2, 2025
Morgan was an champion of Hip-Hop as an academic subject worthy of study.
Marcyliena Morgan, the trailblazing scholar and founder of Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard, has died at 75 years old.
Morgan was an instrumental figure in the recognition of Hip-Hop as a art form and cultural phenomenon. Her work as a professor of the music genre’s study led to the creation of the Harvard institution. The archive solidified her own and Hip-Hop’s legacy within academia.
Born and raised in 1950s Chicago, the linguistic anthropologist uncovered the scholastic nature behind Hip Hop at UCLA. While teaching about urban speech communities in the ’90s, she noticed her students relate their studies to the emerging popularity of rap music.
Morgan initially felt skeptical of Hip-Hop’s place in higher education. However, she dug deeper into the cultural and sociological ramifications of the music genre. She then discovered how it reflects Black and Brown communities, and the multi-faceted roles’ rappers play within them.
“I developed a respect for hip-hop culture because in spite of all its excesses and some of its deserved criticism from society, it remains a rare place where young black people and brown people are valued and awarded by their peers,” she wrote in her 2009 book, “The Real Hiphop,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “They are treated as gods and goddesses and put on pedestals for searching for and ‘representing’ truth and knowledge and recognizing and being proud of who they are and where they come from.”
Morgan later championed the academic study of Hip-Hop. She became a collector of certain artifacts as the art form began to merge with fashion. With collectibles from boomboxes, vinyl records, and highly-lauded sneakers, she founded Harvard’s Hip Hop Archive and Research Institution in 2007.
As the go-to voice for its academic study, Morgan spoke at conferences highlighting the importance of Hip-Hop. Notably, she taught courses on Hip-Hop while watching it blossom into the cultural staple it is today.
Morgan understood the nuance of the rap form. She accepted its existence holistically while still marking its impact on people of color, Americana, and, eventually, the world.
“She was saying it needed to be studied, it needed to be recorded, preserved, archived and analyzed because it was a cultural phenomenon. And she was right about that,” shared Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. “It was not only an American or an African American cultural phenomenon. It would soon sweep the world.”
A lifelong scholar and advocate for Hip-Hop’s place in the classroom and the stage, Morgan leaves behind an academic profile that supports Black people’s artistic creation and legacy. Morgan died at 75 due to complications with Alzheimer’s disease, with her legacy, the Marcyliena H. Morgan Hip Hop Archive & Research Institute, still standing in her honor.
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