If there’s one thing everyone knows a Harvard degree will get you, it’s street cred. Right?  Well, not if you want to get respect from Jay-Z. In his new single, “What More Can I Say,” Hove drops a lyrical H-bomb on fair Harvard, writing of his ascent to the top, “Far from a Harvard student/just had the balls to do it.”

Whether this is a backhanded diss at the equipment available from Harvard’s male population can be left to section discussion in Marcyliena Morgan’s Afro-American Studies 153, “Hip Hop America: Power, Politics, and the Word.”  But believe it or not, Jigga’s latest lyrics are just the last in a long line of Harvard references in hip-hop, as well as rock.  FM has compiled a brief list of rap and rock lyrics representing for Veritas.

Chubb Rock

Album: I Gotta Get Mine Yo

Song: I’m The Man

“Hypothetically speaking

Who’s speaking at the function

Well it’s some genius who lives by the Junction

He’s coming from a Harvard socialite luncheon”

Everlast

Album: Whitey Ford Sings the Blues

Song: Ends

“I knew this cat named Darrell, he didn’t have a dollar

He was Harvard material, Ivy League scholar

Had a Ph. D. , had an M. B. A.

But now he’s waiting tables cause there’s rent to pay ”

Shaggy

Album: Pure Pleasure

Song: It Bun Me

“Now the tracks are in tears, the boy face look pale

Man them beat him with the baton, read him personal mail

Him could a graduate Harvard and graduate Yale

But him muma have rebut it ‘cause she know her son fail”

Bruce Springsteen

Album: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.

Song: Blinded by the Light

“And go-cart Mozart

Was checkin’ out the weather chart

To see if it was safe to go outside

And little Early-Pearly

Came by in her curly-wurly

And asked me if I needed a ride,

Oh, some hazard from Harvard

Was skunked on beer

Playin’ backyard bombardier”

Pep Love

Album: Ascension

Song: The Onus (What You Are)

“But, he was smarter than the average shit starter

Had it all planned out, how he was going to Harvard

Hard as it seems, he was working toward his dreams

But still into things, never for the surrendering”

Hard Knocks

Album: School of Hard Knocks

Song: Nigga for Hire

“Girlfriend was cute and fine

But one thing: the bitch was color blind

She said she went to Harvard

I met her at a time when you could say I was starving”