Person · Composer

Akua Naru

A pioneering rapper and scholar, Akua Naru fights to elevate women's voices in hip-hop while balancing her rising music career with her groundbreaking academic work at Harvard and UC Santa Cruz.

In short · Composing since 2015, 2 decades active.

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Biography

Akua Naru is a rapper from Connecticut, United States, known for blending hip-hop with soul and jazz influences. Since 2018, she has served as a Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University's Hip-Hop Archive Research Institute, documenting the achievements of women in hip-hop. Naru gained significant recognition in Europe, where she lived from 2008 until joining the music faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2024. She currently holds the Pavel Machotka Chair in Creative Studies at Porter College.

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