Hip-hop artist Lecrae produced a project where fellow rappers each took one of Paul's letters, meditated on it for a year, then contributed a song about it to a collection called 13 Letters. I found out about it from a missionary in urban Indonesia who is working with rapper-churches whom Lecrae's people are mentoring, so this is about global culture, not just one American subculture. These are interpretations and contextualizations of each letter in the broad contemporary black church tradition, which Esau McCaulley describes in Reading While Black. (You can do this assignment whether or not you're reading McCaulley's book.)
Choose two tracks from 13 Letters, each one about one of Paul's letters. For each, compare the rapper's interpretation of the letter to the representation of that letter in course materials (the Bible Project, Powell, Work's lectures, etc.). Then compare it to the letter itself. Where does the song's interpretation agree and/or disagree with the course's? Where might it take a stance on a matter on which scholars disagree with each other? Where does it pick up something true about the letter, or perhaps miss? Where might it communicate Paul in especially powerful ways? If you're reading McCaulley, does it bear similarities to McCaulley's characterization of black church interpretation, bear dissimilarities, or both?
This assignment is meant to expose you to contemporary interpretation and the important roles of both a text's original context and the interpreter's context in the process of communication—and maybe to help you hear Paul in a new way and pass that on.
Of course, cite any sources you draw on, whether directly or indirectly, or else you're plagiarizing.