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Baba Brinkman - The Rap Guide to Evolution - 06/28 - Soho Playhouse Off-Broadway, NYC
Delivered entirely in rap and spoken word poetry, The Rap Guide to Evolution is essentially a lecture about Darwin’s On the Origin of Species of Man, with some evolutionary psychology thrown in… And it’s pretty awesome. I did have my reservations prior to the show, but my love for music, and straight-up nerdiness, drove me to go anyway. It was for the best. This show is so well done.
Baba Brinkman, Canadian rap artist, scholar and creator of The Rap Guide, discusses everything from natural selection to the development of human language while using theories of evolution to explain behaviors in hip-hop culture. He remains careful not to offend anyone, give maybe post-menopausal women and mean people. He explains that when he takes on his “gangsta,” hip-hop persona, it is merely a convoluted imitation of several imitations. Who was the original gangster anyway?
The most respectable part of this show is that Baba does not use rap as a kitschy medium. He clearly respects the art form and uses his show to teach his audience, who may have never given deep thought to the development and expression of hip-hop culture, about why things are the way they are. He also got a room full of middle-class, middle-aged men, and their spectacled wives, to chant “I’m a African!” a la Dead Prez. Way to drive a concept home.
It is clear that the Rap Guide is a fine-tuned product of continuous revision. Baba covers important tangential bases like Creationist arguments and the genetic reappearance of homosexuality. This guy knows his way over, around, and through all the literature referenced in his show. I’m inclined to contact him for help with my dissertation!
If you have one ounce of curiosity in your body, please go see The Rap Guide to Evolution. It runs at the Soho Playhouse until 11/02. You won’t be disappointed.
