Baba Brinkman, <em>Rap Guide to Evolution</em>

Rap Guide to Evolution. We talked to him about stories of origin (the universe's and his own), street cred, evolution, hip hop, and his place in it all.

How did this all start? And how did you transition from tree planting to rapping? Everyone's story has different twists and turns but they all begin the same way: first there was the big bang, then some unimportant details, then abiogenesis, then a whole lot of natural selection, and, in my case, I happened to be born into a family of Canadian tree planters who are also very loquacious. I decided as a teenager that rap was the best medium for making an impact on the world through creative language use, and I've never looked back. As for treeplanting, it's a very repetitive job and I did it for twelve years, give or take, so I taught myself to rap by freestyling along with the repetitive motions of the work. I made the transition by quitting my job and being financially very unstable for quite a few years. No risk, no reward.

Some of your raps have been incorporated into classroom curriculum in Australia, Canada, and the UK. Do you think there's a place for hip hop in the classroom? Should more teachers be rapping? Or should more rappers be teachers? There is clearly a place for hip-hop in classroom, in so far as teachers find it useful. I wouldn't say more teachers should be rapping or more rappers should be teaching, because I think everyone makes decisions and faces the consequences and the word "should" is usually mistaken for a moral imperative when it is actually a strategic one. I think if more teachers rapped or used rap in their lessons they would potentially be less boring, and if more rappers tried to teach or tell a more nuanced story they could increase their fan-base and reach a more intellectually curious audience, but I don't begrudge any rappers or teachers their choices. I just try to only pay attention to the ones I find interesting, and repay the rest with indifference.

What's the relationship between an educational message and hip hop street cred? Do you have street cred? J-Live has a lyric that sums it up nicely: "The illest weapon you can load ain't your nine, boy, load your brain / You can ask a real live gangster and he'll tell you the same." An educational message doesn't have to be "eat your vegetables" or "don't do drugs" or some other finger-wagging platitude. Evolutionary theory is an "educational message" that can help to explain the origins of street cred and why it exists in the first place, as a form of primate status competition that measures each individual's level of talent, courage, sincerity, and ability to maintain a credible threat of violence, in comparison to their rivals.

Since there isn't a single currency I manage to get some degree of respect even if I have no interest in violence, whereas someone else might get just as much or more with nothing but physical aggression. Luckily for me, street cred, like all forms of status, is not an either/or binary but rather falls on a gradient, so how much I have depends on who you compare me to. I don't have as much as 50 Cent, obviously, but I bet I have more than you.

You've said that you rap not only about the evolution of man but about the "evolution of hip hop." Where do you see yourself in that evolution? Where's hip hop headed? And what's your role in it all? The beauty of evolution is there is really no telling where it's headed because it causes entities (people, institutions, ideas, organisms, genres) to change in response to changes in the environment. If you can control the environment you can direct the change, but our control is limited. I see myself as an evolutionary novelty in hip-hop, but that doesn't necessarily make me a "novelty act". Keep in mind that mammals were a novelty act once, but after the K-T extinction they took center stage. I'd like to see rap get progressively smarter, wittier, funnier, more insightful, and more willing to challenge the listener, and to some degree I think this is happening, but it all depends on which artists get the most popular support. My music is even too cerebral for me sometimes, so I think there will always be a market for diversity, just like the diverse niches in the natural world. There is a market for those who dumb it down and there is a market for those, like Lupe Fiasco, who satirize those who tell him to dumb it down.

How do you pick which materials you'll rap about? I try to apply my skills where I think they'll be the most useful. When I was asked to write about Darwin and evolution I took a look at the culture wars and the landscape of ideas and decided, "yup, that's an intellectual battle worth fighting." On the other hand, sometimes I take jobs just for money and it takes a bit more effort to find a way to make it interesting for both myself and others. It's probably pretty similar to the way you choose what to write about.

You graduated university with a degree in Medieval Literature. What is it about medieval literature that you love? And why did you choose Canterbury Tales for your last show? What place do they have in today's world? The Canterbury Tales offers a glimpse into the past, possibly the most vivid glimpse we are capable of achieving, since Chaucer was a singular talent and he happened to be writing at a time when the individual authorial voice was really coming into its own. Cervantes and Shakespeare both have a similar quality, but there's something about Chaucer's eye for detail and ability to ironically editorialize or criticize without berating that strikes me as virtually unprecedented. I also love it because it shows you how little human nature has changed over the centuries.

What brings you to the States? Livin' the dream, baby. I wrote a hip-hop theatre show, performed it at some festivals, and it attracted the attention of a New York producer, Sharon Levy, which is pretty much what you hope but never expect will happen to an independent theatre production. So now I get to test my skills against the wary Off-Broadway audiences, like a species from a sparse boreal forest trying to infiltrate the teeming Amazon jungle.

At some of your performances in the Southern U.S., the audience members walked out. Why do you think that is? What do you expect from your New York crowd? They walked out because my opening number finished with a call and response piece that went "When I say 'Creationism is...' you say 'DEAD WRONG!'" and they were offended, presumably because they were creationists (it was in Texas). If they had stayed for the whole show I bet I could have made them laugh and maybe even re-think their beliefs, so I don't tend to open with that piece anymore. I expect New Yorkers will be less likely to find faith-baiting offensive, but some of them will probably be offended by other parts of the show, maybe the part about teenage pregnancy and violent crime as a product of evolution. I expect the response to be rich and varied.

What does your typical fan look like? How do you bring together the science geeks and the hip hop lovers? Or are there overlaps more often than we would think? My typical fan is high in the personality trait known as "openness to experience" since let's face it: a white Canadian rapper who's obsessed with science doesn't exactly conform to expectations. I admit I do pitch a lot of my lyrics at nerds, not nerds in the sense of having no social-skills, but in the sense of being intellectually curious and turned-on by the world of ideas.

I think pretty much everyone in my generation is a hip-hop lover to some degree, and most people in every generation are curious about what makes other people tick, whether or not they know or care about evolution. So that's the somewhat grandiose promise of my show. If you don't love or understand hip-hop, I will convert you; and if you don't find evolution fascinating or understand it, I will convert you. On the other hand if you already love both, well, I bet I can still surprise you, and after you get to tell all your friends: "That's what I've been saying for years!"