MC Hawking: A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking’s Greatest Hits (2004)
This blog celebrates wide ranging musical endeavors, from the sublime to the ridiculous. And we’ve given plenty of attention to the sublime lately, so…
Nerdcore rapper and web developer Ken Lawrence a.k.a. MC Hawking rose to internet prominence in the early 2000’s with mp3’s, released through his website, that employed a gangsta-rappified persona of physicist Stephen Hawking.
His songs proved so popular Lawrence was signed to a record deal and A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking’s Greatest Hits was the result.
Creationists and MIT rival scientists serve as the arch villains here rather than cops and rival rappers. But Lawrence synthesizes the worlds of gangsta rap and hard science as effectively as he synthesizes the voice of Hawking–achieved by use of the text-to-speech program Willow Talk.
Backed by the beats of DJ Doomsday (also Lawrence, using samples, midi compositions and loops available royalty-free) MC Hawking imparts a fair amount of actual scientific theory within spot-on rap parodies.
“Big Bizang” takes on the Big Bang. “E=MC Hawking” deals with the theory of relativity. “Entropy” explains thermodynamics. And “Fuck the Creationists” weighs in on the Creation vs Evolution debate.
If this extremely well-executed collision of two disparate worlds could be described in a word, that word–fittingly–would be “genius”.
Lawrence returned a decade later with “Fear of a Black Hole”, which was performed at the 2016 Starmus Festival with Brian May, Richard Dawkins and the real Stephen Hawking in attendance.
It seems Hawking’s energy can never be destroyed.
Listen to: “The Hawkman Cometh”
Listen to: “Big Bizang”
Listen to: “Entropy”
Listen to: “Bitchslap”
Listen to: “Fuck the Creationists”
Listen to: “All My Shootings Be Drivebys”
Listen to: “What We Need More of is Science”
Every Moment Has A Song 