u/ekkolapto1

MIT Rap Club's long awaited panel with Professor Lupe Fiasco, Professor Elan Barenholtz, and Addy Cha is now live!

Following Dr. Michael Levin's talk on bioelectricity and Platonic Space–we discuss the deepest connections between neuroscience, linguistics, computation, and rap. 

Some topics covered:

Can you train the voice in your head to rap?

Are definitions pointless?

Can training on rap make you better at mathematics, engineering, or public speaking?

Does writer’s block exist?

The minimal units of meaning and rhyme

How meaning is stabilized (and does meaning need to be stabilized?)

Words as linguistic prosthetics

Language as a biological prompt

Cognitive processes behind creativity

Does the "lone genius" actually exist, or is it mostly a myth?

Origins of human tools and language 

At MIT, we are hosting the very first Rap Theory Salon + Hackathon from July 17-19: featuring a panel with MIT Professors Wasalu "Lupe Fiasco" Jaco and Nick Montfort, and Prof. Elan Barenholtz. Moderated by Addy Cha from Ekkolápto.

This all started when we asked ourselves a fundamental question: what would happen if we brought together the most creative minds in music and rap, science and philosophy in a space where they had the freedom to truly experiment and test their strangest ideas?

We will be discussing: the combinatorial space of all possible rhythms and rhymes, music across different sensory modalities (think rap for the blind), the fundamental theory of rap, and much more. This is where neuroscience, biology, philosophy, music theory, computation, and mathematics meets rap in a way that it never has before.

There is very limited seating for the salon and hackathon. If you are interested in attending, PM me!

We are hosting the very first Rap Theory Salon + Hackathon from July 17-19 at MIT: featuring a panel with Professors Wasalu "Lupe Fiasco" Jaco, Nick Montfort, and Elan Barenholtz. Moderated by Addy Cha from Ekkolápto.

This all started when we asked ourselves a fundamental question: what would happen if we brought together the most creative minds in music and rap, science and philosophy in a space where they had the freedom to truly experiment and test their strangest ideas?

We will be discussing: the combinatorial space of all possible rhythms and rhymes, music across different sensory modalities (think rap for the blind), the fundamental theory of rap, and much more. This is where neuroscience, biology, philosophy, music theory, computation, and mathematics meets rap in a way that it never has before.

There is very limited seating for the salon and hackathon. If you are interested in attending, PM me!

Really interested in establishing Rap Theory as an actual field of research, based off his MIT classes. A few friends and I are even planning a Rap Theory-inspired conference at MIT Media Lab later this year.

Curious: what do you think are some interesting ideas that could push rap into a new direction?

Music Theory will be able to tell us a bit about where to go, but what I’ve seen happen is people will create songs that are *technically* brilliant—but it’ll never quite be a song that will make you question your world or make you cry, etc. This is where borrowing core principles and research from cognitive science, theories of computation and linguistics, etc. could potentially have some benefit.

This is just the beginning—so my ears are fully open for all ideas and criticisms.