Music
Baba has independently recorded and released more than a dozen original hip-hop albums since his debut in 2004, executive producing and collaborating with a range of artist through his Lit Fuse Records imprint. His lyrics explore topics far outside the range of mainstream rap, including science, literature, environmentalism, technology, politics, psychology, and human behavior.
“Rhapsode” is an ancient profession, a lyrical entertainer who stitches rhymes and jokes and songs together to fit the needs of a present audience.
Released May 2023
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BRIGHT FUTURE
Bright Future is Baba Brinkman’s 12th full-length album, a collection of songs about science and society and a blueprint for improving the human condition through greater understanding of the natural world, medicine, and technology. Each of the ten songs was commissioned by a scientist or an organization with science at its core, for the purpose of communicating an important and complex idea to the general public, making it the world’s first fully-commissioned custom rap album.
Released May 2021
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SEE FROM SPACE
Baba Brinkman’s latest musical odyssey into the beautiful and terrible findings of modern science: evolution, climate change, reason, and evidence. Rap songs for thinking people in an era of alternative facts (aka falsehoods). On the bright side, apes can see from space.
Released July 2019
Purchase: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify
Music Videos
THE RAP GUIDE TO CONSCIOUSNESS
“Peer-reviewed rap” exploration of the neuroscience of consciousness, hip-hop music at the intersection of beats, rhymes, and brain cells.
Released April 2018
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Baba’s brain consists of more than 80 billion neurons, none of which has any clue that he exists, and yet somehow they come together to produce a steady stream of ill rhymes, punchlines, and some of the most thought-provoking music the world has ever heard. Listen and find out how.
THE RAP GUIDE TO CLIMATE CHAOS
A hip-hop tour of global warming science, exploring the temperature highs and ethical lows associated with this hot-button issue.
Released September 2016
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Canadian rapper and former tree-planter Baba Brinkman breaks down the science, politics, and economics of global warming, following its surprising twists from the carbon cycle to the global energy economy. To paraphrase the Notorious BIG: “Mo’ carbon, mo’ problems.” With scientists, climate deniers, and even the pope adding their voices to the soundtrack, get ready for a funny and disturbing tour of the world’s hottest topic.
THE RAP GUIDE TO RELIGION
A full-length concept hip-hop album about the evolutionary origins or religious instincts.
Released October 2015
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If the answer to the number one BIG QUESTION of religion is “no”, what other questions are worth asking? This album tackles the OTHER big questions of religion, such as “How did faith evolve?”, “Does it serve any adaptive purpose today?”, and “Is religion an adaptation, a byproduct of an adaptation, or a virus of the mind?” With lyrics that were “peer reviewed” for accuracy by experts in the field of Evolutionary Religious Studies, Rap Guide to Religion offers fifteen tracks of mind-blowing science and auditory irreverence from a truly unique voice in hip-hop.
THE RAP GUIDE TO MEDICINE
A sonic exploration of the ultimate origins of disease in our evolutionary past, from trade-offs between reproduction and survival to mismatches between ancient and modern environments. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, infection, obesity, and even the aging processes in our very cells obey the logic of evolution. To better answer questions about how to cure disease, medicine must first ask Why We Get Sick.
Released March 2015
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Produced, mixed, and mastered by Mr. Simmonds, with co-production on track 8 by Tom Caruana. Commissioned by Randy Nesse at the ASU Center for Evolution and Medicine and made with support from the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health, the ASU Center for Evolution and Medicine, the Perlstein Lab, and the Society for Applied Microbiology.
Music Videos
THE CANTERBURY TALES REMIXED
Gritty retellings of four of Chaucer’s most unforgettable Canterbury Tales, plus the epic stories of Beowulf and Gilgamesh, The Canterbury Tales Remixed takes you on an auditory journey into the distant past, accompanied by the epic cinematic music production of Mr. Simmonds.
Released April 2012
THE RAP GUIDE TO WILDERNESS
Developed in collaboration with The WILD Foundation, this hip-hop celebration of wild nature explores the many contributions of wilderness to human wellbeing. 50% of the net profits from each album sale are donated to WILD to advance their wilderness conservation efforts. Engineered, co-produced, and mixed by Lin Gardiner at Super G Music Studios.
Released December 2014
THE RAP GUIDE TO HUMAN NATURE
Produced, mixed, and mastered by Brighton hip-hop virtuoso Mr. Simmonds, Human Nature is Volume Two of Baba’s “peer-reviewed” Rap Guide series, exploring the science of evolutionary psychology and some of the bizarre behavior patterns of the world’s most fascinating primate species.
Released August 2010
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Framed by five popular theories of human nature: creationism, spiritualism, social constructivism, biological determinism, and evolutionism, this album tackles some of the big questions in philosophy, psychology and science, with the help of top science writers David Buss, Olivia Judson, and David Sloan Wilson. Provocative and fascinating subjects (She’s Ovulating, The Evolution of Gayness, Twin Studies) are deftly spliced with some incredible beats and turntablism to bring you hip-hop as you’ve never heard it before. Now available as a comedy DVD from Go Faster Stripe.
“An inspired, groove heavy, high production values record with a wonderful lyrical touch."
– Mind Hacks
"If Eminem and Dawkins had a baby, Baba Brinkman would be the result... does a wonderful job at explaining what makes science so important."
– Elephant Journal
"A genius work of popular culture attempting to integrate itself with the current level of human knowledge."
– Refresher Towel
"I’m no hip-hop connoisseur – in fact I’ve never really listened to it – but I’ve enjoyed the music of this album as much and possibly more than the science contained within his lyrics and it has made me want to try out more rap."
– Spotisfaction
Music Videos
APOCALYPTIC UTOPIAN DREAMS IN THE WESTERN WILDERNESS
Baba’s fifth full-length hip-hop album, featuring Aaron Nazrul, Smoky Tiger, Erica Dee, Tia Brazda, Noa Bodner, and Chantel Upshaw, with production from Lucid Notion, Infinite Potential, Mr. Simmonds, and Tom Caruana (UK), and DJ NST (Germany). Engineered, co-produced, mixed and mastered in Vancouver by Lin G.
Released September 2009
THE RAP GUIDE TO BUSINESS
Commissioned by the NYU Stern School of Business. Hustlers, gangsters, entrepreneurs, hip-hop music and business accumen combine in this 80's-inspired tour of the corporate world. Written as a satirical business plan for Baba Brinkman's whole Rap Guide enterprise, this album explores market economics, the intangibles of human capital, strategies for success, and corporate responsibility. The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of the Stern School of Business.
Released September 2011
THE RAP GUIDE TO EVOLUTION
Original hip-hop exploration of modern evolutionary biology, with songs about Sexual Selection, Artificial Selection, Altruism, Morality, and Unity of Common Descent.
Released July 2009
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Engineered and mixed by Infinite Potential (Natural Selection engineered and mixed by Lin G), Mastered by Mr. Simmonds, with production by Infinite Potential and Tom Caruana (UK), and Nokz (Turkey), this is the original peer-reviewed rap album by Baba Brinkman.
Music Videos
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Performance, Feedback, Revision - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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I'm A African - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide To Evolution Music Videos
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Artificial Selection - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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Creationist Cousins - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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Darwin's Acid - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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Hypnotize - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide To Evolution Music Videos
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Worst Comes To Worst - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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DNA - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide To Evolution Music Videos
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Natural Selection - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
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Survival of the Fittest - Baba Brinkman - Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos
THE INFOMATIC EP
Better science communication through hip-hop. This album was conceived during our one-month songwriters-in-residency position at NIMBioS in Knoxville, Tennesee in 2012. It features five tracks of auditory goodness produced by Mr. Simmonds, exploring allo-parenting, prosimians, oxytocin homologues, cladistics, population modelling, climate change, pseudo-science accommodationism, the homophobic paradox, and the applicability of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad references to science rap.
Released November 2012
LIT-HOP (2006)
Recorded on tour in the UK 2005-2006, Baba’s seminal expression of the lit-hop genre.
Released October 2006
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Featuring Josh Matinez, Aaron Nazrul, Dizraeli, Jena Fair, and Jonny Quality (Fatboy Slim’s band), with production from Infinite Potential, Torez, Sean Moody, and Lucid Notion (UK), and Moka Only, John Tennant, and Lin G (Canada). Engineered and mixed by Lin G in Vancouver.