The Rap Guide to Human Nature

Rap is normally not my first choice in music, but there are a few notable exceptions including Baba Brinkman. Last summer I blogged about his excellent album A Rap Guide to Evolution. After creating that piece, he received an email from David Buss, author of Evolutionary Psychology. A collaboration was born leading to the Rap Guide to Human Nature described as a "controversial peer-reviewed comedy hip-hop show".

I love the description on the website.

"How can you use a woman’s cell phone bill to predict where she is in her reproductive cycle? Why are men (but not women) far more likely to risk their lives in public than in private? How does political conservatism help fight infection from parasites? And what does evolutionary psychology have to say about the gangsters and gold-diggers who symbolize rap music in the popular imagination? In The Rap Guide to Human Nature, Baba Brinkman explores the most fascinating findings of evolutionary psychology, the surprising behavorial science of the world's most bizarre primate."

Both the Rap Guide to Human Nature and the Rap Guide to Evolution are available as pay what you will downloads from his website. I have to give you a video of a track from the album, The Short Term Mating Dance.

He has a second new album called Rapconteur which features raps about Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Kalevala, Mosquito, and the Merchant's Tale. I can see high school kids everywhere getting down to Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.