Baba Brinkman

While theatre and hip-hop hybrids are not a new idea, Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution (his one-man show just finishing a run off-Broadway at NYC's Soho Playhouse) is still a unique concept, with its exploration and application of modern Darwinian biology. With the assistance of Millennium Award-winning producer Mr. Simmonds, who provides an accessible, varied selection of beats, Brinkman collects the show's songs and adds a few new thematically fitting tracks for The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised, essentially a reworking of his original Rap Guide to Evolution from two years back. Brinkman is doing more than "just taking Charles Darwin's theories and making them rhyme," as he says on "Worst Comes to Worst." He also delves into Darwin's theories to imagine a better world through applied sexual selection ("Don't Sleep With Mean People"), posits rapper bling as "peacock tails" ("Sexual Selection 2.0"), utilizes the diverse sexual evolution of animals as metaphors for a scientific sex rap ("Dr. Tatiana") and even traces the evolution of a sample in song ("Hypnotize"). Perhaps a bit preachy, at times, especially when debating Creationism (as on opening track "Natural Selection 2.0" and "Creationist Cousins"), The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised is still an intelligent and fun album that will have you looking at music in a whole new way.