A Brief History of Rhyme

MC Hawking is the persona of a nerdcore artist who parodies gangster rap and theoretical physicist Stephen W. Hawking. MC Hawking gained some popularity in the early 2000s, largely due to the availability of his music on the Internet. The music is in the rap style but the lyrics are synthesized by the now defunct commercial text-to-speech program WillowTalk. Originally released in MP3 format, after the popularity of the website MC Hawking got a record deal with Brash Music to release a so-called "greatest hits" album.

Background

MC Hawking's entire body of work and his rapper persona were created by American web developer Ken Leavitt-Lawrence. The official MC Hawking website (created and maintained by Leavitt-Lawrence) is set to look like a personal fan site for the MC. From the mchawking.com home page: "While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist."

The lyrics are a mixture of gangsta rap topics, science topics and Stephen Hawking quotes (such as the famous "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun."). Stephen Hawking has said that he is "flattered, as it's a modern day equivalent to Spitting Image". [1] Among subjects of MC Hawking songs are various scientific topics, Hawking's professional relationships with MIT rivals, as well as the standard fare of gangsta rap, including street violence and drug use.

The beats for MC Hawking are provided by DJ Doomsday. Most of the beats are samples of classic hip hop tracks, or taken from commercial royalty-free loop libraries.

The lyrics reflect an insight in to many aspects of current scientific thought and a surprising lyrical flow:

* "I explode like a bomb. No one is spared. My power is my mass times the speed of light squared." - From "E = MC Hawking"

Trivia

* The program used to create the Hawking voice is called WillowTALK, a software program that is no longer available.

Hilarious. Click to Listen to MC Hawkings. More info.