I'm Nick Montfort professor of digital media here at MIT in comparative media studies and writing along with Mary Fuller from literature I'm very glad to be hosting Lou it the visiting scholar we all know as Lupe Fiasco AKA wasalu yaco through the Martin Luther King Jr Jr fellowship program my thanks to the Institute community and Equity office for bringing Lupe Fiasco to MIT this year and for the other good work they do on campus once in a while recently people have been asking me wait what's Lupe Fiasco doing at MIT it turns out they're not asking this because they're skeptical about Lupe Fiasco they're skeptical of MIT well our Institute is a very distributed place with a lot going on it may surprise some of you to learn we have a rich curriculum for undergraduates in media studies writing and literature and there's more on offer in the school of humanities arts and social sciences while technical studies are certainly the focus MIT has the first architecture school in the United States as well as the MIT media lab a program in art culture and technology and another in women's and gender studies the Sloan school and more I know many of you have come from off campus you made it through the Eventbrite registration system and it's not as bad as Ticketmaster I know but um you found your way to the building on this rainy night got into it got through part of the MIT maze to this numbered room now even though MIT has had to limit Public Access because of the pandemic we're very glad the people in the community come to join us for events like this I look forward to Lupe Fiasco's talk and hearing your questions for our speaker because I know that what you have to say and what you have to ask will help me learn as of tomorrow December 1st the MIT campus will be opening up further and it will be easier to visit us on campus you'll find a newly opened MIT Museum the MIT press bookstore the art shown at the list Visual Arts Center a public art collection that includes many sculptures Outdoors the MIT libraries and a new Welcome Center if you like rap I suspect some of you do you should know that in this room in 2017 thanks to the Center for art Science and Technology Professor Michelle DeGraff and I hosted Haitian poet singer songwriter rapper Bic Roosevelt sayant who gave a public concert just two months ago bridgeside Cipher brought a live band and welcomed rappers from the community to an outdoor area near the Kendall MIT t-stop thanks to mit's open space initiative which had brought rappers to the space before that to those who made the trip to be here tonight thank you for coming welcome to MIT and please consider yourselves welcome to visit us again now what can be said to introduce tonight's speaker MIT visiting scholar Grammy award-winning rapper record producer entrepreneur activist a founder of the Society of spoken art a founder of the Societe International de ER with Eight studio albums that run from Food and Liquor to this year's drill music in Zion colleagues neighbors friends here's Lupe Fiasco [Applause] I got to appreciate it hello thank you DACA T appreciate the uh the introduction um I don't know if Mary Fuller is here as well hey Mary full appreciate you both uh as well as uh uh Dr Fox um IR um appreciate you as well um my family here at MIT uh as well as Sophia the literature Department admits what's happening um compared to me to studies the entire shafts but as well as uh the mecca The Hobby Shop the sailing Pavilion uh Verdes appreciate you all um what I'm trying to do is keep this very casual um and what I'm doing is a little bit of what the class is the class I'll be teaching um and we're trying to run like a little mock beta version of that in here um so relax yourselves let your concert should be free you're not roll them with thugs or the MIT really um not thugs but you know rappers um so it's an introduction we'll we'll Pace it out there'll be um a little column response you have some duties if you have a piece of paper a pen or some type of writing material or even something digital I'm going to need that very soon so do that but let's get into it rap theory and practice and introduction to what I'm doing here at MIT and what the plans are for the future but first I have to introduce myself see if this works there we go that's me that's my high school yearbook picture right I think I was 17. and I think as you can see I clearly invested into sorry clearly invested into um this thing so that's my high school talent show I'm going to skip forward to that picture that is Spring Fest 2015 here at MIT so that's me performing at MIT and then we'll do another jump that is me a couple months ago in Central Park New York Performing as MIT um rap has always been a Scholastic Pursuit for me I learned how to rap in school that's where I hone my skill sets that's why I learned everything that I do now it's always been in a school environment so this isn't foreign right this isn't anything completely novel um and the proof is kind of in the pudding so it is for me this makes perfect sense that I would be back in a school environment teaching because I learned this craft at a school you know at my high school you know um we'll we'll belay the biography and other things and we'll get right into the meat of the matter what are slash is wraps slash wrap acronyms only right so this is your job now you got about a few minutes acronyms are you take the word I'm very fundamental you take each letter in the word and then you put another you make a letter out of that a word out of that letter that describes the word the original word The Source word let me know you got a good one like a real good one and then you can like stand up and blurt it out and disciplined way but think think through it think about it deeply I want you to reflect aggressively I want you to penetrate subconsciously and really think about it what are wraps what is rap all right give it like another minute to Stew doc you find you this is familiar to you.com T hey guys welcome it needs to come up with an acronym for rap or wraps you can pick not now whoa there cowboy all right that's eight okay who we got that's how we putting people on blast come on uh riffs and poetry riffs and poetry okay let's let's do a whole okay it's uh do let's do the new comma always I mean the thing is mine was Rhythm and poetry I'm trying to uh okay so you're buying Styles already I see um doc I.T okay Rhythm and people rooted autobiographies pronounced uh-huh nice Cowboy what's up okay uh realization and passion realizations and Passions which is randomly Point realist perspectives real ass perspectives okay it's a lot of ass in the room I don't know why I'm biasing to ask I will take it right Rhymes in facing Rhymes and pacing yeah rhythmic access to people's Souls ridden the access to people's Souls Jesus Christ utterly beautiful it's even meaningful um very Fuller ton four months righteous artistic performance cheesy D1 my brother hey anybody else want to throw their last everybody's welcome running after purpose I like that shout out well mine was kind of already said I said right Rhymes and peace and pace yep mine is the base b-a-s-s beats and stories fun you know that's not wraps right do you play the bass is that why you did that no okay all right all right that's unaccepted just FYI um we enjoy it in country artistic power and Style hey rare artistic power and style okay cowboy did you have another one no okay I think about this constantly and I'm constantly revising and setting new rules about how the acronym should be developed the original acronym that we started at Sosa and built Sosa Society spoken upon uh was rhetorical anthropological philosophical structures and then we created an entire curriculum about investigating that particular definition of rap the most recent one that I had was relationships associations parallels and well I can't say the other I can't say that we'll leave it at that because that's that's come true later well I was here um maybe a month ago I came up with these recognizing analogous patterns maybe reconciling adversarial patterning and just goes on and on and on and on right constantly revising constantly being dynamic right because that's what rap deserves it deserves constant attention constant Focus constant alteration right constant changing in the face of new Ventures new places new spaces new ideas new generations as they take it and make it what it means to be for them right but it's also really really sexy I think right this idea of defining it by its own structures what's already there right not trying to go too far out and make it something that it's not like can we Define it within its own terms and then what is the process to get to that right what happens when you do that to your name right what do you happen what happens when you do that with your job description what do you have what happens when you do that to your belief systems what is the mechanisms and the tools and what changes right so it's meant to constantly be defined and then dug into right what does it mean to reconcile adversaries what does it mean to be righteously aggressive what does it mean to to base you know to be based cook and dance so shapes and details right sometimes we get this confused we talk about rap right I like to keep things very fundamental very simple very basic we can get complex later we're already complex that's the problem too complex right we need to dumb it down going over people's head s um I like to do it this is very to me this is very clean right the metaphor or the analogy would be bodybuilders right if you want to become a bodybuilder first thing you have to do is get into shape right just a general shape a generable general workable shape right big exercises just do some squats let's do some bench presses right just big exercises then as you start to want to get your pro card you got to get into the details right a little five pound little joints once you just do this little thing right here to get this little part right here to just pop a little bit right get into these details right shapes and details right big big ideas big big Concepts then how do we execute through those Concepts right how do we filter through and come and get the details right and they play off each other yeah I have both you can't just be super duper detail-oriented with no shape right you can't just have shape all the time with no details right if you want to be subjectively good but even objectively good right because this is happening whether you want to or not you're playing with shapes Primal big primes and playing with these little small things shapes and details to keep it really basic so get a little bit more precise is my favorite word in rap she knows where it was in rap because I put it there yeah use it all the time micro decisions right your details we'll get into what these are a couple micro decisions May consist of stretching or extending specific vowels in words to achieve or regulate certain tones moods or temporalities right so you have to do all of this all you need is I need this punch line I need this I need that like no I need you to put a little more stress lay on that oh so it goes oh did you behold what I did right I need that ah and what to be very quick right so behold feels like this how do you do that in words well you have to say oh [Music] right seems silly it won me a Grammy right [Music] right seems Seems like Ah that's nothing so millions of Records Millions made millions of dollars cars jewelry it's ridiculous what you could do with stretching vowels right one simple tool that one simple micro decision right and you can just play with it all day you sit with words and say I'ma take take the word itself micro decision my Crow decision right well I'm gonna do my growth decision okay all right I got I got my I got what I want to put my stresses on my vowels right and now I'm gonna go write this verse right I already got the shape I already know what I'm gonna talk about but now let me get into these details work on these micro decisions and there's more there's a list but we don't have time macro decisions big [ __ ] right big old things Big Ideas right big shapes we're going to dive deep into this this next one one of the best macro decisions and what I've been studying here on the research side since I've been at MIT has been studying surprise right surprise is one of the fundamental Primal pieces of life this is rap of life [ __ ] right I can make the claim that everything you learned was by surprise in one way or another right it's kind of crept up on you right you didn't know before you know it now what's the mechanism to get it to Traverse that distance that Gap it's probably surprise right let's go deep you ready ready to get deep ready to go to class check this out that's right I read white papers and I cite surprises not only influence individuals attention learning memory attitudes and behavior they can also have larger scale social influences this is because people seem to be interested in Sharing Surprises with others who shared the meme today we shared the video today right what's the word I give you two dollars not in real money but in Lupe dollars if you tell me what's one of the one of the phrases that we always see one of the common phrases that we see and videos being posted on social media huh viral yeah yeah but we don't really see this is this is viral like what do we see in the comment section in the description watch till the end right or wait for it what is that wait for it right share that right it goes viral because you see that one thing and then you like she's like buddy right you know that one look at you surprised he's like she was surprised that I knew that didn't you but it's right you're laughing how many times did you watch it yeah bye bye right I didn't expect that little girl to do that I watched that [ __ ] so many times it was crazy right and there's others right stories with surprising elements tend to degrade and change less as they are past the law than stories without surprising elements a surprising right how does Lupe Fiasco persist this long people can't believe it right I don't talk about sex I don't talk about guns I kind of do but I don't know I want to really bad it's just littered with little surprises little land mines of whoa bars that you don't get until like five years later when you're watching some random cartoon from Turkmenistan maybe I'm like oh oh right they sustain they're stable right ain't that what we want in careers right isn't that kind of the essence of longevity right it doesn't degrade how do we get to that maybe do surprise here's another one I got them all day surprising information has been shown to impact what we remember and to facilitate transfer of learning strategies inducing an uncertain mood like surprise has been found to lead to more systemic processing which might Aid learning what does rap do all day you know how much [ __ ] I learned from rap I learned how about Rolexes from rat did you know Rolex is a 501c3 that's a non-for-profit I didn't learn that from rap but surprise right I bring it up not lightly rap teaches a lot is one of the most ultimate teaching tools teaches you how to dance teaches you how to dress es you how to talk teaches you how to walk teaches you how to think it's ridiculously ridiculously capable right you can also teach how to kill people teach you how to sell drugs teach you how to die teach you how to go to prison right teach you how to survive in prison get your job it could teach politics right teach you to vote for it's a teaching tool right how many people intentionally use it as that how many people just do it for fun how many rappers in it for fun right for money money and fun there we go right he didn't say teaching because unfortunately most rappers don't know how right we live by phrase that Sosa that rappers know how to do it but they don't know what they're doing because rap was never formally trained it was never put into an institution and all of these things like this you didn't have to take a test to become a rapper your test was doesn't work at your strip club which is the Atlanta formula for real does it work at a strip club that is the test for rep I don't care how you got there but can you have that effect can you teach strippers to dance right that has its place right but rap has so much potential right so if you come to the class you're going to be doing this [ __ ] We're not gonna have we're gonna have some fun I'm gonna make it fun but we're gonna be doing this that's a warning to the students out there who thought she was going to be in here making strip club music with Lupe Fiasco we're going to be reading white papers about surprisal foreign you how to do that with intention so you can really elevate the power of The Craft right and really use it as a teaching thing because if you do it successfully guess what my man's you'll make more money and have more fun because you'll have more followers because more things will go viral you create deeper relationships associations parallels and surprises right here's another one surprise we still surprised surprises evoked just to give you a little sense of what it is right that stuff was kind of descriptive this is what it is how it works surprise is evoked by unexpected schema discrepant events and it's intense intensity is determined by the degree of the scheme of discrepancy right how far off is this from normality for you right it's how big the surprise is unexpected events cause an automatic Interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an intentional shift and intentional binding to the events it's like oh what is that oh what's that right which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision schemas are kind of World Views kind of conceptual frames cognitively how you view the world how you pursue through it right and run after purpose right you do that in certain ways in certain paths based on what your kind of fundamental schemas are these schemas are constantly being changed as you interface with different types of information and different types of experiences people's places right so that's why you have to be careful what you listen to be careful who you listen to and where you go because unconsciously your brain is changing right and not necessarily your neurons or like neuroplasticity and stuff like that that happens but on the front end just the way that your schemas change right Story Time repetition break plot structure here's a tool of how you can use surprise let's bring it back down to earth let's come out to white papers right let's take to the streets are you in a gang you you in a gang no okay which is actually infused in the game you got a lot of blue there I'm just making sure [Laughter] nice sweater I like it don't wet that out west though it's a joke I was just joking Once Upon a Time Three Little Pigs first Pig builds his house out of straw big bad wolf comes he says a huff and a puff little pig little pig let me in blue Pig says now by the hell am I right wolf was like yo and I'll Puff I'll blow your house down let me go blow this house down right so that little pig runs to his other homies Pig's house right which is made out of sticks and little pig little pig let me in not by the head on my the column response to the power of story so I just made you do that why did you do that right I've been in front of millions of people that I've never met before I had them doing all kinds of things right consciously unconsciously they just want to be that's power be careful rappers I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down he helps he Puffs he blows House Down right those two little pigs go to the third Pig's house this house is made out of no it's made out of a Carbonite material at least here that mightier would be made out of that we made out of nuclear energy or something like that um it's made of bricks and he knocks Little Pigs Little Pigs let me in not by the hell my is I'm still saying it why oh dude Jazzy no I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down he blows he blows he blows what happens repetition break plot structure is what happened it was a break in a repetition right first Pig did a thing we'll do the thing the thing happened you're like all right cool shiny change right next thing pigs do a thing wolf does the thing happens same thing happens right go the third one oh they do a thing they do a thing surprise nope can't blow on these bricks right repetition break plot structure where have you seen this we've seen this I know you've seen this everybody's seen this you've seen this in rap verse verse hook verse is that really that you know one two one two one two just Maybe so it's not really a macro right it's not some that rap macros that act like that but not really that happens musically happens in Beethoven right training training habituation habituation Divergence has the same kind of effect right training training training same same different right similarity similarity Divergence right um like the um the verses in Gold Digger where like the first perspective the guy who's done with everyone who keeps it as from the perspective of neural portrays the original narrator it's reputation the greatest the greatest example of that is this Stan right anybody where's anybody not aware of Stan anybody not not blown away about his list don't know what this means Stan is probably Eminem's uh greatest record right arguably hands down probably Eminem Eminem's greatest record right the song is about a fan is where we get the word stand from right anybody got any stands in here I got a couple stands I got I have a lot I have a lot I'm a stand of you yeah I do I appreciate that there's a Stan reciprocity going on right here hey Stand By Me um the song is about a fan who writes m m a letter and he's writing this letter dear Marshall right he writes a letter in the first verse then it goes and he writes a letter in the third verse and the second verse I apologize right writes another letter to Eminem this one's a little bit more kind of aggressive you know a little bit more yeah you know you owe me something I bought you know the third verse third verse isn't a letter per se it's a recording and the Stan this fan of Eminem he's recording himself kidnapping in true Eminem Fashion Is God um his uh his girlfriend and doing this weird kind of murder-suicide plot and he's recording this thing to Eminem and then at the end of the verse of the third verse he comes to the realization like we're going to drive this car over this bridge he's like oh [ __ ] how am I going to send this out right but that's not the plot twist is it for the stands of Eminem Who know right that's not the plot twist but that's great he got to stop right there but there's a fourth verse right kind of breaks this to this one one two structure or this this three is trifecta this tricolon was like one one then the twist he does one one one twist and the twist is Eminem finally receives the letter from the first verse right and he sits down to respond to it he says Dear Stan I appreciate that you got all my records right I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you I was on tour hey man I hear you going through a lot hey just you know chill out you'll be all right and then Eminem as he gets toward the end of the verse he said you know sometimes people do crazy things like there was this guy who got upset and he took his car with his girlfriend and he drove it off a bridge Into the Wilderness and Eminem has the Epiphany like oh [ __ ] it was you right the layering and the complexity right of how he worked right that repetition break repetition plot break structure right masterful right taking a very simple concept that we all learned when we were kids because we all knew China right so it's very very simple macros right that we've all can process and all have been privy to but then how do we turn around and use that in our work as rappers right very basic things instead of trying to do a bunch of details right a bunch of word flips and name flips and multiple syllables am I rapping it's having a hitting an end right right okay that's cool right why don't can you master these basic things and then the argument becomes Stan is one of the highest selling records of all time in any genre of music right to the point where the name of the song entered into common vernacular the power of rap right on par right on par culturally with E and E equals MC squared right on par right and other kind of catchphrases from different fields science social sciences archeology whatever you want history right Stan is right there right General if ever is a song that I wrote it's about a little girl true story and was janayla she was six months old she's murdered in Chicago she was she was shot about six times the gunman was trying to kill her father in retaliation stealing a PlayStation he didn't know that jenayla was sitting on the lap he just ran up to the car and started shooting Mr father hit her six times a six-month-old baby destroyed the city right I was like I need to make that a song right now and the song was about Janella growing up going to school being really smart going to school going to med school becoming a doctor instead of going to work at let's just call it I don't know MGH or whatever the hospital is um she goes to open up a free clinic in the neighborhood in which she grew up in and then one day she's in the office she hears some gunshots outside and then she runs outside to this van and gets this little girl triages her stabilizes her to the paramedics can come and eventually see you saved saves a little girl she doesn't realize that she just saved herself right repetition repetition The Twist the power of that the surprise all surprises don't have to be good surprises they can happen in they call it valence it could be somewhat sad right it doesn't have to be but a little glimmer of hope in there doesn't change the situation but it's cathartic it helps yeah Sing About Me Kendrick Lamar me to me one of his his greatest record just the first verse where he's singing about a guy wrapping him out of God who's in the streets and was involved in some violence and he does it a different way so I reveal I say it I reveal it you know you bet you didn't know you didn't you just saved yourself Eminem reveals it the words he says oh oh [ __ ] it it was you Kendrick and his genius he he's writing a letter in the in the person in this as he as if he's this God and he's like hey if you're if I live to see your album come out you just did a series of gunshots then the verse stops the beat keeps going so God he dies right if I live to see her I'm coming I just want you to do right repetition break structure in the class we study this right we'll take examples we'll set up a theme we'll say okay we're going to talk about surprise we're going to talk about a very specific type of surprise on how to utilize it and execute it and we'll use this particular frame right we'll start with three little pigs and then we'll end on Kendrick Lamar right and show you different ways to navigate and assess and then hopefully accomplish that process in your own work you can talk about whatever you want you talk about three little pigs if you want right so that's the rhyme you know that's the only thing I ask and it has to be to a Beat there's more it's not just surprise right I call them Primes because I like to sound smart mathematical but fundamental rap primes we just went through surprisal there's different ways there's different mechanisms there's different approaches to generate surprise right to navigate through it right to process it the hope would be the same way that you did the acronym for rap you do that for a surprise right you look at this thing you look at this word the single word the single concept and you approach it from all these different angles and waves to try and hack it right come up with new novel surprising ways to surprise right maybe it's do it in a group right do a little Think Tank right do a little something do figure out different Avenues to generate that rhyme is the another one metaphor tone and then etc etc etc etc right and we can do this all day right all of those very very fundamental uh very very powerful things that we interface with on a daily basis are just kind of sitting dormant in rap waiting to kind of be explored in a very methodical very classical way with the goal of creating new work right not all work new work I want to create new work we have to advance some of these problems or rethink them in fundamental ways with the new knowledge or the New Perspectives that you as a younger generation have that I don't possess yeah yeah cool that's the name of the class for uh MIT undergrads it is also open to Harvard Wellesley and mass art in terms of cross registration so if you're interested you're our student of vanilla schools you know somebody that's in any of those schools they're more than welcome to apply that is the course number special subject CMS S60 rap theory in practice it'll be up on pre it'll be up for pre-registration tomorrow actually um and then outside of this one of the conundrums that me and dakati have been trying to solve is making sure that the community of not only Cambridge but Boston wide and Beyond those are able to participate in the course and in the class in some capacity so the syllabus will be up if you want to follow along nine times out of ten we will be working with ocw which is open courseware here at MIT to at least record it there's other things that we're thinking about and primarily we still want to hold sessions like this so talks that are open to the public open open to the to the grad students open to faculty open to staff anybody that wants to come in and kind of address and run through these in a different way for folks that are interested in taking a class want to have a little bit more information you will be rapping and recording in the class your final project is the EP I will [ __ ] fail you right I will I so will fail you my name is Fiasco so that is a failure and I have no problem sharing you no I don't know but I do want you to take it seriously you don't have to know how to rap I'll teach you um but you will be expected to rap and you will have rap assignments that you have to turn in okay so if you're afraid or if that's a challenge for you I cordially invite you so it's a wonderful experience I've taught this before so I know it works um but yeah so that's just a little information on the class if you're interested in going through some of those white papers about surprise um this is the uh uh it's a body of papers got the ubiquity of surprise developments and Theory conversion evidence and implications for cognition and it goes from computational like actual computer science all the way to cognitive theory it's a basic more even more kind of theories and applications a way to approach a prize and it's in a journal called topics um which is topics in cognitive science and it's on online Wiley library for those who are kind of astute but you you better if you're looking for it that is the uh the bundle of papers if you want to continue on yes there is an ER tournament I uh I play er there's a few other people who play her in this room maybe you don't know where her is but now's your time to do the thing with the phone maybe maybe you'll pick it up maybe not or you can go to player.org it's something we started here at MIT not too long ago this Society International the uh it is the governing body the only governing body for ER in the world I did it when I was finishing my syllabus because I got bored um and now we're throwing our first tournament at the BSU the black student union and a walker and it is uh Friday five o'clock it is ten dollars to register um but there are sponsored slots for the Brokey brokes um and there's a 250 first prize so come have some fun with us there'll be staff there it'll be students there's it's a great we've been playing for a couple like a month so if you're interested um there's that and then thank you appreciate your time coming out in the weather and the rain and I hope it added value and I will leave the balance of the time for questions or insights or follow-ups or hate mail which I also will take confrontations fights you want to throw hands I'm here for that um but yeah so appreciate you all hope it uh added value [Applause] all right uh I'm back as the Q a bouncer and wanted direct your attention to the two microphones we have set up please come to uh one of these if you have a question uh Mr Fiasco over here will be glad to address it absolutely there's uh two mics down here if you want to pull up this is your chance yeah [Music] what made you write the song hip-hop saved my life I mean because it did um a lot of my friends are dead um so me it did you know um I'm sure that I would have survived you know but it preserved a life that I wanted to lead right because of multiple lives we leave we lead a different life every day multiple lives in a day right but which life do you want to lead the most you know and Hip-Hop gave me the tools um and the opportunities proof is in the pudding um to live the life that I wanted to live yeah um hip-hop also kills a lot you know so just weird dichotomous balance that we're trying to do the song itself was was uh uh homage to Houston Texas though to the rap to the to the scene the hip-hop scene in Houston Texas which I was a huge fan of a huge fan of the uh the artist it's actually kind of loosely based on the life of Slim Thug um and if you see the video you see like Bambi in there you see a few other cats from Houston in there um and yeah it was it's a it's an homage to that scene I thought they were superheroes like when you look at Houston rappers and they Mouse on Iced Out the swag the whole I was like oh these dude like Paul Wall and all those guys so it was an homage to them but the message overall was you know it does save lives if you let it you know if you wanted to uh first off I want to say thank you Lupe for being here and one sharing your art throughout the years really appreciate it um my question is actually regarding just your philosophy for learning um I spent a lot of time listening to your podcast during the pandemic and one thing I really appreciated was hearing how you talked about your father and how he knew just a lot about everything and I think as someone like you you know a lot about everything as well too so I was just curious to hear about your philosophy for Learning and how you approach new things each day um I mean I love learning man you know I love it um we have nothing else to do you know um part of it is everything materially that I've ever wanted I had you know um everything experientially to a degree I've experienced um and that's not to like like humble Flex or anything like that but it's like of all the only thing left was to learn you know so I come to school every day I don't go to college right so this is my freshman year and I'm treating it like my freshman year at MIT right and so I just go to my office every day and read white papers you know and people come by and they drop off books they say hey do you want to go to the lab and I'm in there just like a freshman just in there doing Transformations and pipetting [ __ ] and reading through kind of historical monographs and all type of other craziness and I've been doing that since I was a kid I've been reading this like when I my sister's legend about me is that uh I used to just read the encyclopedia you know um and I think even just through rap I wanted to I want to talk about other things I don't want to talk about the same old ribbon Monroe I want to talk about different things novel things surprising things and it requires kind of extending yourself opening yourself up to other conversations right to other knowledge bases to other ideologies even if you disagree with them right and I look at my track record and I've made records about nuclear weapons I've made records about Houston Texas I've made records about skateboarding I've made anything that I could you know that spoke to me I pursued and pursued it deeply right and even me being at MIT part of this is like yeah I'm gonna teach some of the things that I know but I'm really here learning more than I'm teaching know because I want to get deeper into you know surprise you know I want to get deeper into rhyme I want to get deeper into Rhythm I want to get deeper into other things so I'm just constantly learning never stop learning right because you don't have a choice that's the real thing you're always going to learn so you might as well be very intentional about the things that you want to learn and then be very intentional about how you want to operationalize and submit those learnings in your own life yeah so which idea did you have first the song the Cool or the album the cool and what was your inspiration behind it um the cool started out my mentor was Cornell West Dr Cornell West and him Tavis Smiley I want to say uh Dr Dyson Michael Eric Dyson as well they were doing like this speaking tour kind of randomly right um and I don't know if it's part of like this the state of Black America it was something like this very just interesting it would go to these theaters and different cities and they would just sit up there and be smart right um and Cornell West said we have to find a way to make the things that are harmful uncool and make the things that you know are good cool and it was like I gotcha right um and I became the the initial point right a command was given by one of the elders you know to the artistic class who spoke to the youth with a mission to make those things uncool and I went right and then the whole process you might have seen some of it play out here the whole process of okay what do we do what is the most Immortal story that persists through all culture right what is that Trope that just never dies zombies right Thriller is one of the biggest records in the world and I was like oh zombies oh yeah zombies right so I'm going to turn the cool [ __ ] into a zombie Rotting Flesh you know like all of those trappings but I'm gonna do it through a frame so that it sticks and it stays right and it's my most popular album it's my highest selling album right and so there's something to that oh yeah being very intentional about that work and how you do it um and then it was just putting other pieces to it building out the storyline with the streets and the game and putting them in a narrative and having them play against each other and creating these different ideologies and then pulling in these different concepts that are cool a lot of it was uh Miles Davis the birth of the cool so it's like he did the birth of the cool I'm gonna do the death of the cool I can die right um so a lot of those decisions are very intentional to speak to history so that when questions are asked like that I could say oh there was a little influence from Miles Davis birth of the cool have you ever heard that album have you yeah now you're gonna hear it now yeah so indeed indeed right learning moments to help build into your own craft right but if you don't have that type of intentionality with how you learn and how you operationalize the things you learn then you won't be able to pass those things along right um what's up Ian Mr Professor condry great talk thank you so much for tonight um yeah so about surprise uh you know one thing so interesting about it is it keeps changing right there's no the old surprise I was thinking you know back in the day break dancing look he's spinning on his head and now it's like oh yeah it's break dancing and look he's scratching the record oh my God what's that and then it's like oh yeah he's scratching a record are there things that you've noticed lately and sort of how hip-hop's evolving and say oh yeah I thought there was nowhere to go but now this surprised me or because we're already used to all this other stuff like for you what what's a new frontier for surprise um devolving right there's a de-evolution taking place right um and that's surprising because hip-hop was all about evolution right it was all about multiple forms and that still exists and I want to take away from that but it's devolving content-wise or if if it's not devolving to that degree it's super adapted to the point where it has no other place to go and it's starting to become complacent and it's setting itself up to get overthrown and that is surprising and so what I look for is what is the thing that's coming next to disco hip-hop right right Punk got disco out of there a little bit then like rock and roll and Hip-Hop kind of got punk out of there now hip-hop is doing and rap is doing some of the same things that those genres which are still there but they're there calcified right and they're kind of being pulled from maybe an electronic music or just down the third but as a as a genre leading type thing or a genre in and of itself where people are still Giorgio moroder is like I mean he did the Daft Punk piece but it's like maybe that counts but it's not everywhere right but maybe it is we'll have that conversation later right um but I feel like that's what's happening right I feel like there's there's a paradigm shift that's about to happen and that some of that Ultraviolence right is contributing not only to the death of the artists themselves but to the death of the genre right um because it's starting it used to be surprising to hear somebody say I'm going to kill such and such right I was like oh my God he said he was going to kill such and such did you hear that cut that music off boy now that is there is no alternative and you can't cut the music off right it can't be that stuck out it's too it's too democratic so anyway that's what I think is it is but in terms of rap itself I really as you know I really enjoy Japanese hip-hop um it's always interesting to see the new artist that come out of these places where you don't expect it I expect it because I know the history but it's still interesting to see how they're taking the Farms that are coming out in the new generations and then processing it right and then given their kind of cultural spin on it so yeah appreciate you yo what's going on boss appreciate you um for the for tonight um so I got two questions the first one is really light it's um it's more so about the class like what's the process for a tough student particularly a Tufts graduate student if they wanted to to register for this class and then the second one is um in light of what you what you kind of discuss it it kind of like sheds like on the the morphing um or the appreciation of rap as an art and a science so what's what's your process for writing particularly in periods where you might have like a um a block of some sort in your writing um I don't believe there's a such thing as Rogers block um there's some we've had some interesting conversations in Sosa about that um some very very interesting kind of like there's a physical thing that is supposed to represent rather that's very interesting but anyway um I don't believe in writer's block um I believe that like there's some times where you just shouldn't write I do believe that I put the pin down my God you know go experience maybe you take that as a signal for you need new experiences right um I don't believe I don't necessarily believe in writer's wife because I have such a fascination with the base of word right maybe this is a lesson for you um If you experience in writer's block maybe there's something to you asking that question because you you got right as well right um like I fell in love with words you know in the same way where you can go back and analyze and assess just stretching vowels in the same word very basic things and pull out new meanings if not new semantic meanings new kind of structural kind of presentations or new Sonic ideas that come out of that you know um and just just work with the material that's there until something comes up of Interest right that's not necessarily a block like you're working right if if that's what you're doing right if you're just kind of like keep trying to throw bars and gather all these punch lines and be as witty as you can and you're coming up with weak ass punchlines um there are a bunch of weak ass punch lines you know I come up with silly dumb punch lines like nope nope no no no no um but then also come with a little fire thing here and there but a majority come up with is Concepts and a ways to approach a particular concept as opposed to like I need this bar to be dope because I want to sound like I'm on URL with every verse and it's like nah you know just enjoy words you know enjoy the feeling that you get when you have a novel idea and you get that Cascade of dopamine and it's like oh lovely right so you got it oh yeah what's up brother hey what's up Lupe uh firstly thank you for coming huge fan um so I was going to ask you two questions the first question was just asked um in regards to how do you approach writing um you know do you come in with the freestyle but you just talked about that so I'll go on to my second question which was what's your perspective on redrafting something you've already written or perhaps something you've already recorded um I mean I draft in real time I edit in real time right so as I'm writing I'm editing right um and there's some things that I won't depending on what the the what I'm writing for right if I'm just writing for the joy of writing then that you don't edit because you're writing for whatever comes out and you're writing things that feel good to you right if I'm writing to sell some records it'll be different right from writing to going to a battle would be different if I'm trying to go into something different um there is something to approaching things very systematically right if you have all of this kind of nascent knowledge there right if you're coming in within you've been practicing very intentional things right and then you can kind of suspend it was a there's a great uh jazz player by the name of Bill Evans right jazz pianist right and he says well you learn all of this kind of classical training and all these different core structures and you learn all this static you know kind of stuff and very academic and you you go through these standards and standards and standards and standards standard standards so these things become innate then once they become innate you can then collapse all that and then you can create right freely but you're creating from a space of Education you know you're creating from a space of knowledge as opposed to creating just pure virtuosity right and so that idea of build up your basic skill sets right if you build these muscles then no matter what you do right you'll be you'll already have edited your your synapses would have already kind of built in certain ways where it's just been like oh we only do this so if you build yourself just to don't do because you can do that you can build yourself to just do punch lines right and at the expense of what though right but you can do that you can build yours you can build a certain schema set that only makes this type of writing or that type of writing um but sometimes I do freestyle it out too right there is a there is something to just top lining business I'm gonna get in the back of this place and show everybody what I can do with my face I'm a smile on the style and hold down the island everybody maybe I'm gonna move into the South maybe I'm going to do Atlanta [Music] um maybe I'm gonna hit him with the cameras and scanners and animals right so that's just like got this top line just which is just these words but a feel and then I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna find the words that match that but if your vocabulary is this big you're not gonna do that right so focus on the basics Mastery of Basics is mastery period right thank you you got it yo song peace uh thank you for doing this I'm not an MIT student I'm studying film at Emerson so the fact that's open to Public's really cool of you so thank you um I have another writing question I think we got a lot of writers in here but uh all of your albums and songs uh feel like you build a world and then fill it with your ideas and thoughts so do you build a world and then go from there and develop an album through that or do you do it retroactively do you have uh specific song ideas and individual ideas you want to express to people and then build a world going backwards from there I mean you're always going to build a world right you're never not building a world right or borrowing a world right and maybe re colonizing different parts of that world right rarely do I hear somebody building a world from scratch I hear a lot of borrowing of Worlds or invasion of other worlds right um so be be cognizant of that um but with that said as just kind of like a general framework like yeah you I I start with a word that sounds good right like paper tiger right I'm like oh [ __ ] Paper Tigers origami um origami that's Japan oh but that's also these sharp edges oh okay what else have sharp edges maybe that Radiohead album cover for kid a Amnesia oh then you start to populate just off that one word right but you want to start with something very strong very visible but also maybe something very mysterious so it can become a surprising moment for somebody once you unfold that tiger and you realize it's the note That Eminem was writing back to stand right he didn't know what to do with it so he folded into a paper tiger and he put it on thing and it's like oh [ __ ] that's [ __ ] crazy little baby it's not all the songs in the talk together all right um so sometimes you build a world sometimes you borrow somebody else's world like how I just borrowed Stan's world right but now I Incorporated this idea into it to point it toward this culture so now we have this type of conversation right but that other world is still here so instead of building a world let's build a universe right let's build a system right and that's kind of where I am I want to build systems interconnected things um but it also depends on what the project is drill music is Zion I need to record an album in 24 hours from scratch right the first record is going to decide or here's the title cool it's a little vague but it sounds good right but it's from The Matrix so if anything happens we always get the Matrix right if anything happens that's from The Matrix Lupi I don't understand what this means it's just like Pac-Man or something like this like it's from The Matrix for the Matrix right um and then you'd start to just it's a time thing it's not even about what I want to do it's what I have to do if I'm going to meet this is time limit right kind of like this talk um but yeah so it depends on what I'm trying to do at that time some some records take a very long time I'm still writing this record called Samurai right which is the life of Amy Winehouse as a battle rapper right it's like holy [ __ ] right but it's like right um so it's it's a lot of different things a lot of different ways to go but do you understand all of them can you do all of them right as opposed to being aware of them and then how many different paths do you have at your disposal that's more important right having multiple paths yes hey salute my name is Chris what's up Chris first off late thank you because uh uh Food and Liquor was the first album or what in my household was this first secular album I bought oh wow thank you yeah and uh maybe wide in my perspective on what I perceived to be true and maybe look into a wider scope you know so thank you for that for sure because I learned from Abu gray to from a gold watch everything that was on gold watch from learning about what Heisman body was to I'd be just looking at the websites so I appreciate you for that oh you got it you got it but uh question I got is because so I remember the Japanese cartoon and remember Hello Goodbye had a real Punk feel to it and how early on did bands like uh I assume Joy Joy Division was one of your Inspirations yeah yeah Queen and how early on did that inspire you and like affect your writing um punk music is always just aesthetically we good okay they're not going to turn the lights off but our audio visual support will bounce ends in six minutes okay so uh we want to see if we can get to as many questions as possible maybe about the shapes indeed rather than the details in the details see how you use that against me could you cast that you see how you did that always been a fan of punk from a performative aspect to an aesthetic aspect right the energy of it the vibe I based my live shows if not the music pump Japanese cartoon was my I have a punk band called Japanese cartoon well I sing in a British accent it's [ __ ] hilarious um but more for the performative aspect so my stage shows a lot of that is pulled from Bad Brains and nerd and you know Punk and Ian Curtis and like stuff like that right um how they performed minimally without a lot of [ __ ] and we're still able to put on an energetic show and what does that take right so that's kind of like the cue for that and what I kind of pulled from that genre in a direct way that you can see right like when I'm on stage while on the [ __ ] out yeah cool yo we're gonna cycle through these things we're gonna get shapes you know good evening good evening thank you maybe I can keep mine brief with an invitation ah you mentioned earlier how you can get more of this out there I am a public school teacher hey just across the other side of Mass Ave in Arlington so you can come on over anytime um because what I was going to ask is both for the kids and for the teachers definitely and especially the district in which I work this is probably not the type of literature that is embraced so I'm wondering how to maybe get more teachers to kind of cultivate this different type of poetry in their classroom and also for the young kids that are dreaming of this being the next Lupe Fiasco who having no time to pay attention to my English class what message would you give them um the message I would give to your English class directly is uh I'm without 1984. the book 1984 which I got in my English class right there is no Lupe Fiasco right arguably right because it was like oh you can tell a story like this and it has double think this concept of double thing and in the end at the back of uh of 1984 there's a whole dictionary which defines like all the words that they were using in the book and it was like a whole like weird like breakdown of it I was like oh my God double think oh two ideas operating at the same time oh man these bars punchlines metaphors um I need to have multiple triple entombres double entender is when I write raps so it became a teaching moment right so it was but I had to do that right nobody nobody said that now that you know you can see like what are you interested in my greatest teacher his name is Mr Kendrick Mr K rest in peace it was like [ __ ] all this right I'm gonna just give you this D so you can pass so you can focus on what you want to do right and I'm just here to empower and Surround what you already are good at and what you want to do so take this stuff right and then how can we apply it to what you already do and it's meeting them where they are right and then for at least for me humbly I would say so just tell them like hey man you can rap about this right because Lupe Fiasco said so um appreciate you but I will pay I will pay a visit yeah absolutely for sure hi Lou um so I have a question you mentioned the repetition break technique and you listed three songs but I'm curious if I have the wrong idea about that because the first thing that came in my mind is he say she say and the cool um because it comes back from the dead goes back to the people that killed him I was wondering why that wasn't listed or if I just have the wrong concept sometimes I forget my own songs and I was trying to find the most obvious examples oh okay um and and that's why but you're correct you're correct that that frame is there sometimes it's there unconsciously you know because that's just we were taught to tell stories in a certain way and we reference the stories that we know the most and are the most simple right so but you're correct it is in a cool it's in it's in other songs as well right and sometimes it's reversed right it's about oh how do we reverse that process what we actually start with the reveal and then it becomes educate you after the fact and then you're like oh [ __ ] that was a giant robot right kind of deal so yeah thank you thanks Mars yo nice to see you again so keep my question short how do you think that we like Mig students like scientists physicists Engineers like working we contribute to the rap scene or to the hip-hop music or the culture say that again oh what part like everything okay so uh what do you think that say us like MIT students like physicists Engineers uh mathematicians what can we contribute oh oh wow wow so one of the best rappers at MIT right now is a nuclear physicist bruncino his name is Alex all he raps about is nuclear physics [Music] right and I'll put him on blast he came to me he's a grad student he went to Caltech and then came here for Grassroots um all right docati all he raps about all of his raps are about nuclear physics right and he gets oh my God right but they're really [ __ ] good and he can perform them at length he came and did a five minute thing just kind of like and I'm learning and excited and dancing and going crazy and I was like oh my God right so it's how you approach it do you want to use it as attorney as a learning tool do you want to you know think about it and do you want to come up with a mathematic mathematical formula that represents this because the other part of these these uh papers is there is a mathematical formula for a surprise right it's like here's this Delta stick bug thingy with a zoo right and that's how surprised look it feels a mathematical equation right and that exists for everything so maybe the support would be like hey take a look at what we do the same way that you look at nanoparticles right and what do you see and then come and have come be in concert with us and come conversate with the rappers right and then we can give you what we see in you and in your field and how we can say Hey you know if you talked about it this way or maybe if you approach it this way you know maybe people will get it right instead of saying like you what's what's the thing uh you know in in calculus right just say a little bit of right just say a little bit of like this DX over the the that's just saying a little bit of this and a little bit of that [Laughter] right um got cool cool be good all right cool thank you so I gotta tell you this is going to have to be our last question but before we take it uh you notice that we you could hear everything yes that we were saying so let's let's give it up audio visually not possible right I'll have this one more yeah the daughter of two professors over here hey that's why I'm here um I was wondering I think you have an interesting point about like how current state of rap is like you know coming from devolving there's like a lot of people again I'm sorry I think you made like a really interesting point about how a lot of like current rap is sort of like devolving like there's a lot of violence Etc I was wondering if there are any newer like rappers that you feel like bring something new to the game and have been like interesting you uh new rappers um I mean Alex here at MIT raps about nuclear physics I mean like oh my God right like he's ridiculous and amazing and phenomenal and he's like running a particle accelerator right now somewhere and writing raps about that [ __ ] and I'm like oh my God right when I when I went out to look at rap and I and this is something that's going to be relevant in the class right is there's rap music business rap and billboard and the charts and Spotify and all these other things that is this much of rap it is very very tiny reflection of what rap is and who's doing rap and where and I try and be tuned into all of it right and when you tune into all of it even though that that piece the violence is there and we can't shy away from that right all of the other things are there the ills are there um but there's also a lot of not you know I meet a guy who everything he raps about is nuclear physics I mean another guy everything and he doesn't even curse D1 doesn't even curse the his raps at all which is wild to me you should curse man listen it's delicious baby [Laughter] um so there's a range and I don't want to pigeonhole and I also don't want to just point out or or limit you to think that what's available on Spotify on the playlist is the only thing that you have and the only thing you have access to right some of the best rap that you're ever going to hear is the rap that you go out and find and discover that you go out when they're doing an open mic at the Middle East or they're doing a thing over at what have you you know or Cambridge Cipher is doing something or something like that right like that's where you're going to see these moments in a context that'll really speak to you right because there's something yeah you can listen to it in the iPod and you can listen to it in this and listen to it and add or whatever but there's something about discovering some random God you know freestyling on the corner you know and it's wow the way he Incorporated what she or they or them or whomever Incorporated this little thing and it was like wow that was that was really good that's rap and it counts and it's valid right so yeah and buy more Lupe Fiasco albums he's great I hear he's I hear I hear that guy's really good you know maybe maybe not we'll see but good thank you you're welcome appreciate the question um I'll wrap up I do want to highlight uh my brother D1 here uh stand up D um it's it's uh what is it Serendipity or like it was meant to what's that word yeah it was serendipitous that's good right yeah okay cool um how we arrived here in Cambridge on the same plane in the not on the same airplane but in the same time frame with the same Mission so while I'm here at MIT doing this uh my brother D1 is a uh is a Nas fellow down at Harvard um at the uh uh African-American Institute right um with uh skip Gates and the other folks that are there Professor Morgan and so he'll be here for the year just like I'll be here for the year hopefully we'll be here longer than a year maybe right dude maybe hey you know hey hey you know um but Dia's down there doing amazing work researching uh the relationship between hip-hop and violence hip-hop and Divinity and all these interesting layers and Chambers that are of interest to him and doing it at at the highest levels is some of the highest and greatest institutions that America has to offer so two boys who are been welcomed into the Cambridge Cambridge family from our respective cities D is from New Orleans from Chicago um on that same mission to kind of show hip-hop in a different way to show rap music in a different way and expose it to you in a different way so just want to give you your flowers um and he just released a record called God and girls too um which he released not on streams to your point right it's not on streams right you go to his website it's you can download it for free or you can pay five thousand dollars for it because he's a baby stop it stop lying man stop lying name your own price and then he's also doing more things at Harvard next semester and stuff like that so make sure you tune in to my brother D1 um uh so yeah uh lastly thank you again audio visual thank you guys um for hanging in there for us we appreciate it thanks to the staff here at MIT thanks to all the faculty for showing up really appreciate you um and we'll see you all next we'll see you all uh Friday at the ER tournament over at Walker pull up but we'll see you next time hopefully we'll have another Symposium like this and if you see it for the students for the students that are here I have office hours all the time I'm in building 14 on the fourth floor so if you want to come kick the [ __ ] you want to come play Early you want to come play some of your music for me you want to come talk about nuclear physics give me a book or anything like that I am available at service to you here as long as my tenure lasts okay so appreciate y'all enjoy the uh the evening try not to get wet and we'll see you next time thank you