Hip hop science communication for the next civil rights battle

Daniel Nelson

It’s hip hop but not as we know it.

The Rap Guide to Climate Change

Image by St James Theatre

It shouldn’t be a complete surprise, though. He has form. His Rap Guide to Evolution, a hip hop homage to Charles Darwin, was described by microbiologist Mark Pallen as "the first peer-reviewed rap".

The science of his latest show, "The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos", staged for two nights at the St James Theatre in London and next at the Edinburgh Fringe, is solid science, too. He could usefully perform it at the climate change negotiations in December because his songs confront all the arguments that will be trotted out to stop agreement in Paris: denial of climate science, the irrelevance of individual action, the inadequacy of renewables, the perpetual ingenuity of humankind in coming up with answers.

His rhymes are pretty good: shocking/Hawking; decarbonisation/ hospital patient; African sun/ thermal maximum.  

Canadian white boy Brinkman thrums them out and for those whom hip hop beats usually come in minute-sized Radio4 clips, he varies the pace as well as the content. Every musical needs one song that you leave the theatre whistling and the best here is a play on Notorious B.I.G.'s ‘What’s Beef?’.

Then he rap stops, “I’ve been rhyming for 45 straight minutes - and everything rhymes. But I’m not rhyming now”, and he invites suggestions and questions from the audience, managing – just – not to diss a questioner who confuses the ozone hole with climate change, and a youngster who ignores Brinkman’s aside that “changing light bulbs is like ethical masturbation” and counter-suggests that individual action can influence others.

Brinkman, born in a log cabin and the son of an MP and a man whose company claims to have planted more than 1 billion trees, semi-freestyles the audience comments into a rap response, generating the first still slightly un-English whoops of the evening.

He sees climate change as “the next civil rights battle”, and given the power of the fossil fuel lobby (“There ain’t no party like a fossil fuel party/ because a fossil fuel party never stops”) and the red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist fellow travellers, the battle will be won only by putting pressure on governments. That means climate change must be in the culture, on TV, in plays, in books – and in hip hop science communication.

You heard it here first.

+ St James Theatre, 12 Palace Street, W1. Info: 0844 264 2140844 264 2140

Baba Brinkman

Rap Guide to Climate Chaos

Wine Bar: Gilded Balloon

19-20

5-31 Aug

Previews 5-7 Aug

£7

8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 24-27, 31 Aug

£10 /£8

10, 11 Aug

£12/£10 (2-4-1)

14-16, 21-23, 28-30 Aug

£12/£10