Perfect Plus One: Baba Brinkman's Evolution Rap

By Delaina Dixon | May 17, 2010 | Entertainment

baba_brinkman_0191 It’s not every day I accept an invitation to see a one-man show.

But when I got the invite in the mail to witness Baba Brinkman‘s entertaining romp The Rap Guide to Evolution, I couldn’t resist.

Baba, a native Canadian, is a guy who knows how to put seriously intellectual concepts to a major funky beat. After his successful rendition of┬áThe Rap Canterbury Tales, he was commissioned by Dr. Mark Pallen, a leading geneticist, to create the same experience to describe several theories of evolution.

So what exactly is Baba talking about? He explains the concept of natural selection; how our past actions, its success and failures, have shaped the people we have become today. It’s a theory that’s not without controversy. Baba literally shoots down the concept of the religious creation of man in favor of our DNA ancestry coming from amoebas.

Even if you don’t agree with all his arguments, which also explain why young men from the poorest of areas are the most violence and how man uses words to woo his most beguiling target: woman, you can’t help but tap your toes and hum to Baba’s simple theory to making anything better in your life: “Performance, Feedback and Revision.”

One of the best parts of the show is listening to Baba “freestyle” about evolution and what’s going on in his audience (yes, he makes eye-contact with his viewers during the whole show. No easy feat when you’re trying to recite the theories of microbial genomics in rhyme). I had to blush when he noted that the “flower in my hair,” was no doubt to catch the eye “of some man out there.”

The concepts aren’t the easiest to grasp, especially when Baba’s delivering a them mile a minute. Thank goodness he’s put out a CD, available at www.babasworld.com. It’s like the rap version Cliff Notes on how man began.