The titans of hip hop have been donning their mortar boards at any opportunity lately, what with Harvard launching a fellowship in honour of Nas and Kanye delivering his motivational ramblings to surprised design students.
The latest rapper to enter the lecture theatre is Wu-Tang Clan’s resident genius, who turned up at the University of Toronto this week to give a lecture on ‘Consciousness, Creativity and Music’, during which he debuted an epic rap on the origin of the universe.
GZA wasn’t just winging it, either – after all, he’s honed his knowledge hanging out with renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and recently teamed up with Rap Genius and Columbia University to launch an education scheme across New York using hip-hop to explain and promote scientific concepts.
Sadly, the video of GZA’s lecture has been set to private by some internet killjoys, but the rhyme is set to appear on GZA’s quantum physics-inspired 2014 album, Dark Matter.
Here are the full lyrics:
Before space and time thought produced a speck of light
It was infinitely hot, so extremely bright
Within the centre of this great shining
there was massive energy and it was expanding in great timing
Within this fireball was all of space
Of every special place for information it encased
Literally a beginning this cosmic clock was ticking
And allowed space to flow while it was spinning
Everything we see around us
The sun, the moon, the stars, the millions of worlds that astound us
The universe inside is hard to fathom
It was composed in a region small as a single atom
Less than one short width the size of a point of a pen
Microscopic but on a macro level within
Unfurling this swirling cloud of light
A star city, a galaxy with all its might
Within the blinking of an eye, expanding beyond comprehension
Within the fraction of a second, a new dimension
At a marble size, very unstable
In time it will come with a periodic table
Space, was expanding faster than light speed
It moving at the rate only thought cannot see
A picosecond after the big bang
Music of the spheres
Before the ears
The universe is now sang
Small enough to fit in your hand a nanosecond later
It was the size of Mars and becoming greater
A fraction of a second later, 80 times the size of Earth
Fastest growing infant since the time of birth
Still expanding but it didn’t contain matter
Just pure energy that was mixing within the batter
But mass and energy interchangeable
Convert those particles, rearrangeable
Matter and anti-matter (the arch rival)
Met, obliterated each other for survival
A warzone, a battle to the death
But as long as there is life and breath there is one remaining left
