This isn’t the story of your usual conservative Harvard student.
Obasi Shaw said a big fuck no to slaving over a 7000 word Harvard thesis and decided to spit it out in form of a self-made rap album. Not only is a the kid a creative genius, the album title Liminal Minds was awarded the second highest grade in the department.
Shaw focused on the appropriation and struggles of black identity in America with each song being told from a different character’s perspective, a format inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s seminal 14th century piece.
The rapper / student has been compared to Kendrick Lamar, whose album To Pimp A Butterfly was added to the Harvard Library in acknowledgement of the cultural significance.
In the opening song, “Declaration of Independence” Shaw spits about the police brutality that African Americas face on a daily basis.
“Composing like Beethoven, to the deaf, or just the hard of hearing —
Complacent faces, vacant breasts, bereft of all the feeling.
A nation due for inspection, this is the audit, herein
Lies the fear in the eyes of our departed dearly —
Cold bodies facing .22, man in blue.“
Listen to the glorious ten-track album (/thesis) below.
