Rapsode, by Baba Brinkman

Rapsode

by Baba Brinkman

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1.	Rapsode 05:58	lyrics	buy track
This is Baba Brinkman Recording live from Long Island, New York And this record is called "Rapsode" Want you to check the method people Of what you think you want be Oh oh oh oh A rapsode is like a lyrical technician We share a common sight and seashore There's no reason to drown for keeps Alone oh oh oh But not a superstar, you know It's like a service job Nobody paid me to write this Only track on the record that wasn’t a paid assignment And that makes me delighted, major alignment I say what I like, but the topic, I let the patron decide it Only proper, when they spent the paper to hype it Like a private investigator, you can pay me to dive in But never dictate what I’m writin’, I can claim it as mine then Rapsode, with the vocational rhymin’ Occasional versification, that’s my livin’ I can’t work a 9-to-5, I’m purpose-driven Skills never rusty, college credits dusty But the reach of the music is down to the algorithm Shout out to the slept-on rappers blazin’ verses Major wordsmiths workin’ bars and table service Flow so crazy but never get paid for verses A vast, unappreciated labor surplus And yeah they can hustle, embrace that struggle The pipeline is leaky but they see Drake and covet 21 Savage and Travis Scott make them hungry Crabs in a bottomless bucket facing upwards Facin’ math lottery-level-bad, but it’s all for the art Walk-ons and extras, we all play a part Workin’ actors hit auditions, it’s tough to get started But workin’ rappers don’t exist in this market Just artists decades into the skill-build Who find the grind still doesn’t pay real bills Knowin’ the road is rocky and steep uphill Doesn’t make that feel like less of a raw deal I can relate, ‘cause I’m another one and the same Always figured one day I’d Roc-A-Fella my name But I never been the type to get jealous of fame Instead I figured a pivot and reinvented the game And became a Rapsode, embraced the public service Scientifically informative when I’m bustin’ verses Something of a rapper and something of a journalist A cross between Biggie Smalls and Copernicus Mappin’ a clear path out of a lyrical trap Rational actor, check the rearview and adapt Causin’ a misconception near you to collapse Scientific collabs on peer-reviewed raps A useful application of a rapper’s abilities Abilities accumulated by practicing diligently In the pursuit of celebrity, frustrated eventually And then applied flexibly to a different niche Not the niche of the typical music industry Sex symbols and singles and status signaling Jingles and jiggling, appetite tickling In the pursuit of followers and profitability A lot of songs really speak on the same topics But I’m not gonna judge, ‘cause yup, the motive is profit And rappers are good at giving the fans what they wanted The lowest common denominator path to the top To get them to stream it and cop it, that aspirational Motivational music to climb a ladder and chase a goal Olympic podium music about takin’ gold And makin’ the competition pay respect to the throne And that’s dope, but limiting, returns are diminishing Rapsode life, where status isn’t everything This art form is capable of encompassing anything If incentives are disconnected from mass-distributing So change the incentives, embrace reinvention Fossil fuel is just one way of crankin’ engines Imagine a rap game where the rappers make sense of A thousand diverse topics, and get paid for their efforts Under the renaissance patronage system, it seems backwards But it takes a Medici to make a Sistine Chapel Commission a Michelangelo, pick an issue to tackle Suggest the back-up sources and leave the rest to the rapper And watch as the ceiling is painted, that feeling’s amazing The scene may not go on to become exceedingly famous But you can always be part of the means of its making And stories today are better than biblical scenes of creation I’m talkin’ scientific discoveries that are changing The way we perceive creatures in nature Energy generation, DNA, technology and it’s major And people hang in the balance of each innovation It needs interpretation, a storytelling medium Beats, rhymes, and life science to break the tedium A distribution platform on digital media And a trained labor force, if we can give the means to them Three consecutive records of custom raps Original tracks I got the privilege to craft Why? ‘Cause I liked the topic, and someone asked And rap is a business, they budgeted for the task How fun is that? In the midst of a major disturbance The pandemic had me in a cage never workin’ At the peak of a labor surplus I made that swerve and Transformed the rap game into a service A useful service in which rap pays A middle class wage, let’s erect that stage Quit the day jobs, and spit mad flames And drop whole records that Event Rap made That’s the album intro, the passion and vision That’s the manifesto, now it has to deliver For the Rapsodes, makin’ the raps on commission So check the method, just play this album and listen Listen to thirtreen original tracks All paid commissions Made on assignment Want you to check the method people Of what you think you want be Oh oh oh oh Now I get it If you're Drake, that is not cool We share a common sight and seashore There's no reason to drown for keeps Alone But then again, if you get paid to do what you love There's gotta be intermediate definitions of cool
2.	Palindrome in the Genome 04:31 video	lyrics	buy track
Palindrome in the genome CRISPR on the beats With the PAM on the jam So it knows where to cleave Protospacer Adjacent Motifs In the genome CRISPR on the beats Palindrome, I REFER to a sequence repeated From the back to the front: NEVER ODD OR EVEN Or when ACGTTACC Matches GGTAACGT From the back to the front like a mirror CRISPR is the zipper, Cas-9 is the shearer With no error, ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD WE FEW, DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA? The CRISPR era, yo, I hope it goes well I know it will now that MADAM Emanuelle Charpentier is known for genome skills With Jennifer Doudna, they hold the Nobel DEIFIED in the SAGAS of the public EYE On the RADAR of science, they RACECAR drive And IF I HAD A HIFI, I’d wanna ride To the vibe of CRISPR Cas-9 ‘Cause I, MAN, A GROSS ORGAN AM I DRAB AS A FOOL, ALOOF AS A BARD Ready to BORROW OR ROB any rhyme From a lab to LEVEL up my lines… Palindrome in the genome CRISPR on the beats With the PAM on the jam So it knows where to cleave Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs With the Cas-9 enzyme Snip those genes Palindrome In the genome, don’t sleep On the Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats In the genome CRISPR on the beat Palindromes on the brain, like WOW and YAY Every TESTSET gets better STATS every day My daughter’s name is HANNAH and when she’s my age We’re gonna treat brain disease with guide RNA The CRISPR Cas-9 way, that’s the REVIVER Bacteria first evolved it to fight a virus But now it’s at the forefront of cutting-edge science For Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s When a braincell firing has a protein intervening You can see the genes involved – CRISPR screening You can even light them up, it’s not a GAG Fit the proteins with bioluminescent tags To make them POP, and you can LOL, cool But can you make a CRISPR knockout cell pool? To study Huntington’s disease with repeats In HTT genes, too many CAGs! Don’t get annoyed, past generations didn’t get a choice To grow pluripotent stem cell organoids But thanks to CRISPR Cas-9 we’re now poised To shed a little light as we stare into the void Like an OOZY RAT IN A SANITARY ZOO WON’T LOVERS REVOLT NOW and get a room? Get a lab and test whether each TENET’s true SO MANY DYNAMOS in this field of view So this goes out to the whole CRISPR Cas-9 crew… Palindrome in the genome CRISPR on the beats With the PAM on the jam So it knows where to cleave Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs With the Cas-9 enzyme Snip those genes Palindrome In the genome, don’t sleep On the Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats In the genome CRISPR on the beat
3.	Exponential 03:53	lyrics	buy track
Exponential evolution of info Don’t call this intelligence artificial Algorithmical, just let the tech go Separate the noise from the signal The first artificial intelligence movement Started with billions of years of evolution Cells reproducing, mutations screw things Up in interesting ways, mostly useless Random isn’t usually a path to improvement Scramble a plan and chance is you ruin it With one in a million or two fit to boost it Natural selection infused the flukes in It seems smart but it’s not Blind watchmaker fit the parts in a clock From a poison dart frog to aardvark to hawk Keep whatever works and discard what does not And one of its designs was an organ A navigator and a calculator of fortune With a hippocampus, a cerebellum and a cortex Intelligence as a performance Exponential evolution of info Don’t call this intelligence artificial Algorithmical, just let the tech go Separate the noise from the signal Exponential evolution of info Invisible solutions get exposed Technophobes watch the benefits flow Noise to the signal, let’s go Surrounding every organism is affordances Opportunities and threats you can avoid if you’re quick Brains evolved to discover and exploit them That’s how a living thing flourishes Affordances, discover the better moves Diamonds in the rough, find the hidden jewels To get calories spending minimal joules Game-changing culture, upgrade the tools Make the rules transcend the person A fix on a fix, infinite recursion From a skin to a pen to a tablet surface To a microchip computational learning Interconnectable neural networks Engaging in a vast unsupervised search Of a dataset, fine-tune in some quirks Now hit it with a prime and find if it works Exponential evolution of info, Don’t call this intelligence artificial Algorithmical, just let the tech go Separate the noise from the signal Exponential evolution of info Invisible solutions get exposed Let the benefits flow to the technophobes Noise from the signal, let’s go Affordances around us, evolution found some By stumbling around with its limited powers And now networks do the same but they’re boundless Algorithmically extending outwards Agents endowed with basic drives Pattern recognition from people to AIs Chat CPT-3 look me in the eyes And explain everything human beings can surmise And eventually, the network’s gonna be Programmed to read data sets contextually With any piece of information fetched for me Cyborg with machines workin’ next to me Intelligence finds solutions to problems Clockin’ odds when opportunity’s knockin’ A process, all in the consequences So bring in the chips to augment us Exponential evolution of info, Don’t call this intelligence artificial Algorithmical, just let the tech go Separate the noise from the signal Exponential evolution of info Invisible solutions get exposed Let the benefits flow to the technophobes Noise from the signal, let’s go
4.	I'm Human 04:07 video	lyrics	buy track
I’m human, alive on this planet rock Chip off the old block, primate, mammal stock Natural-born chatterbox, lookin’ back at our Path to the top, it started in Africa Home of our bonobo and chimpanzee cousins Where OG fossil hominins keep being discovered Seven million years is a lean budget From knuckle-draggin' to supreme niche-construction But we did it, bipedalism, we leaned in Naturally-selected the genes in Increased the cerebrum Human Accelerated Regions And yes I confess, some interbreeding Bringin’ dead hominins back to life I’m at least 3% Neanderthal, ask my wife She knows, got the genomes to bring it home Plus Denisovan from a tooth and a finger bone And that’s enough to see populations today with 8% Denisovan sequences in their bases Homo sapiens, the last representatives No mo’ erectuses or floresiensises Poor little Hobbits, never made it out the Shire So why did we thrive while the rest expired? Was it tools or babysitters or language or fire? Anthropogeny testify! How does a human originate? I mean our form and our shape And also how we behave What’s a human? Just an altered ape With some new adaptations A few novel traits And solutions We can pass innovations From brain to brain We can stand up and say I’m human… I’m human, I can run an impala down Marathon-style, heat stroke stall it out Home base, lock it down on solid ground Every time I range I got a new saga to talk about He said, she said, food up in the creek bed Ambush, he’s dead, killer had three friends Reputation in pieces needs redress Pay the blood price and hit the reset Every thesis tries to explain it all away Technological ape, stoned ape, aquatic ape As if it all came from one small trait Instead of generations of selection on lots of traits Controlling fire, shrunken-down molar size Brain capacity explodes at the same time Social dynamic leaps, novel calories Gracilization leaves bones atrophied No longer fighting for mates like wild horses Sexually dimorphic in decreasing proportions Co-evolutionary culture-gene forces On the walls of a cave, paint a portrait Of a human And how we originate I mean our form and our shape And also how we behave What’s a human? Just an altered ape With some new adaptations A few novel traits And solutions We can pass innovations From brain to brain We can stand up and say I’m human… I’m human, prone to teleology "Everything has a purpose" default psychology But Anthropogeny is a field, not a faith So it’s got a base in biology All you need is mutation and selection Blind watchmaker-style Evolution of the only upright ape in town Scientific method, hypothesize, test it And if the evidence finds different then take it down No magic leaps allowed, just different threads From the genes in our cells to the brain in our heads From the ways we get fed to the mates in our beds To the threats that we face, we can make it make sense Charles Darwin said it: “Light will be thrown" On human origins and despite what we know The list of what we don’t is quite formidable So launch the scientific probes Into the roots of humans And how we originate I mean our form and our shape And also how we behave What’s a human? Just an altered ape With some new adaptations A few novel traits And solutions, we can pass   Innovations from brain to brain We can stand up and say I’m human
5.	Cards on the Table 04:03	lyrics	buy track
All right, cards on the table Let’s go… let’s show What up bird, how you know how to nest-build? How to find a mate and food, and when to just chill? It’s like your brain has evolved to behave In a way that translates into hatched eggs And that’s great, pass those genes on Natural selection, yup, that old theme song The tune you march to, from tuna to shark tooth Darwin's tune, beaver to carp to moose But not you, sitting on a barstool Coveting a cool car at a liberal arts school? Not you? Your brain is made of what? Stardust? Sawdust? No biology in your startup? Not true? Why? ‘Cause you don’t want it to be true That the center of the universe is not you Cards on the tabletop, y’all, it's all true You have a brain that evolved as a kluge No plan, no endgame, just a huge Box of neurological tools, what they all do?! Call it a “module” a “circuit” or “proclivity" Every tool makes us behave species-typically Put your cards on the table if you wanna play Primates with evolved brains I put mine on the table all the time Adapted mind in the spotlight Put your cards down now show us your hand Make no claims without evidence Cards on the table, let’s go! Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show Take a jar out of the fridge with rust On the rim, give the lid a twist… puff Listen to the hiss, ugh, give it a sniff, bleugh What you’re feelin’ is commonly known as ‘disgust’ Evolved to prevent the vectors of pathogens From coming in contact with our skin In the world that our ancestors inhabited Disgust was useful and adaptive So what evokes it? What’s the process? What’s the neural activation of grossness? How does a trigger get molded by culture? And does it predict how political votes work? Can disgust make you xenophobic? And only wanna be social with your own kin? Which genes in developmental growth sets A human brain up with this emotion? Put your cards on the table if you wanna play Primates with evolved brains I put mine on the table all the time Adapted mind in the spotlight Put your cards down now show us your hand Make no claims without evidence Cards on the table, let’s go! Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show Evolved Psychological Adaptations Let me just break that down to the basics Foraging optimization, depression when fruitless Success brings euphoric moods in Color vision, hunger, incest avoidance Nausea after ingesting poisons Preferences for symmetrical faces Anti-predator directed gazes EPAs, wariness around snakes Willingness to risk physical pain Males and females having different ways Of assessing traits when selecting mates If only there existed a digital space Where the data sets could collect in one place! Edited by experts who investigate Each respective scientific evidence-base Is it an adaptation? What’s the case against? Every genetic, theoretic, and brain scan test Updated and aggregated and then fed Into a dossier of human nature’s bits Put your cards on the table if you wanna play Primates with evolved brains I put mine on the table all the time Adapted mind in the spotlight Put your cards down now show us your hand Make no claims without evidence Cards on the table, let’s go! Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show
6.	Control Systems 03:59 video	lyrics	buy track
Control system design All the same tricks of the mind If my furnace and my thermostat is actin’ erratic I’ma ask a mechanic to fix it, that has understanding Of the mechanistic interactions of every part in the whole And the specific system failure that lost me control And if my mood is erratic and catchin’ the blues is a habit And minor triggers seem to move me to panic, I'ma do Psychiatric Assessment, and if they label it a “major depression” I’ma conversate with clinicians, and maybe take a prescription To correct that “chemical imbalance” between my ears But what I really wanna hear is control system engineers Explain the tradeoffs built into designing race cars If you want them to go faster, they’re gonna have to break lots When they fly off the track. What kind of design flaw is that? Not a flaw, just a compromise between safe and fast Control system design, identify the central target The homeostatic optimum the system is benchmarkin' Every cell in my body’s got a sense of its margins A hundred thousand mini control systems in every organ Quick responses, pushin’ the gains out of the pockets Positive feedback loops, so easy to overshoot From blood pressure to temperature, glucose to mood The optimum depends on what’s been poppin’ with you What did you eat? What did you see? How far did you run? What did you do? I’ma get back in the groove when the situation improves Control system design Keep it all inside the borderlines You know them by their polar sides All the same tricks of the mind Control system design Keep it all inside the borderlines You know them by their polar sides All the same tricks of the mind I want to talk to the original design engineer That put my brain and body together, this arrangement is weird I’m not talkin’ about a non-existent god with a beard I’m talkin’ Darwinian selection over millions of years Each organism adapting to environmental stress Optimizing behavior to its situational best And not for the purpose of living life healthy and blessed The ultimate target was always raw genetic success Threat assessment, anxiety rises, and that’s adaptive Even if a threat is imagined, false negatives are disasters The trigger is tracking an average fitness maximum With redundancies overlapping, robust is better than accurate Anxiety and depression, are they diseases or symptoms? Like physical pain, it depends on the day, depends on the triggers Relationships catching damage, frustrated ambitions And trauma, and mismatches from ancient to modern living Some people have a genetic predisposition to mood swings It’s not surprising that evolution can’t do some things Like eliminate all the mutations that cause harm And protect a modern day brain from false alarms Natural selection made control systems to keep track That are naturally fragile to swings of positive feedback From surges of confidence to falling deep in a morass Find the high spots in the swamp to creep back Control system design Keep it all inside the borderlines You know them by their polar sides All the same old tricks of the mind Control system design Keep it all inside the borderlines You know them by their polar sides All the same old tricks of the mind
7.	Social Contagion 04:04 video	lyrics	buy track
Social contagion Somebody wins and somebody fails We try to make sense of it, hmm, by referencing effort and skills But what if a company’s future and every benefit that it yields Depends on effects bigger than anyone’s individual selves Social contagion! Like the propagation of pathogens All it takes is a few contagious travelers rambling Between insular villages, and the rate of transmission averages And everyone catches it on Facebook in a chain reaction Topographically map it, track the diffusion dynamic Use it to plant a seed of activism, or spread confusion and panic Social contagion in a language-using mammal A social primate with a super-talent for groupish habits Take a deep dive, seek and you’ll find, infection typically thrives On the proliferation of acquaintances known as “weak ties” It’s a small world after all, a meeting of minds With slow motion fact-checkers chasing after fleet lies Deep ties are relatively rare, relatives who care Best friends who share everything, conventional fare Until a social contagion appears, proliferating sources More than exposure to one fanatical neighbor’s endorsement A complex contagion, spreading from multiple nodes Seven touches from seven individuals someones’ attentional flow When the chance of infection is more than zero but less than one It takes a proliferation of contacts to get it done Social contagion Buildin’ a digital network Full of individual vectors Infectin’ the rest of the herd Contagion Threats and benefits emerge Forget about makin’ an effort Just let the net work Social contagion Influencers and connectors Transmission success turns On network architecture Contagion When complexity surges Forget about makin’ an effort Just let the net work Social contagion Social contagion, I’m just friending and unfriending I’m just checking what’s trending, posting and contending Forget about the privacy policy, I’m consenting Every legacy system, disruption is upending Trackin’ the digits, big data systems, big business Network density algorithms measure resistance Nodes of influence at the center of social connections With extra bridges, just don’t forget to measure the bridge width Social contagion, it affects our spending habits Our body mass indexes, emotions and finances Social ties matter, their motions are so dynamic Which businesses are now in the business of trying to capture The Network Effect: the more connections collect The more benefits and perks every single participant gets When the best converge, it triggers a surge of interest (imagen edificios con luz) Whenever the party’s poppin’ success breeds success An arms race for attention, a contagious infection Forget if it makes us anxious and raises rates of depression Shareholders want quarterly profits, they can eject an Ethically-conflicted executive, who raises objections Social contagion! Welcome to the new society Where information is moving virally through the wiring And you can find a network that’ll move you to violence Or one that you can thrive in, so choose wisely Social contagion Buildin’ a digital network Full of individual vectors Infectin’ the rest of the herd Contagion Threats and benefits emerge Forget about makin’ an effort Just let the net work Social contagion Influencers and connectors Transmission success turns On network architecture Contagion When complexity surges Forget about makin’ an effort Just let the net work Social contagion
8.	Science of Science 03:30 video	lyrics	buy track
Experiments on experimental findings The Science of Science So many scientific studies So many obstacles to getting published So many trends, you can split it or lump it Develop the status quo or disrupt it And if you wanna be disruptive Then get a smaller team with fewer incumbents ‘Cause it was all a dream, Biggie Smalls, it was all a gleam In the eyes of a novice chasin’ a novelty A temporal cluster with a high degree Of citation impact, that’s a hot streak When the best in the h-index comes next To the next best, it’s the peak of success With the rest back low, that’s a fresh plateau But the Q-factor can still express that though When a study getting cited is a dice throw Q-factor is consistent highs or lows For an individual, plus every next move Could be the best yet, random impact rule So keep it movin' – never let the stress impact you Your biggest hit could be the next you do Every study ever published, line it up To data mine it for signals hiding Experiments on experimental findings The Science of Science Don’t get excited Just check the impact, which get cited? A meta-study of a meta-study Double-blinded The Science of Science So many scientific studies So many changes in the way they get conducted Co-authorship in the hundreds and bigger budgets Big data sets on the means of production 58 million scientific papers Less than half will ever get a citation Just a few hit-makers get the platinum sales Power law distribution, it’s fat-tailed Preferential attachment, the rich get richest Scientific publications in a competition For citation acquisition, in different positions Plus with intrinsic fitness characteristics The fitness parameter, witness the stamina Mix vintage with bleeding edge to get the maximum Fitness impact, references get stacked Every paper follows a specific citation path Like a rap track, it gets released and you see An immediate peak, plus some longevity Some achieve street credibility, but the rest Fall through the cracks like a null result test Papers left in the desk drawer, gotta explore Pre-register more, and forget the rewards Take a risky bet, and if it’s a wrong turn Don’t forget, failure just makes you stronger Every study ever published, line it up To data mine for signals hiding Experiments on experimental findings The Science of Science Don’t get excited Just check the impact, which get cited? A meta-study of a meta-study Double-blinded The Science of Science
9.	Cold Fusion Renaissance 03:59 video	lyrics	buy track
Cold fusion, here we go, take two Spread the great news, it’s a miracle breakthrough! Anomalous heat, we can stimulate new Fusion reactions in a solid state too! Wait… you… say it doesn’t replicate? Despite the ten million Google investment stake? Revisit the Cold Case of Cold Fusion No excess heat detected is the conclusion Okay, so back to exile? Perpetual motion machine jokes, refresh now USPTO – still kept out Back to the old reputational death count But… there might be something in it A possible fusion rate-boosting mechanism Recent advancements in calorimetrics From pathological science to rational optimism Just imagine, the theories abound It’s been shunned like a too-spooky burial ground Scooby Doo and the gang need to come figure it out And set that one reference experiment down Cold fusion Some call it a myth Cold fusion And say it doesn’t exist Cold fusion Like Fleischmann and Pons Anomalous heat Measure twice and it’s gone Cold fusion But if you want it to work Cold fusion Invest in research From the old fusion To what lies beyond Cold Fusion Renaissance Cold Fusion, renaissance, rebirth Back from the dead, with persistent research ‘Cause greenhouse earth really needs it to work So let’s take a look at some features First of all, yeah we know fusion happens It’s a nuclear reaction of atoms up in the plasma When it’s done right, with sufficient confinement time Temperature and plasma density, it’s like sunlight But that’s too hot – too under pressure Maybe fusion can trigger in unusual conditions So cue the experiments to fuse it into helium Bombarding palladium with pulses of deuterium The theory is empirically testable, we tested it And so far there’s… less than compelling evidence But maybe we just haven’t hit the threshold to trigger it And hey, you can never prove a negative Cold fusion Some call it a myth Cold fusion And say it doesn’t exist Cold fusion Like Fleischmann and Pons Anomalous heat Measure twice and it’s gone Cold fusion But if you want it to work Cold fusion Invest in research From the old fusion To what lies beyond Cold Fusion Renaissance Cold fusion, Solid State Atomic Fusion Energy, the race is upon us With startups and academic departments and state bodies Like ARPA-E betting their reputation on it Google did it and so did the EU Made that HERMES move, hands up like “me too!” And NASA’s even moving into massive alignment With that deuterated erbium in lattice confinement Ooh, it’s that cold fusion renaissance First nobody wants to touch it, and then it pops Getting props from the Department of Defense At the Naval Service Center up in Indian Head And they don’t give a deuteron about the controversy Is it proven or not!? I guess we’re all gonna see And that debate is shooting off some anomalous heat So cool it off and focus on the receipts No more secret findings, just peer review Independent replication of it in a year or two As post docs start to see it as a career move And if you never gave up on it, cheers to you Cold fusion Some call it a myth Cold fusion And say it doesn’t exist Cold fusion Like Fleischmann and Pons Anomalous heat Measure twice and it’s gone Cold fusion But if you want it to work Cold fusion Invest in research From the old fusion To what lies beyond Cold Fusion Renaissance
10.	You Must LENR 04:13 video	lyrics	buy track
As the fossils burn And the tables turn Remember You must LENR Who you callin’ low energy?! Nuclear reactions in a metal beam Packed with deuterated fuel at a density A billion times what a tokamak has ever seen In a solid state, a metal lattice With individual atoms stacked in grid patterns And that’s where fusion events happen Contents under pressure, electrostatic Force of two positive charges, two nuclei Pushin’ apart hard, that’s what you usually find Pushback, like the attitudes of science To cold fusion findings since 1989 Crazy times call for crazy moonshots too And this isn’t ’89 it’s 2022 And science is about finding out something new, So what you gonna do? Quit, or tunnel through? Get up and dust off when you get stepped on And screen out the charge with metal lattice electrons And press on, until a deuteron strips off This is L-E-N-R hip-hop This goes out to Anomalous Results To the cracks In the vaults This goes out to the Oddballs Under pressure from The platinum walls This goes out To the holdouts Revenge of the nerds As the fossils burn And the tables turn Remember You must LENR Don’t tell the doyens of science But we got research teams workin’ overtime They know the field and they know the signs Some experiments have a slow loading time Italy, America, India, Japan Anomalous heat gets detected in scans Check the fusion events at NASA Glenn Look around, there’s something happenin’ Call it a moment, but never call it a waste Of effort – don’t you know what all of them chase?! A source of energy that’s so cheap and so safe That fossil fuel generation all gets replaced Start small, and later put it on an escalator Scale it from a basic application to a generator To a whole civilization, potential major Remember solar panels only on a calculator? Hold on, how much energy is in a photon? Enough for the whole draw? Bet the whole farm? And how much energy is in a nuclear bond? Unlock it and that’s a whole new dawn This goes out to Anomalous Results To the cracks In the vaults This goes out to the Oddballs Under pressure from The platinum walls This goes out To the holdouts Revenge of the nerds As the fossils burn And the tables turn Remember You must LENR And hey, to the Negative Nancies Exponential growth isn’t inevitably ‘cancer’ Abundance and better living standards Within reach if we can take ‘yes’ for an answer Vision-lackers try to set us backwards With cynical attacks directed at vision-havers And meanwhile, the greenhouse gasses Keep building up with no emission-standards What’s the planners’ plan to skirt the crash? In this catastrophic planetary circumstance With the heat trajectory on a vertical track And a few years left to avert the worst path Just let the time go by? And don’t try To crack the hydrated palladium goldmine? No science allowed outside the bold lines However small, safe, cold, or LoFi? But the dream won’t die, so let it grow Energy needs to be free, that’s the end goal No more autocratic oil, and let’s end coal L-E-N-R Let’s go! This goes out to Anomalous Results To the cracks In the vaults This goes out to the Oddballs Under pressure from The platinum walls This goes out To the holdouts Revenge of the nerds As the fossils burn And the tables turn Remember You must LENR
11.	Insulate It 03:48 video	lyrics	buy track
Cut emissions Unsexy The climate is changing baby And that is not a sexy topic Fossil fuel wrapping us In emissions of carbon Like the planet’s insulated No joke, no special gimmick Just set a target and hit it Get your crib retrofitted Buildings are 40% of emissions And 90% of the ones that we live in Today are gonna be with us After 2050 So get them insulated Talk to the council, talk to the landlord Vote for the politicians who want to Invest in it and plan for it Wrap an apartment building in a jacket Fit it with a heat pump Pre-fabbin’ the package in a factory EnergieSprong Insulated If you need funds, look to the subsidies Private investors are buzzing That people can pay for it monthly Emission cuts, if your city is with it Then back your city up If the cuts are big enough Like Ithaca, Ithaca, Ithaca Ithaca, Ithaca, Itha… Gotta insulate it Retrofit it, retrofit it Gotta insulate it Let’s go get it, let’s go get it Gotta insulate it Cut emissions, cut emissions Gotta insulate it Unsexy, unsexy Gotta insulate it You energy wastin’ bastards Your furnace is up your walls are thin And the glaciers are all collapsin’ We know what’s makin’ it happen And we know what’s needed to stop it And we all just want to help As long as it doesn’t affect our wallets Insulated ‘Cause none of us feelin’ the impact Read up on it academically Middle class life intact And really, this is a policy issue And if you get sad then you all need a tissue But in the meantime, I’m livin’ blissful ‘Cause my crib is insulated It’s nice In the wintertime outside is ice Snow be makin’ the whole street Look like a wedding cake Outside is white Inside, I’m just fine, I’m toasty Temperature all that, I’m boasting Comedy Central, Martha Stewart I’m roasting, coasting From Boulder to Pagosa Springs Colorado to Kinshasa, Congo All around the world Let’s go! Gotta insulate it Retrofit it, retrofit it Gotta insulate it Let’s go get it, let’s go get it Gotta insulate it Cut emissions, cut emissions Gotta insulate it Unsexy, unsexy Gotta insulate it Yeah What a weird topic to rap about But hey, we’re here, just one atmosphere There ain’t no backin’ out So get your crib retrofitted Yeah, give it a wrap around And get that energy transfer Up the standards of Passive House And Retrofit NY And every city from here to Dubai Either get with the emission reductions Or hey, we’re all gonna die So listen, Insulate Britain Blockin’ the M25, I’m proud of you People are dying around you In homes with low R-Value That R is Thermal Resistance Each of us makes internal decisions Whether to look away and give in Or fully resist that pull of indifference And it feels distant, I get it Insulated from its effects But every passing minute You’re insulated less So you gotta insulate it Retrofit it, retrofit it Gotta insulate it Let’s go get it, let’s go get it Gotta insulate it Cut emissions, cut emissions Gotta insulate it Unsexy, unsexy Gotta insulate it Get your crib retrofitted Gotta insulate it Let's go get it, let's go get it Gotta insulate it Cut emissions, cut emissions Gotta insulate it Unsexy, unsexy Repetition, repetition Get your crib retrofitted Let's go get it Repetition, repetition Unsexy, unsexy
12.	Targeted Pressure 03:46 video	lyrics	buy track
Targeted pressure Carbon is hard to sequester Marshall Plan All in together Targeted Pressure ‘cause we been burnin’ that Petrochemical fuel, crankin’ up the global thermostat And yup, take a bus, take a bike, take a bite of a veggie dog That’s just turning the heat up a little bit slower, instead of off Clean the skies of carbon dioxide That’s the needle-in-a-haystack that we need to find ‘Cause emissions are way too high to just mitigate It’s a race to eliminate pollution before it obliterates I try to be neutral, a non-partisan pupil of all The solutions across the whole field of carbon removal When lockin’ molecules in, it’s all about the minutia So put them all up on the same stage – Lalapalooza Get the natural carbon sinks in the jam Nature’s way, baby, CO2 goes into the land With reforestation, capturing it in the plants Photosynthetic oxygenation and biomass Raise a higher bar, measuring every forest fire scar Remote sensing the carbon density with LIDAR Trackin’ nature-based solutions is a fine art From kelp and algae to coastal blue carbon to biochar To the farm with the cover crops, regenerative ag A bit less of a drag, got the decades in the bag Climate change is now, we don’t have centuries to act Buy time with the vertical stacks to roll it back With that… Targeted pressure Global warming is relentless Parts per million Have gotta be lesser Targeted pressure Carbon is hard to sequester Quality tested Gigatons are the measure Targeted pressure Buy from a market of sellers Offsets and credits Negative carbon emissions Targeted pressure Marshal the effort Marshall Plan All in together Targeted pressure – shout out the engineers The architecture for direct capture from air Not geo-engineering, just carbon engineering Local factories that clean up the air, them we’re cheering To bring the cost down per ton of carbon we can lock down We got it now, it’s impounded in solid rock, underground The transition to low carbon technology’s sound But that’s just the floor, the goal is unlimited drawdown Ssshh, the carbon is resting, it met with the targeted pressure It met with the force of a hydraulic garbage compressor It met with the force of global economic incentives The force of a thousand startups finding investors The market is dextrous, it doesn’t play favorites It just pushes the price down, incentivizing innovations I’m not talking about the greenwashing day-traders Upselling credits, I’m talkin’ cost of containment Direct capture to nature, replanting all the trees To carbon mineralization, sprinkle the olivine Economies of scale, and next-gen technologies Constantly increasing durability and quality Carbon removal, this is just the start of the movement The gold rush is coming, call the AirMiners to suit up In the time of CRISPR-Cas9 and quantum computing We can make a moonshot out of carbon pollution With the… Targeted pressure Global warming is relentless Parts per million Have gotta be lesser Targeted pressure Carbon is hard to sequester Quality tested Gigatons are the measure Targeted pressure Buy from a market of sellers Offsets and credits Negative carbon emissions Targeted pressure Marshal the effort Marshall Plan All in together
13.	Offsetters 03:56 video	lyrics	buy track
Offsetters If the idea that you can simply invest a little money and make your carbon footprint disappear, that’s because carbon offsets are bullsh… Bad credits. Bad credits Making-offsetters-look-bad credits Like we never had them vetted Scam credits No-standard-having credits Like we don’t know what a ‘carbon asset’ is So let me break it down, climate change is now Fossil fuel is what the planet is phasing out Slowly, transforming glacier-style Too slow to stop glacier melt This is just an introduction to emission reduction Supply chain, every link in production Get rid of your combustion addiction Give it up and mitigate the destruction While still evading bankruptcy Keeping your business open with emissions low Is critical, what’s left in the mix is ‘residual’ The most expensive and difficult emissions Offsets can help get rid of those A bridge from low emissions to no emissions has to be Based on the principle of ‘additionality’ Taking carbon from the atmosphere for a fee Makin’ happen what would never happen for free Offsetters Makin’ amends For carbon emissions Offsetters Takin’ pollution away And just makin’ it All better Offsetters Sale of indulgences Pay for the privilege Y’all sinners Offsetters Bad credits, bad credits Improperly-vetted scam credits Makin’ the cynical apathetic Makin’ offsets look like a theatrical premise At best, and at worst an actual menace Bad credits undermine the whole rationale Now they say “the checks simply don’t balance out” Not enough plantable ground to capture each ounce But the offsetters are not backin’ down “Sometimes it fails in practice, let it go!” It’s all fixable, check the principle A financial incentive to grow carbon sinks In the developing world, that is literal gold Protect a forest, from timber companies And poachers who would happily wreck it for us Build a clean energy source Transform an emitting industry into one that absorbs “How do we pay for it?” With a carbon market With enforceable standards so it’s not defrauded Only true removals getting bartered on it Now watch as total emissions start to plummet The idea is that an offset should provide an extra reduction of carbon that wouldn’t have happened any other way. ‘Cause stopping pollution Is harder than moving To offsetting You might wanna hide in A cave if you find it Too upsetting If we can cool off A planet that’s getting Too hot, let us Don’t try to dismiss it As greenwashing, nah ‘Cause it’s all vetted Offsetters Makin’ amends For carbon emissions Offsetters Takin’ pollution away And just makin’ it All better Offsetters Sale of indulgences Pay for the privilege Y’all sinners Offsetters
14.	Climate Hero 04:27 video	lyrics	buy track
Climate Hero Cheer on the climate hero Hey, we must be talkin’ ‘bout climate change I can see it your face, that writhing pain Strife and strain, sacrifice your gains For the planet and cast down your eyes in shame Shame! Let the penance begin The climate change flagellation of thin skin Sin! Sin! Mother Nature’s vengeance Never talk about mitigation as win-win “When we get dedicated, we can mitigate it By makin’ the expensive and difficult changes Climate change is regrettably necessitating So take your medicine and get educated!” That’s the narrative, it’s time to bury it Health benefits of mitigation so various So serious, survival of the cheeriest Live long and prosper, those are covariants And yes, I know emissions are tragic But co-emission factors are really killin’ us faster Sulfur dioxide, particulate matter Mercury, lead, cancer, heart conditions, asthma Every year millions succumb to these So fossil fuel companies are coming under siege When emissions go down, so does lung disease Some decisions aren’t as tough as they seem Cheers to the planet and to your health And to the glaciers, may they never melt You could be the hero to someone else But the one that you save might be yourself Be yourself, just be yourself The one that you save might be yourself Go be the hero to someone else And you might save yourself Climate hero Cheer on the climate hero You say “Biking is to my liking” My climate hero, sacrificing That longer-life thing? That’s just icing Fit like a Skarsgard Northern Viking Walking not driving, cars go faster Cars blow massive carbon smoke backwards Walking is better for cardiovascular Co-factors, hearts, strokes, and cancers Especially if the physically activity Is integrated with a nutritional scheme Extra beans and greens and less red meat Ancillary effect of living emission free Is we never settle for less And see fewer premature preventable deaths Climate change is anthropogenic, and yes Tackling it is bringin’ the health co-benefits Cheers to the planet and to your health And to the glaciers, may they never melt You could be the hero to someone else But the one that you save might be yourself Be yourself, just be yourself The one that you save might be yourself Go be the hero to someone else And you might save yourself Climate hero Cheer on the climate hero Climate change, sacrifice and pain But mitigation brings surprising gains GAINS! Greenhouse Gas, Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies, room for improvement Build for humans, public transportation Bike lanes, fewer cars and less pavement Motivated by climate mitigation Now just watch the drop in hospitalizations Quantification of whatever destroys us All that coal, gas, and oil emits poisons Industrial sectors make electric choices Tens of millions of future deaths avoided Decades of better health, taken to account The cost of mitigation really pays for itself Before the effect on climate change is felt So all my heroes, better save yourselves Cheers to the planet and to your health And to the glaciers, may they never melt You could be the hero to someone else But the one that you save might be yourself Be yourself, just be yourself The one that you save might be yourself Go be the hero to someone else And you might save yourself Climate hero Cheer on the climate hero

about

About This Album

"Rhapsode" is an ancient profession, a lyrical entertainer who stitches rhymes and jokes and songs together to fit the needs of a present audience.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsode#Etymology_and_usage

Event-based, topic-specific rhyming is Baba Brinkman's signature style, and his custom hip-hop agency Event Rap Inc represents a dozen skilled artists who create original works on commission as modern 'rapsodes'.

eventrap.com

Baba Brinkman's latest science rap album explores major topics in technology, culture, and industry, from artificial intelligence to genetics to energy innovation, fourteen tracks of original hip-hop music that charts the impact of a changing world on our shared human experience.

This album (like several of Baba's previous projects) also represents a new business model for the music industry, where artists get paid to write about specific topics, producing original work on commission while retaining full ownership and freedom to distribute and sell the work after it's made.

That's the rapsode life.

credits

released May 15, 2023

Credits

Lyrics by Baba Brinkman

Tracks 1, 5 and 14 Produced and Mixed by Mr. Simmonds
Tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13 Produced and Mixed by Tom Caruana
Track 9 Produced by Tom Caruana and Mixed by Jake Palumbo
Track 10 Produced by Tom Caruana and Mixed by Serge Henderson

Live instruments on tracks 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 14 recorded at Funkadelic Studios, NYC

Additional Vocals on tracks 1, 3, 4, 6, 11, 12 and 13 by Isaiah Dunkley
Additional Vocals on tracks 5, 8, and 14 by Aaron Ross
Additional Vocals on tracks 9 and 10 by Adam Mererstein
Keys on tracks 3, 6, 11 and 12 by Sharla Funk
Keys on tracks 2, 8 and 13 by Simon Kendall
Horn on tracks 3, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 by Eli Asher
Guitar on tracks 3, 4, 6, 11 and 12 by Isaiah Dunkley
Guitar on tracks 9 and 10 by Adam Mererstein
Violin on track 7 by Todd Reynolds
Cuts on track 10 by Corey J

Mastered by Mr. Simmonds