Ken Lawrence is a nerdcore hip hop

Nerdcore hip hop

Nerdcore hip hop, is a sub-genre of hip hop music characterized by themes and subject matter considered to be of general interest to nerds, though it can appeal to others as well. Self-described nerdcore musician MC Frontalot has the earliest known recorded use of the term in the 2000 song...

 artist who purports to be theoretical physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...

 rapping under the name MC Hawking.

MC Hawking gained some popularity on the Internet in the early 2000s. The songs were originally released in MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 format, but due to the popularity of the website Lawrence was signed to a record deal with Brash Music to release a "greatest hits

Greatest hits

A greatest hits album is a music compilation album of successful, previously released songs by a particular artist or band...

" album in 2004.

Background

MC Hawking's entire body of work and his rapper persona were created by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 web developer

Web developer

A web developer is a software developer or software engineer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to a web browser....

 Ken Lawrence.http://mchawking.com/includes/press/latimes.html Lawrence earned a degree in music composition from Hampshire College

Hampshire College

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...

. His rap

Rapping

Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

s are synthesized

Speech synthesis

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...

 by the text-to-speech program WillowTalk. The beats for MC Hawking are provided by DJ Doomsday. Most of the beats are samples of classic hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 tracks, or taken from commercial royalty-free loop libraries.

Lyrical content

The lyrics are a mixture of gangsta rap topics, science topics and Stephen Hawking quotations (such as the famous "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that might be...

, I reach for my gun", which became "Every time I think of them my trigger finger itches", referring to creationists). Among subjects of MC Hawking songs are various scientific topics, Hawking's professional relationships with MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 rivals, as well as the standard fare of gangsta rap, including street violence

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

 and drug use

Drug

A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in drug control law, government regulations, medicine, and colloquial usage.In pharmacology, a...

.

The lyrics display insight into many aspects of current scientific thought, Newton's laws of motion

Newton's laws of motion

Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that form the basis for classical mechanics. They describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its motion due to those forces...

 ("All My Shootings Be Drivebys"), Einstein's theory of relativity

Theory of relativity

The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....

 ("E=MC Hawking"), the Big Bang

Big Bang

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...

 ("The Big Bizang"), Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...

 ("Entropy"), and quantum physics subjects such as Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that might be...

 and the wave function collapse ("Rock Out With Your Hawk Out").

The creation evolution controversy is also mentioned in "Fuck the Creationists

Creationism

Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

" and "Entropy".

Dark Matter & Greatest hits album

He is also involved with a heavy metal group called Dark Matter — a parody of Ice T

Ice T

Tracy Marrow , better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician and actor.He was born in Newark, New Jersey and moved to the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles when he was in the 7th grade. After graduating from high school he served in the United States Army for four years...

's "Body Count

Body Count

Body Count is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1990. The group is fronted by rapper and actor Ice-T, who founded the group out of his interest in heavy metal music, taking on the role of vocalist and writing the lyrics for most of the group's songs. Lead guitarist...

" — with whom he has performed such songs as "Why Won't Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...

 Just Hurry Up and Die", "UFT

Unified field theory

In physics, a unified field theory, occasionally referred to as a uniform field theory, is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field. There is no accepted unified field theory, and thus...

 for the MC" (a parody of the Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...

 song "Anarchy in the UK"), and "The Big Bizang". He is also an occasional Song Fight!

Song Fight!

Song Fight! is a weekly online songwriting and recording competition in which amateur artists are openly invited to participate. Traditionally, a title and deadline are posted each week for which participants write, record, and submit a song in MP3 format...

 participant.

His "greatest hits" album is called A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking's Greatest Hits, a parody of Hawking's book A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time is a popular science book written by renown physicist Stephen Hawking and first published by the Bantam Dell Publishing Group in 1988. It became a best-seller and has sold more than 10 million copies...

. It included many songs that were available on the official website, plus new material (four songs and three interludes from a fictional radio interview).

Reaction by Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has said that he is "flattered, as it's a modern-day equivalent to Spitting Image

Spitting Image

Spitting Image is a British satirical puppet show that aired on the ITV network from 1984 to 1996. It was produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central Television. The series was nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards, winning one for editing in 1989....

". http://articles.latimes.com/2000/nov/02/news/tt-45710 On the inside cover of A Brief History of Rhyme, Lawrence thanks Stephen Hawking "for taking this joke in the spirit that it was intended."

Discography

• A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking's Greatest Hits (2004)
  1. "The Hawkman Cometh"
  2. "The Dozens
     The dozens
     The Dozens is a game that has its origins in African American slavery. The game originates from the devaluing and bargaining off of deformed or defective slaves in auction houses. This element of the African American oral tradition in which two competitors, usually males, go head-to-head in a...
     
     "
  3. "Big Bizang"
  4. "Excerpt from a Radio Interview (Pt. 1)"
  5. "Entropy
     Entropy
     Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
     
     "
  6. "The Mighty Stephen Hawking"
  7. "Crazy as Fuck"
  8. "Bitchslap (With MC Frontalot
     MC Frontalot
     Damian Hess , better known by stage name MC Frontalot, is a Brooklyn-based hip hop musician and self-proclaimed "world's 579th greatest rapper". He is best known in nerdcore hip hop and video game culture, for naming the nerdcore subgenre, and performing at Penny Arcades annual Penny Arcade Expo...
     
     )"
  9. "Excerpt from a Radio Interview (Pt. 2)"
  10. "Fuck the Creationists"
  11. "E=MC Hawking"
  12. "All My Shootings Be Drivebys
      Drive-by shooting
      A drive-by shooting is a form of hit-and-run tactic, a personal attack carried out by an individual or individuals from a moving or momentarily stopped vehicle without use of headlights to avoid being noticed. It often results in bystanders being shot instead of, or as well as, the intended target...
      
      "
  13. "UFT
      Unified field theory
      In physics, a unified field theory, occasionally referred to as a uniform field theory, is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field. There is no accepted unified field theory, and thus...
      
       For The MC"
  14. "Excerpt from a Radio Interview (Pt. 3)"
  15. "What We Need More of is Science"
  16. "GTA3
      Grand Theft Auto III
      Grand Theft Auto III is a 2001 open world action computer and video game developed by DMA Design in the United Kingdom, and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first 3D title in the Grand Theft Auto series. It was released in October 2001 for the PlayStation 2, May 2002 for Microsoft Windows,...
      
      "

• Songs released in MP3 format only
  • "Led Zeppelin Medley" (no longer available)
  • "QuakeMaster"
  • "Why Won't Jesse Helms
    Jesse Helms
    Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
    
     Just Hurry Up and Die?" (Since the release of this track, he did.)
  • "Rock Out with Your Hawk Out" (appears on Rhyme Torrents Vol.1 )
  • "MC Hawking Holiday"

• Appearances
• "Nerdcore Rising" - MC Frontalot
  MC Frontalot
  Damian Hess , better known by stage name MC Frontalot, is a Brooklyn-based hip hop musician and self-proclaimed "world's 579th greatest rapper". He is best known in nerdcore hip hop and video game culture, for naming the nerdcore subgenre, and performing at Penny Arcades annual Penny Arcade Expo...
  
   - Nerdcore Rising
  Nerdcore Rising
  Nerdcore Rising is the official debut album by nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot. The album was first released on August 27, 2005 at the Penny Arcade Expo....
  
  

Fictional discography

As part of the parody, a fictional discography was created on the MC Hawking's Crib website. None of these albums were actually created, and any songs not listed in the above discography

Discography

Discography is the study and listing of the details concerning sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified musical genres...

were never actually recorded.

• The Hawkman Cometh EP (1992)
  1. "The Hawkman Cometh"
  2. "Big Biz-ang"
  3. "The Dozens"
• Fear of a Black Hole (1994) (originally called A Brief History of Rhyme until Hawking's real album was given that title)
  1. "Crazy as Fuck"
  2. "The Mighty Stephen Hawking"
  3. "Nanomachine"
  4. "Black Holes"
  5. "Faster Than Light"
  6. "Why Won't Jesse Helms Just Hurry Up and Die?"
  7. "Big Biz-ang (Remix)"
  8. "Doomsday Device"
  9. "Cut It Up"
  10. "Bitch Slap"
  11. "Entropy"
  12. "Fucking Shit Up Old-school"
  13. "F.Y.M."
  14. "Bring the Noize"
• E = MC Hawking (1997)
  1. "A Brief Dissertation on Gravitational Entropy, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle."
  2. "Fuck the Creationists"
  3. "Event Horizon"
  4. "All My Shootin's Be Drive-bys"
  5. "Space Time"
  6. "Wrong Again Albert"
  7. "What We Need More of Is Science"
  8. "Bitch Slap"
  9. "F.Y.M.A.S.M.D."
  10. "Dark Matter"
  11. "TKO"
  12. "Paradox"
  13. "E=MC Hawking"
  14. "Kick That Shit!"

External links

MCHawking.com was created by Lawrence to look like a personal fan site for the MC. From the former home page: "While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist." The site is no longer active.