GZA, 46, who was born Gary Grice, had just finished an extraordinary round of meetings with physicists at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, culling ideas for a coming solo album about the cosmos. Dr. Emdin, 34, an assistant professor of science education at Teachers College, was a lifelong hip-hop fan. They discovered a shared interest in merging their two worlds: GZA by bringing science into hip-hop; Dr. Emdin by bringing hip-hop into the science classroom.
¶ Next month, the two men, along with the popular hip-hop lyrics Web site Rap Genius, will announce a pilot project to use hip-hop to teach science in 10 New York City public schools.
David Kaiser, a physicist at M.I.T. who met with GZA in December and again this spring, said he was impressed. “He’s read a lot of books and asked really well-informed questions,” said Dr. Kaiser, 41, who is not a fan of rap. “It was fun to see how excited he was about science.”
e need you to complete at least ONE of the broken promises you keep giving hip hop