Baba Brinkman on The Rap Guide to Wilderness
'I just see rap as an extremely versatile art form that can contain any message'
A hip hop artist who made a name for himself by rapping The Canterbury Tales has just released a new album, this time celebrating the great outdoors.
Baba Brinkman grew up partly in the tree planting camps run by his parents in B.C. Now age 36, and living in New York, he says that early experience with the outdoors has stayed with him.
“I can reflect on my experiences in the wild wherever I am,” he says, by way of introducing a song called Tranquility Bank that he wrote to capture that feeling.
Brinkman first drew attention for his one-man show The Rap Canterbury Tales, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004. Brinkman, who as an undergrad, studied evolutionary biology alongside comparative literature, has also written The Rap Guide to Evolution.
But there’s just something essential about wilderness, he says.
“The idea that we are connected to all living things, not in a hippie spiritual sense, though you could argue that may be the case as well, but we are scientifically connected to all living things and we’re related and distant cousins to all living things.”
Brinkman says he is first and foremost a hip hop artist. But he’s found a way to use the medium to communicate his own messages, like this segment from Walden Pond.
“I just feel like wilderness is dope/I'm trying to get a dose/I feel better minutes later when I get exposed/I be reading National Geographic for centrefolds.”
The Rap Guide to the Wilderness was first suggested to Brinkman by Vance Martin of The Wild Foundation. The conservation group created a crowdfunding campaign to get the project completed. Half the net profits from album sales will go to Wild conservation programs.
“The message has changed a lot,” Brinkman says of his work. “Let’s all just have a party and go crazy, or this is the history of evolution on the planet or I’ll do a rap song about connecting with the wilderness or retelling The Canterbury Tales of the Middle Ages.
"I just see rap as an extremely versatile art form that can contain any message.”