My name's MC Lars. Today I'm gonna talk about hip-hop as a sphere of influence and I know a lot of you are looking at me thinking "what can this nerdy white guy teach me about hip-hop" right? Let's admit it, that's what we're wondering. Let me give you a little bit of background.

I studied literature at Stanford and when I was -- I know we're at USC, but I went to Oxford to study Shakespeare and over there I started writing these silly rap songs where I took Shakespeare stories and I made beats on my laptop and I'd rap them and I convinced all these punk indie bands to let me open for them. And that somehow lead to a career where I've been making hip-hop professionally touring for the past 6 years. So when I told my parents I wanted to be a fulltime rapper, they were a little shocked and surprised. But, I've opened for Snoop Dogg, I've opened for Nas, I collaborated with KRS-One. When I wake up every day I have to pinch myself cause it's so weird that I get to rap for a living.

We're gonna talk a little bit about how hip-hop and Shakespeare are related. Now, a few weeks ago at Coachella, 2Pac was brought back as a hologram. Give it up for hologram 2Pac!

This was a really exciting moment because hip-hop is a culture based on remixing the past. Another person who was famous for remixing the past is this guy -- William Shakespeare. He would take old stories and recreate them for the popular culture of Elizabethan England. One of his most famous plays, Hamlet, written in 1600, was actually based on an old Danish play called Amleth from 1185.

When we look at Hamlet we can see three elements of Shakespearean tragedy that apply to other cultures outside of hip-hop. Such as in the feud between Biggie and 2Pac. We have three elements of what makes a Shakespearean tragedy. We have a hero of high standing, a tragic flaw, and a series of unfortunate events.

In the case of 2Pac and Biggie, 2Pac had sold millions of records, he was holding it down for the west coast in the 90's. He got a lot of love and he was really, really popular. His tragic flaw was his anger. His song "Hit Em Up" is just this vitriolic rant against Biggie and his whole crew that kind of led to a bad animosity. The third thing, the third element in a Shakespearean tragedy is a series of unfortunate events. In the story of Biggie and 2Pac, the media and the record labels really helped fuel the east coast west coast feud and it ended in the tragic death of these two talented musicians in their twenties. So, it's really lame. To put it lightly, very lame.

Another Shakespearean tragedy: Macbeth. So we take the archetype of the three elements of Shakespearean tragedy. We have a hero of high standing: Macbeth, who was a general in the army. A tragic flaw: Macbeth's tragic flaw was ambition. He was never satisfied, he always wanted to have more. It wasn't enough that he became the thane of Glamis or whatever, he kept wanting to get more and more recognition. The unfortunate event in Macbeth is the interference of the supernatural. He's coming home from battle, he runs into these three witches who give him this twisted prophecy that ends in him ruining his whole life.

When we look at the meter of Macbeth, something really struck me as a kid. When I was sixteen in high school, I never really fit in. I kinda couldn't relate to people, I couldn't relate to girls, I couldn't play sports, I wasn't up on popular culture. So I spent a lot of time on the weekends making music, making beats by myself.

When I was reading Macbeth I noticed the chant of the witches kinda fit a drum pattern that I'd built on Reason. So if we look at the chant of the witches:

Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble

The cadence of that fits the typical rhythm of a house beat and I wanna demonstrate that for you guys.

This is a form called trochaic tetrameter and we're gonna see how it fits over the beat. So check it out. Imagine Macbeth is coming home and he sees these witches around a cauldron. And they have something dark to tell him. That's the context for this rap, here we go.

Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Fair is foul, foul is fair
Must warn you Macbeth beware
Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Fair is foul, foul is fair
Must warn you Macbeth beware

Hip-hop and Shakespeare, best friends.

So it fits and if we wanna understand hip-hop as a cultural form, we need to take it back to the 70's. This man is Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc, the godfather of hip-hop. He grew up in Jamaica. He came to the Bronx in November of 1967 and he'd heard a lot of loud sound systems in Jamaica at dancehall parties. So his idea was, "Okay, if I come to the Bronx and setup these sound systems, we can bring people together and have these really awesome parties."

So the first ever hip-hop show -- this is some trivia, you guys should write this date down. August 11th 1973, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, Kool Herc threw this really cool back-to-school party.

What Kool Herc is credited for is inventing the breakbeat. The breakbeat is the part in the song where all the band cuts out and it's just the drum part. It's really the rhythmic backbone of the song, kinda like the rhythmic core of the song. A famous track that was used a lot in hip-hop was James Brown's funky drummer beat. And you can hear that right now, I'm gonna play it for you. This is the backbeat of hip-hop, it's been sampled by every rap group ever.

So what's important to note is that when we sample James Brown, that's music in the 4:4 time signature. And so when we look at poetry, in music we have the beat, in poetry we analyze rhythm with the feet. So anything that uses dimeter, two feet, tetrameter, four feet, or octameter, eight feet, fits perfectly over the break beats. It's pretty cool.

Another emcee I want to introduce you guys to actually lived in the Bronx, but 125 years before Kool Herc, is our man Edgar Allen Poe. I wanna show you guys something really cool. If we take the first line of his famous poem "The Raven":

Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary

If we line it up with the James Brown breakbeat, we'll find a natural rhythm. But before we do, I wanna practice with you guys. So rap with me, I'm gonna count you off, we're gonna come in on four, we're all gonna rap all three levels Edgar Allen Poe. One, two, three, four.

Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary

TEDx is poppin', that's awesome. Alright so what we're gonna do, we're gonna take James Brown, as sampled by Public Enemy in "Fight the Power", I'm gonna count you in and we're gonna rap the first line of "The Raven" over Public Enemy. This is gonna be sick, check it out. The lyrics are there to help you out if you forgot 'em. K you guys ready? Here we go, one, two, three, four.

Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary
Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary

Give yourselves a round of applause, that was awesome.

When we want to understand the cultural history of hip-hop, we have to look at a very important archetype that plays into the whole history. This is the archetype of the griot. A West African tradition of the wandering story teller who would go from village to village telling the stories of each culture using rhyme and music. When we look at the griot, we can see how this influenced a lot of music with the work songs with the slave trade, with gospel music blues, and eventually rap and it all goes back to the oral tradition of the griot.

When we want to analyze how oral culture is preserved, we need to analyze something called rhyme with helps with the stickiness of it as a culture. So, here's some neurobiology.

Check it out. When we look at the brain we can see how we use many different parts of our brain when constructing rhymes. When we recite a rhyme we use the frontal lobe for organization and patterns, the temporal lobe for language decoding, and the cerebellum for fluidity and rhythm. When we're writing a rhyme we use all three of these, but also the parietal lobe for writing and reading.

That's why hip-hop is a really good teaching tool because it engages the entire brain, helps with memory, and when we mix it with the magic of music, which gives us emotion and passion, it's awesome. We have the amygdala and the hippocampus, the hippocampus helps with our memory and the amygdala is associated with emotion. So that's some neurobiology in hip-hop right there for you.

This semester I teamed up with the Annenberg crew and Henry Jenkins, who's a friend of mine, he brought me on to work with the PLAY group which is the Participatory Learning And You group. There's a lab at the RFK School in Korea Town which uses new media, transmedia education, to help students learn and process information in new ways.

Henry Jenkins, in his new research, he talks about how in a hunter-gatherer society students are encouraged to play with spears and bows and arrows as kids. That means, in an information society we should be encouraging kids to use ideas and be free and play that way. So that's the point of the PLAY group.

Another mentor of mine, Lynne Goldfarb at the Rossier School of Education, in her theories of democratic -- give it up for Rossier School of Education. She talks about subject relevancy and the importance of giving students a voice and the importance of making education democratic so that they can relate to the music and the information that they are processing and spit it back themselves.

We set out on this really exciting mission to take an Edgar Allen Poe poem or story turned into a rap song and make a music video for it. In doing this I wanted to relate to the students with artists they understand. That's [?] in the studio rockin' the mic.

One of the groups that a lot of the students listened to was Odd Future, a popular LA hip-hop group that's blown up in the last few years. This is Tyler the Creator. Odd Future don't self-identify as horrorcore, but they kind of exist within the subgenre of hip-hop that focuses on dark subject matter, gothic themes. And there are a lot of similarities when we look at Edgar Allen Poe and anti transcendentalism. There are a lot of similarities between Tyler the Creator and Edgar Allen Poe.

In analyzing this work we can kind of see the beauty in the darkness that connects the two. So we studied Edgar Allen Poe's stories and found similarities. We read his story "The Mask of the Red Death", which is the story of a man living in Europe who's trying to keep the plague out of his house. So he invites all his rich friends over, they have this crazy incredible party, they wall off all the doors, but the plague shows up in the form of a skeleton grim reaper.

We took this story and juxtaposed it to the Hollywood Hills, so an emcee, a rapper is having a huge awesome party. He invites all his friends, but a rival shows up and crashes the party.

So, TEDx USC, please give it up for the RFKLA hip-hop collective. This is "The Mask of the Red Death". They produced this song and made the video and it's awesome. You guys can come out.

The Red Death will crash your party
End it all for good, bring death to everybody
The Red Death will crash your party
End it all for good, bring death to everybody

Damn, there be chicks everywhere
Drinks in the air, stuff in their hair
Run from the sin, what does he wear?
Where does he go? Is he really there?
So let me just run away,
Telling me I’ve got nine lives in my state?
Second hand got me elevated
Out of my place, death be waitin’
For me, when I touch down
Destiny, comin’ from the corner around
Decided whether I should or not bounce
And when I do he’s shadowing the ground
Damn, he’s here should I resume to
Running away from the voodoo
Caught me up, no shoo shoo
What happens next? To be continued

Money power and the liquor, got me feeling kinda sicker
I made my way to the richest, so I turn my life in switches
I live with no regrets, ‘cause a dollar’s meaningless
So nevermind the less, reveal my stress,
Liquor spilled on you tonight
‘Cause everything has started off right
Feel the rath in my head but it’s nothing they said
So I keep to a party with a shawty
Got a couple of girls that will sleep for some money
Now depending how it goes from my life shell be running
Money can’t be a savior, life with too much paper
I see a killa in my eyes, so I’m willin’ when I die
I feel it kreep and crawl when it reaches break of dawn
The liquor got the best of me wasted heart beat
Cause my life’s a mess, just try to test
Then again I’m a boss busting like Rick Ross
Ain’t no matter the cost, so I pop another bottle
Next to a millionaire model

The Red Death will kill any human of interest
Like an abortionist taking the souls of unborn infants
I’m seeing dead people dancing, right before my eyes
Celebrating, once when they were alive
There was a house party and Death had arrived
No hoodie or a scythe, just don’t cross my path
feel my wrath, don’t underestimate me ‘cause I’m grim
Kick me out and I’ll just find another body to get back in
Now is a good time to confess God to all your sins
I’m rolling with the top legends – sippin’ juice and gin
Nah, you can’t cheat me out of this game
‘cause I’m feeling insane in my brain
poppin’ blood out of your veins, make it fall like rain
chumps take Novocain just to ease the pain
I hear a girl crying – she’s probably hiding
That’s enough time to get blood and guts flyin’!

The Red Death will crash your party
End it all for good, bring death to everybody
The Red Death will crash your party
End it all for good, bring death to everybody

Give it up for the RFKLA hip-hop collective. You guys are so awesome, you made me so proud. Nice work, you killed it, that was sick. Edgar Allen Poe and hip-hop right there ladies and gentlemen.