Harvard Student Makes History With A Rap Album For Senior Thesis


(via Soundcloud)

Obasi Shaw, an English major at Harvard University and Georgia native, has made headlines after presenting a rap album for his thesis.

He presented a 10-track album titled Liminal Minds. He addressed  oppression, the Black Lives Matter Movement, mass incarceration, and Obama in his thesis. Shaw didn’t even think the rap album thesis would be accepted but it was more than accepted, he received the second highest grade he could have received, the summa cum laude minus.

He even made history as being the first student to produce a senior thesis in the form of a rap album. Using the art of rap to express his thoughts on the black experience was brilliant. So often, rap is overlooked within the world of academia but it is truly an evolved form of poetry. Rap is poetry in motion.

Shaw may have just opened the doors for others to find unorthodox ways to express themselves in school.

“Black people in America are kind of caught between freedom and freedom. They’re free, but the effects of slavery still exist in society and in people’s subconscious. Each song is an exploration of black liminality, that state between slavery and freedom”, Shaw told the Gazette.

You can hear Liminal Minds here.