Harvard student submits rap album as senior thesis

BOSTON: While other Harvard University students were writing papers for their senior theses, Obasi Shaw was busy rapping his.

Shaw is the first student in Harvard’s history to submit a rap album as a senior thesis in the English Department, the university said.

The album, called Liminal Minds, has earned the equivalent of an A-minus grade, good enough to guarantee that Shaw will graduate with honours next week.

Count Shaw among those most surprised by the success.

“I never thought it would be accepted by Harvard,” said Shaw, a 20-year-old from Stone Mountain, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

He describes the 10-track album as a dark, moody take on what it means to be black in the United States. Each song is told from a different character’s perspective, an idea inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century classic The Canterbury Tales.

Shaw, who is black, also draws on the works of writer James Baldwin while tackling topics ranging from police violence to slavery.

Shaw’s thesis adviser, Harvard lecturer Josh Bell, said Shaw is a “serious artist and an amazing guy”.

“He was able to turn around an album that not only people in the English Department would like very much, but that people who enjoy rap music might also like,” Bell said.

Harvard undergraduates are not obligated to submit senior theses, but most departments require it to graduate with honours. Often it takes the form of a research paper, but students can apply to turn in an artistic work as a creative thesis. Some submit screenplays, novels or poetry collections.

It took Shaw more than a year to write the songs and record them at a studio on Harvard’s campus. His friends supplied many of the beats, while he taught himself how to mix the tracks into a polished product.

Rap and hip-hop have drawn growing interest from academia in recent years. Harvard established a fellowship for scholars of hip-hop in 2013, and other schools such as the University of Arizona have started to offer minors in hip-hop studies.

Shaw plans to circulate the album online for free and hopes it will open doors to the music industry. In the meantime, he is headed to Seattle to work as a software engineer at Google.