Image credit: Obasi Shaw/Soundcloud
Harvard student Obasi Shaw has perhaps the most interesting thesis we have heard of—he created a rap album for his thesis project and will be graduating with honors in part because of it.
The first ever student in Harvard’s history to do so, according to HNHH, Shaw created the 10-track album titled Liminal Minds after working on it for a year. The album is told from the points of view of different characters, and draws heavily on Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales. The Instagram for the school made the following comment on his project, some of his reasoning included:
Obasi Shaw ’17 submitted Harvard’s first rap thesis, “Liminal Minds,” which combines elements of Middle English poetry with issues of racial identity in America. “[African-Americans are] free, but the effects of slavery still exist,” says Shaw. “Each song is an exploration of that state between slavery and freedom.”After graduation, Shaw will move to Seattle for a one-year internship in software engineering. As for rap, he’ll keep it as a treasured hobby. “Rap is a genre in which I can say everything I want to say,” Shaw said. “I’ve been writing in different capacities, but I never felt that I found my art form until I started rapping.”
In this vein, the album focuses on Black identity in America and has since been awarded summa cum laude minus as the second highest grade in the department Shaw belonged to. The album can be listened to below if you want to hear the music that has even Harvard raving.
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