EDINBURGH 2010: Baba Brinkman's RAP GUIDE TO HUMAN NATURE

How can you use a woman’s cell phone bill to predict where she is in her reproductive cycle? Why are men (but not women) far more likely to risk their lives in public than in private? How does political conservatism help fight infection from parasites? And can evolutionary psychology help us understand the gangsters and gold-diggers who symbolise rap music in the popular imagination?

Following the Fringe First winning success that was The Rap Guide to Evolution, Baba Brinkman returns to the Fringe with The Rap Guide to Human Nature, a show that goes beyond Darwin to mine the deeper seam of contemporary evolutionary psychology, using his finely wrought rhymes to consider not just who we are, but why we behave the way we do.

Darker and more contentious than ever, in The Rap Guide to Human Nature Baba Brinkman brings his inimitable style to illuminate a new topic in the tradition he has created with his previous Edinburgh Fringe shows The Rap Guide to Evolution and The Rap Canterbury Tales. Drawing inspiration from evolutionary psychologist David Buss, who contacted Baba after The Rap Guide to Evolution, The Rap Guide to Human Nature finds fascinating insights and plenty of laughs in this comedy rap study of the science of human behaviour.

Since its award-winning run at last year’s Fringe, The Rap Guide to Evolution has toured Australia and the US, culminating in a sold out Off Broadway run that drew praise from the New York Times.

Baba will be performing a short run of The Rap Guide to Evolution, a hybrid of hip hop music, storytelling and peer-reviewed evolutionary science, alongside his new show. Ever prolific, Baba will also be performing Rapconteur, a new storytelling show featuring rap adaptations of Beowulf, Gilamesh, and Kalevala, on the Free Fringe. Both shows will be presented in association with SPL, the original producers behind hip-hop show Into The Hoods and last Edinburgh's award-winning rap-theatre show The Rebel Cell.