Home > News >
Hip Hop Meets Math
Hip Hop Meets Math
by J-23 | 09.24.04

Hip Hop Meets Math

Say what you will about him, his voice is irritating, he is probably the nerdiest guy to ever step on the hip-hop scene (he’ll be the first to admit that), but don’t say the man doesn’t have crazy skills. Anyone who has heard the Jewish kid from Jersey knows he has a penchant for layers and layers of embedded rhymes, but who knew it was all mathematical.

In a recent interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Barman revealed that he likes to structure his rhymes according to math’s most famed sequence; the Fibonacci Sequence. "The mathematics of rhyming are there just by rhyming," Barman told the paper. "So why not explore that? It's just really fun. My math teacher thought I was going to be a mathematician anyway."

For those that don’t know, the Fibonacci Sequence is 1,2,3,5,8,13 and on and on. Each number is the sum of the two previous digits. So just check a verse from “Enter Pan-Man,” the numbers have been added in to count the rhymes; "It was an action flick (1)/Pan-man kicked backwards (2) attackers (2)/Sent by the sexy matadors (3) from her Spanish fortress (3) of course the film was torturous (3)/Like Kaufman's masterpiece (5) achieving wide release (5) logos in the marquees (5) said 'Pac Man' with the 'Cs' (5) rotated 90-degrees (5)." The next line has 8 rhymes, but it stops there. "Once I got to 13 I noticed the entire song would become gobbledygook," he explains. "So I would just go from one to eight and then back to one again."

You can check out Paul’s “It’s Very Stimulating” EP or his full length “Paullelujah!”

Post your comments

Name (required)
Email Address (required but not displayed)
Rep yourself (optional link displayed)

be heard. register now!

check it: Protect your username, one time log-in. upload a unique avatar. no more verification code. rate comments with the karma system. messageboard access. weekly newsletter.

click here to register

your comment

Hottest news

most discussed news