{"id":1100,"date":"2005-02-22T14:40:21","date_gmt":"2005-02-22T19:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=1100"},"modified":"2005-04-13T13:23:25","modified_gmt":"2005-04-13T18:23:25","slug":"geeksta_rap_tak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/22\/geeksta_rap_tak\/","title":{"rendered":"Geeksta rap takes aim at technically averse"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Throughout\nthe years, there have been countless attempts by educators and parents to glamorize\nthe academic pursuits of science and technology. Whether it was financial incentives,\nor catchy tunes on PBS children’s programs, for many,\nthe battle usually ends in bitter defeat. What they should be doing is speaking\nto kids in a language that they understand — rap and hip-hop. <\/p>\n\n

At least that’s Rajeev Bajaj’s theory, and the 39-year-old engineer\nfrom Fremont, Calif. is putting his ideas into motion. From the San Jose\nMercury News<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n

\n

Bajaj recently spent $15,000 of his own money forming an independent\nrecord label<\/a> and hiring musicians to perform four rap and hip-hop songs he wrote in\npraise of the engineering profession. He hopes his debut album, “Geek Rhythms,” will\nconvince America that engineers indeed are cool.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sure, that sounds about right. A rap album entitled “Geek Rhythms” from\na chemical engineer in his late thirties can’t possibly fail to make that\npoint.<\/p>\n\n

Hopefully, a friend or family member will sit him down and introduce him to\nthe term “irony.” After all, his lyrics are brimming with it:<\/p>\n\n

I pack more heat in a computer chip than any man
\nthere is more than most can handle
\nthe trick is to protect the circuit and conduct the heat
\nwithout causing to short circuit<\/em><\/p>\n\n

You pack more heat in a computer chip than any man? That’s quite a claim,\nand will surely do nothing to end all the senseless gang violence erupting between\nIntel and AMD engineers on the tree-lined streets of Mountain View. Still, his\nunderlying motive is shared by others:<\/p>\n\n

\n

“Trying to put a different face on engineering is very important,” said\nLeann Yoder, executive director of the Junior Engineering Technical Society.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

“I just wish it wasn’t this face”<\/p>\n\n

Ultimately, Bajaj has plenty of personal incentive to see his delusion become\na reality:<\/p>\n\n

\n

Being brainy was nothing to be embarrassed about when Bajaj was growing up\nin India. He said it wasn’t until he immigrated to the United States in\nthe ’90s to earn his master’s and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering\nthat he “found out that engineers are geeks and social misfits.”<\/p>\n

He didn’t really care. His wife and two young daughters adored him.\nPriyanka, now age 7, drew him pictures of all the things she wanted to build:\nspace buses and shrink-ray guns like the one in the movie “Honey, I Shrunk\nthe Kids.” That’s when it hit him.<\/p>\n

“I started to deal with the fact that my kids were going to go to school\nhere,” said Bajaj, chief executive of SemiQuest, a Fremont start-up that’s\ndesigning a new way to polish silicon wafers.<\/p>\n

“I want their ambition or their desire to not get filtered by the high\nschool experience of what the biases are. I would like them to feel cool about\nwhatever they’re doing.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Little does he realize that when his daughters enter high school, they’ll\nfeel cool by telling their friends that rapping Bajaj is really just a crazy\nuncle from India. They can make father proud by saying that he suffers from mercury\npoisoning. How else will they be able to explain these lyrics:<\/p>\n\n

I am an Engineer
\nRespect my mind
\nI made D.C from A.C been trying since B.C<\/em><\/p>\n\n

I am an Engineer
\nRespect my mind
\nI made the refrigerator to make your ice freeze better<\/em><\/p>\n\n

I am an Engineer
\nRespect my mind
\nI made the airplane, car and motorcycle<\/em><\/p>\n\n

I am an Engineer
\nRespect my mind
\nSo bow down when u see me down town<\/em><\/p>\n\n

I’ll defintely bow down, but only to avoid eye contact. It’s just\nthat, see, it would be awkward for us to run into each other downtown, and share\ninsincere pleasantries. Especially after I called you delusional. I’m sure\nyou understand. <\/p>\n\n

Following a spade of\nmainstream press reports, Bajaj’s album climbed from 231,392 to 5,716 on\nAmazon.com’s sales charts<\/a>. And all joking aside, it’s a noble effort,\nwith good intentions, and it would be great to see it succeed. In fact, I know\na few folks that I’m going to buy this for. It would be the most passive-aggresive\nway to get them to stop talking to me.<\/p>\n\n

San Jose Mercury News<\/em>: Geeksta\nrap<\/a> (free registration required)
\n\nDay to Day\/NPR: Geeksta rap brings education to music<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the years, there have been countless attempts by educators and parents to glamorize the academic pursuits of science and technology. Whether it was financial incentives, or catchy tunes on PBS children’s programs, for many, the battle usually ends in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}