Background
Baba Brinkman was born in B.C.’s West Kootenays, and grew up mostly in Vancouver. He was raised in the midst of the province’s tree-planting sub-culture, which was founded in the 1970s by his parents and their friends, and Baba himself planted trees for ten years, from the age of 15-24, personally sowing over one million seedlings. The views and values of this culture: communal, environmentally conscious, self-reliant, and pro-active, all continue to inform his life and art.
Education
In his youth Baba Brinkman was an avid writer and poet, and a fan of hip-hop music since eleven years old. At the age of 19 he began writing and performing his own original hip-hop lyrics and practicing freestyle rap, intent on mastering the craft of the MC. Since he was midway through a B.A. in English at SFU, Baba found ways of merging his dedication to hip-hop with his studies, and in the spring of 2000 he wrote his undergraduate thesis comparing freestyle battles to Chaucer’s storytelling competition in The Canterbury Tales. After graduating with an honours degree at the age of 21, Baba traveled at his own expense to England to perform his first hip-hop adaptation of Chaucer at the Canterbury Festival 2000, and returned the following fall to begin a Master’s in English at the University of Victoria. For his M.A. thesis, Baba further researched connections between hip-hop culture and English literature, and continued to adapt more of The Canterbury Tales into his own rap storytelling style.
The Rap Canterbury Tales
With a Master’s in Medieval Literature and extensive battling and performing experience as a rap artist, Baba Brinkman launched his professional entertainment career at the age of 24, performing his one-man hip-hop theatre show “The Rap Canterbury Tales” at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in the fall of 2003. "The Rap Canterbury Tales" tells the stories of the Pardoner, the Miller, and the Wife of Bath through the medium of rap and physical theatre. Since 2003 Baba has been making his living independently from performances and record sales.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
In the spring of 2004 Baba founded his production company, Babasword Productions, and self-financed his debut full-length hip-hop album “Swordplay” before embarking on a self-produced world Fringe Festival tour with “The Rap Canterbury Tales.” Between May and September 2004 he performed his one-man show at festivals in Brighton, Prague, Montreal, Toronto, Edinburgh, Victoria, and San Francisco. The pinnacle of this tour was the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, the largest arts festival in the world, where “The Rap Canterbury Tales” sold out the majority of its 33 performances over a three week run. The show was nominated for a Tap Water Award for Theatrical Excellence and also received a coveted five-star review from The Scotsman, one of only nine theatre shows to be awarded this honour out of hundreds competing. Baba has since returned to the Edinburgh Fringe for four more successful runs.
School Touring
Following his success in Edinburgh, Baba Brinkman returned to Vancouver to record and independently release his second full-length LP in one year: “The Rap Canterbury Tales”, produced by Lin Gardiner. The album’s release attracted national media attention in Canada, and Baba’s success in Edinburgh prompted the UK’s prestigious Cambridge University English Department to sponsor him on a tour of secondary schools. In the Spring and Summer of 2005, this sponsorship allowed Baba to perform his show and teach creative writing workshops on rap storytelling in over 30 high schools around the UK, introducing students to Chaucer through the medium of hip-hop culture. Baba has since toured the show to literally hundreds of educational venues, including high schools, colleges, and university campuses such as Harvard, Cambridge, and Wellesley.
Publishing and Writers Festivals
In the fall of 2005 Baba Brinkman was a featured performance poet at the Vancouver, Calgary, Banff, and Edmonton Writer’s Festivals, where he shared the stage with the likes of bill bissett, Shane Koyczan, Ivan E. Coyote, and Sherri D. Wilson. Baba was also offered a publishing contract from Vancouver’s Talon Books in July of 2005, and through the Fall and Winter of 2005/2006 he compiled and edited his “Rap Canterbury Tales” into a full-length manuscript, illustrated by his brother, Erik, a former graffiti artist. The book's prologue is a synthesis of his thesis research and his first-hand experience as an aspiring rap artist, further exploring the parallels between hip-hop and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. Baba has so far been featured at over a dozen literature festivals in Australia, the UK, and Canada.
Lit-Hop
In 2006, Baba Brinkman completed his third full-length LP, “Lit-Hop”, describing the sub-genre of hip-hop that he helped to found and pioneer. "Lit-Hop" makes explicit the parallels between rap and the history of literature, and the awareness that rap is the newest branch in the evolution of literary history. The album features songs produced and recorded while on tour in the UK, as well as collaborations with Canadian artists, such as underground hip-hop stars Josh Martinez and Moka Only. “Lit-Hop” was released to coincide with the publication of “The Rap Canterbury Tales” by Talon Books, which was also launched in September of 2006.
Lit Fuse Records
In 2007, Baba founded the indie record label Lit Fuse Records, and recorded and released the debut album "Butterfly Man" from Aaron Nazrul, produced by Lin Gardiner and Simon Kendall. Songs from "Butterfly Man" have been featured in the CBC TV show "Heartland" and the hit CBS network TV show "90210". Aaron's video for his lead single "When the Night" was in the Top 10 viewer-requested rotation on Much Music.
Mud Sun
In 2008, Baba Brinkman and UK Slam Champion MC Dizraeli combined forces as the rap duo Mud Sun and recorded and released their debut EP "Mine the Gap", a humourous and upbeat collection of original rap songs. On the strength of their debut release, Mud Sun was invited to play at the Glastonbury Festival and the Electric Picnic Festival, the largest music festivals in England and Ireland respectively.
The Rebel Cell
Baba and Dizraeli also collaborated in 2008 to co-write the hip-hop play "The Rebel Cell", loosly inspired by a book of cultural criticism "The Rebel Sell" by Canadian scholars Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. "The Rebel Cell" was recorded and released as a full-length LP in July of 2008, with production by Tom Caruana, Infinite Potential, and Mr. Simmonds. The hip-hop theatre show was also a major hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning the "Spirit of the Fringe" Award and receiving eight separate four and five star reviews, one of the biggest critical successes of the Fringe. After an extended run in London in October 2008, "The Rebel Cell" was optioned by London's SPL Productions for a second UK tour in 2009, including a return to the Edinburgh Fringe.
The Rap Guide to Evolution
Also in the Fall of 2008, Baba was approached by Dr. Mark Pallen, microbiologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK, and asked if he would be willing to "do for Darwin what he did for Chaucer". Accepting the challenge, Baba undertook extensive research into evolutionary theory and over the winter wrote "The Rap Guide to Evolution", a humourous and hard-hitting exploration of the intersections between Darwin's theories of natural and sexual selection and hip-hop culture. Baba performed "The Rap Guide to Evolution" at venues around the UK for the week of Darwin Day in February 2009, and recorded an album version of the show in June and July, produced by London's Infinite Potential. Baba's award-winning run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August was a critical smash, and show is continuing to tour extensively.
Recent Releases
Baba Brinkman also recently released his fourth solo hip-hop record, entitled "Apocalyptic Utopian Dreams in the Western Wilderness", a musical meditation on the bizarre end-of-the-world fervor endemic to the Pacific Northwest. Lit Fuse Records' newest member is Winnipeg's Smoky Tiger, whose debut album "Smoky Tiger and the Seven Doors" featuring the woodland anthem "The Tree Planter's Waltz" was released in September.
When he is not on tour, Baba resides in Vancouver, Canada, with his brother.