20-year-old Obasi Shaw has made history.
The Harvard student is heading to Seattle to be a software engineer, but he is also a rapper who submitted the school's first ever rap recording thesis, which earned one of the department's highest distinctions, summa cum laude minus.
Liminal Minds is a 10-track album that explores the lasting effects of slavery in a manner that was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th Century classic, The Canterbury Tales.
The project is noted for blending Middle English poetry with Shaw's style of rap lyricism, as he transitions from song to song narrating from the perspective of a different character.
Harvard has gone lengths to recognize the artistic, academic, and social significance of hip hop music and culture in recent times. Earlier this year the university entered Nas' Illmatic, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly into its prestigious Harvard Library.
You can listen to the album HERE