Wu-Tang's GZA and Neil DeGrasse Tyson Collaborating on Rap Album About the Cosmos. No, Really.

Edit: As many have pointed out, "collaborating" might be too strong a word. GZA mentioned it to NDT on his radio show, and the articles I read to compile this article transformed it into a collaboration. Let's call it "inspiration" instead. NDT cleared this up on his Facebook page earlier this week.

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We always love it when bands re-invent themselves by turning to educational music. You can't tell me that you don't sing along when any song from They Might Be Giants' "Here Come Science" (particularly "Meet the Elements") pops up on shuffle on your iPod (and it was sorta cute when the Barenaked Ladies did it, despite the fact that one of them's a coke fiend).

But this is just ridiculous.

According to The Wall Street Journal, GZA, a member of the iconic rap group Wu-Tang Clan, will be teaming up with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, as well as other noted physicists and cosmologists from Cornell and MIT, to record an album called "Dark Matter" about the cosmos. It will be the first in a series of albums from the rapper, with another reportedly focusing on water and the sea with Philippe Cousteau.

Let me reiterate that. GZA from Wu-Tang Clan is teaming up with nerd-hero and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson to make an educational rap album about space and the cosmos called Dark Matter, after he was inspired by a model of Saturn's spinning rings, which he equated to the universe's longest-spinning record.

This is going to be amazing.

The article goes on to say that GZA will use a full away of orchestra instruments, and that "There's no parental advisory, no profanity, no nudity. The only thing that's going to be stripped bare is the planets."

GZA is an artist and a poet on top of being a rapper, so this isn't so hard to believe, even if he's a high-school dropout and even if he made a career shocking people. I'm actually looking forward to this. And it'll probably be the greatest rap-science collaboration since the Insane Clown Posse pondered the inner workings of magnets: