The Canadian's hip-hop show was the opening act of the University of Otago's Science Teller Festival.
The Rap Guide to Evolution is touted as the first peer-reviewed, or fact-checked, hip-hop show on evolution. It combined scientific knowledge, including Charles Darwin's theories, with music, using re-workings of popular rap songs and storylines based on natural selection and the evolutionary roots of human behaviour.
The festival was opened by Science Communication Centre acting director Phil Bishop, who credited the rap guide as epitomising the novel ways science could be communicated.
Science Teller was a celebration of storytelling and science around documentary film-making, writing and other creative media, he said.
About 120 people had registered and international guests had come from as far away as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and from across the Tasman. The three-day festival programme combines public screenings, events and workshops with guest speakers, including one of the world's top amphibian specialists, Robin Moore, and the world premiere of films produced by the 2013 graduating class from the University of Otago's Centre for Science Communication.
