LHC rap: a global phenomenon

Do you think the LHC is super duper fly? Does it make you want to compose some slick rhymes and bust out some killer beats? It did for one CERN rapper, and the results have become a YouTube smash hit!

Katie McAlpine will sing for the CMS party on 24 September, and for the ATLAS Fest on 4 October.

The Large Hadron Rap, to give it its full name, is the brainchild of AlpineKat, AKA Katie McAlpine, who is currently working for ATLAS e-News and outreach. To date, the YouTube video rap has been viewed more than 2.5 million times, to say nothing of the media coverage. Featured in newspapers around the world, including the New York Times in the US, The Telegraph in the UK and Geneva’s very own Matin Bleu, the rap is officially a sensation!

Katie wrote the inspired (and pretty accurate) physics lyrics during her commute on the number 56 bus between Geneva and CERN. After obtaining permission to film in the experiment caverns and tunnel, she enlisted the help of some anonymous backing dancers and cameramen in order to make her dream of a rap video a reality. The last step was to add the killer beats and mixing, which was done by Will Barras, a linguistics student at the University of Edinburgh.

"I made it because the LHC is so badass it ought to be rapped about. I’m shocked at its success. We thought it had finally lost steam, when YouTube put it on its front page and then CNN picked it up," says Katie.

Katie will be performing her rap at the ATLAS Fest on 4 October, with backing dancing from another CERN institution, Les Horribles Cernettes. Don’t miss this chance for a live performance from a global physics rap star.

If you haven’t already checked out the video, you can find it here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM