Stephen Hawking: "Call Me Rap Master Steve-E-STEVE."

(Cambridge-England) It was to be another lecture by noted theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. But the familiar synthesized voice uttered an unanticipated phrase. "You can't touch this." After which, MC Hammer's 1980's rap classic blasted out of a stack of amplifiers and Stephen Hawking began to rap.

Stunned academics that were present later recalled the incident. "It started with "You Can't Touch This", went on to "I Like Big Butts" and ended with "Gin N' Juice," said Dr. Niels Olaaf of Stockholm's String Theory Think Tank. "At one point," said John C. Stevens of Lockheed-Martin's Mars Project, "a hidden wire pulled off what appeared to be a tear away suit to reveal a vintage MC Hammer outfit. I have to admit he didn't suck." Hawking later revealed that the costume was worn by MC Hammer in a 1988 Pepsi commercial. "I plucked it on eBay," said the physicist/rapper, whose familiar voice synthesizer now sounds like Sug Knight.

As the world of academia and entertainment are collectively asking: "What's with the rapping," Hawking, now calling himself Steve-E-STEVE, admitted at a press conference Wednesday that he had "been wanting to lay down some phat rhymes since Eminem." According to Hawking, "ponderin' on the Universe an' such is only fulfilling for a blimpzit, and it doesn't pay that much; and tenure, word, is a base-pipe dream." When asked by a reporter what about his new voice synthesizer, Hawking was quick to type in: "I ain't going to play you. It's my gimmick. I'm not as phat as these young bloods. My rhymes need slice." And will there be a feud between him and Eminem? "Ain't no thing but a chicken wing. Eminem and me is cool, but I could only listen to M so many times before I said to myself: 'Homes, you know that you can bust a cap in that white boy's butt with your lines.' But, ya know, it's all good."

But both academics and entertainment critics remain unconvinced. John C. Stevens summed it up for both groups. "As a physicist, he's duh bomb. But as a rapper, mm-mm-mm, Nephew, there's a big difference between Old School and tired."