Hip-hop Wizardry Meets Mad Computer Skills

By Jeff Feinman

September 1, 2008 —

A New York City programmer is showing the music world that technically savvy people can have plenty of hip-hop groove.

Soce the Elemental Wizard, whose real name is Andrew Singer, may not have typical hip-hop roots: He was born and raised in Kensington, N.H., and obtained an Ivy League education at Yale University, graduating with a degree in math and computer science. But while hitting the books, Soce discovered rap acts like Above the Law, the Beastie Boys, Wu Tang Clan and Jay-Z. As he rapped along to the popular albums from those artists, he said, he gradually began to mix in his own lyrics and freestyles. Thus began his love affair with the genre.

Today the 28-year-old lives in New York’s East Village and is a computer programmer for a midtown Manhattan brokerage, where he generates financial database reports for sales, compliance and other departments. Though he was unable to disclose the name or details of his employer, he said he uses an Oracle database and a Cognos reporting tool. His duties include writing scripts and formatting reports for clients and government groups. He has also done Perl programming, along with work in C++, Java, and Python for the brokerage.

Early in his career, Soce worked in Louisville, Ky., for General Electric Appliances, programming with Microsoft’s Visual Basic and doing what he called other “simple” database work. After about a year, he found himself at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, working as a build tester for SharePoint Team Services.

Soce downplayed his testing contributions to SharePoint, saying that he mostly reviewed code that had already been tested and that most of the bugs he found were already known to the company. Nonetheless, he said his Microsoft experience was enriching.

“I got used to the corporate vibe, and it was a fun time there,” Soce said. “They hold Puzzle Day, and they have lots of intramural sports; it’s a real college-type vibe. You have to take a bus to get around their campus; if you have a meeting somewhere else, it’s not as easy as walking down the hall.”

In talking about SharePoint, Soce said he didn’t think it would become as popular as it today back when he was a tester for it in 2001.

“For every Microsoft Word and Windows, they always have a couple of other projects that end up just disappearing off the face of the planet, so I kind of thought this was gonna be one of those things like, ‘SharePoint? Never heard of it,’ ” he said. “But now, it’s seven years later, and my company even has SharePoint pages, so it’s become kind of a big deal. I’d like to think somehow I helped make that happen, although my contribution was probably pretty small.”

The main ingredient of SharePoint’s popularity, Soce said, is that you don’t have to be computer savvy to use it. He pointed to SharePoint’s collaboration capabilities, which allow people working on group projects to upload files and reassign tasks on the server.

When he’s not laying out reports in his Manhattan office, Soce is laying down beats and rhymes for his growing hip-hop fan base. He produces his own music, using MOTU’s Digital Performer audio sequencer to build sounds and mixing in live instruments.

“The beats can be like writing code; you have to line everything up just right,” Soce said. “With the code, if I don’t know what to do, I can have meetings and get help from people. But for the music, I’m really on my own.”

Along with making a name for himself in the New York club scene, Soce performs regularly at high schools, colleges, museums and community centers. He raps about everything from peace and unity to video games and the Internet. Some of his songs might be labeled with a Parental Advisory message, but he also can put on a clean, family-friendly show. Occasionally donning a purple wizard’s cap, Soce always brings lots of energy to whatever stage he plays, swaying and smoothly dancing to his raps.

Recently, he has gone on tour around the United States, traveling to Minnesota, Indiana and Illinois. He has bounced to his beats at private events and benefit shows for an HIV cure. He is also putting together his third album, “Master of Fine Arts.”

Hip-hop ambassador
Whether it’s performing live or providing his music on iTunes and on CDs, Soce’s goal is to offer hip hop to audiences that wouldn’t normally be associated with the genre.

“A lot of people haven’t really experienced hip hop in ways they can really handle. They know of it as a group of people speaking in slang they don’t understand and talking about things they can’t really relate to,” he said. “So I feel excited when I get a chance to open up people’s eyes and show them hip hop is for everyone. You don’t have to be part of a certain society to fully appreciate it.”

Soce said he has no plans to pursue hip hop full-time. He acknowledges the difficulty of making a living off touring and music, but he said he gets fulfillment from his job as a computer programmer, and he isn’t sure he would want to be a musician only.

“It’s nice to have a solid life of being with a company and working with a group of people, and not just sitting in my apartment on my own,” he said.

Related Search Term(s): SharePoint, Microsoft

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