Dr. Sherman Hershfield, a respected physician in Beverly Hills, lived a life of routine and rigor. His days were typically spent between his upscale apartment and his medical practice in the San Fernando Valley. However, one morning shattered this normalcy when he found himself inexplicably behind the wheel of his car, having blacked out somewhere along his usual commute. This alarming episode was not an isolated incident. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he later confessed, grappling with the unsettling mystery of his sudden blackouts.
For a man in his fifties, Dr. Hershfield was in remarkable physical condition. Tall and lean, he was a dedicated runner, clocking six miles daily, and adhered to a strict vegetarian diet. He believed in leading by example, once stating, “I believe a physician should provide exemplary motivation to patients. I don’t smoke and have cut out all alcohol.” His specialty, physical medicine and rehabilitation, had for decades allowed him to guide patients with brain injuries through the arduous process of regaining mobility and rebuilding their lives. Yet, despite his extensive medical knowledge and experience, Dr. Hershfield was at a loss when it came to understanding the turmoil within his own body.
Stress, he speculated, might be the culprit behind these perplexing blackouts. Dr. Hershfield held the demanding position of medical director at the rehab center of San Bernardino Community Hospital, while simultaneously managing a private practice 76 miles away in Winnetka, where he offered non-surgical spinal treatments. “Sometimes I worked from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m.,” he recounted, acknowledging the immense pressure that had even contributed to the dissolution of his first marriage. His demanding schedule often led him to sleep in the doctors’ lounge at the hospital, where his colleagues playfully nicknamed him “Dr. Columbo,” a nod to the rumpled and ever-persistent television detective.
Dr. Sherman Hershfield, known as Dr. Rapp, performing rap music on stage.
The mystery surrounding his blackouts deepened when Dr. Hershfield experienced a grand mal seizure, the dramatic and convulsive type most commonly associated with seizures. He was rushed to the emergency room, his 6-foot-4-inch frame thrashing uncontrollably. At UCLA Medical Center, concerned doctors, in the context of the late 1980s AIDS epidemic, initially suspected a possible accidental needle stick and HIV infection. However, an MRI scan revealed a far different and more complex reality: Dr. Hershfield’s blackouts were caused by a series of minor strokes, the result of antiphospholipid syndrome. His immune system was mistakenly producing antibodies that were increasing the likelihood of blood clots. These clots posed a constant threat, as any could travel to his brain and bloodstream, potentially proving fatal at any moment.
To manage his condition, doctors prescribed blood-thinning medication and mandated that Dr. Hershfield cease driving. Despite these significant changes, he remained capable of practicing medicine. Yet, like many stroke survivors, he began to experience speech difficulties, including stuttering and slurred words. Beyond the physical, his personality seemed to undergo a transformation. He developed an intense fascination with poetry, spending hours reading and writing verses. Soon, those close to Dr. Hershfield noticed an even more peculiar side effect: he was unable to stop speaking in rhyme. Everyday sentences concluded with rhyming couplets, such as, “Now I have to ride the bus. It’s enough to make me cuss.” Remarkably, when he spoke in rhyme, his speech impediments vanished completely.
A stroke, often referred to as a “brain attack,” is a sudden and unpredictable event that can affect anyone. In the United States, a stroke occurs every 40 seconds. These incidents can lead to lasting disabilities and a range of unexpected side effects. Some stroke patients experience hypersexuality or compulsive gambling behaviors. Others have even woken up speaking with a foreign accent, sounding as if they were from a different country. Alice Flaherty, a neurologist and psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, recounted the case of an Italian man with “Pinocchio syndrome,” where telling a lie would trigger a seizure, effectively crippling his business dealings.
Dr. Flaherty’s case studies include Tommy McHugh, a 51-year-old British man who suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a stroke caused by bleeding around the brain. This stroke fundamentally altered McHugh’s personality. A former criminal, he transformed into a deeply philosophical individual, spending up to 19 hours a day immersed in poetry, rhythmic speech, painting, and drawing. He humorously noted that his previous experiences with art galleries were limited to “maybe steal something.”
For Dr. Hershfield, this newfound passion for poetry was equally unexpected and out of character. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1936, he followed his father’s footsteps into medicine, despite his mother’s career as a concert pianist. He graduated from medical school in 1960. In Flin Flon, a mining town in Canada, he treated injuries of hockey players, then completed his residency at the University of Minnesota before serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1973, he established his practice in Southern California, where his demanding schedule left little time for anything beyond medical journals.
His professional challenges began during the medical-malpractice crisis of the 1970s. The surge in lawsuits against doctors led to an astronomical rise in liability insurance costs, for Dr. Hershfield, from $864 to $3,420 annually. In protest, he limited his practice to emergency cases only and took a job at Thousand Oaks Fish and Chips, earning $2 an hour frying fish. The story of the doctor frying fish in hospital scrubs captured national attention. One newspaper quipped that Dr. Hershfield “looked like he was about to have four cod fillets wheeled into surgery.” He explained his decision by stating, “I’ve always been a person of high moral values. I’ve thought, what the hell do I want out of life? And it comes out, I want to be happy.”
Dr. Hershfield eventually returned to medicine, but further adversity struck when his business partner and close friend developed a severe drug addiction. “He was an excellent surgeon, a handsome man who had everything going for him … but he was unable to control his fears and constant bouts of withdrawal and depression, and he tried five times to take his life,” Dr. Hershfield remembered. He was present when his friend’s life ended, six days after being placed on a respirator.
By 1987, Dr. Hershfield had declared bankruptcy. The following year, he became the medical director at the rehab center, where his unconventional ideas, such as opening a hospice that would allow pets to stay with their dying owners, often clashed with management. It was around this tumultuous period that the blackouts began.
In the decade following his stroke, Dr. Hershfield dedicated his spare time to Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist organization, finding solace in hours of chanting. There, he met his second wife, Michiko, a Japanese divorcée who was captivated by his intellect and his three medical certifications. Michiko observed that her husband “changed a lot” after his stroke. “He used to like Japanese haiku poems—you know, five, seven, five,” she noted, reflecting on the shift in his artistic sensibilities.
Read: Can music be used as medicine?
Dr. Hershfield also reconnected with his Jewish heritage, volunteering at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human-rights organization. “I did the Holocaust in rhyme,” he recalled of an educational poem he would perform on the bus. The city’s sounds became a rhythmic backdrop to his recitations: brakes hissing, horns honking, bus bells ringing. As Dr. Hershfield rhymed to himself on public transport, he risked being seen as just another eccentric talking to himself. However, one afternoon, at a Hollywood bus stop, a jewelry vendor overheard him and suggested he take his rhyming to Leimert Park.
“Where is Leimert Park?’” Dr. Hershfield inquired, unfamiliar with the location.
Intrigued, he took a bus to South Central, passing Crenshaw’s Magic Johnson theater, numerous churches, and liquor stores. At the base of Baldwin Hills, he discovered Leimert Park, an area with a significant African American population. In a crowd of 100 people in Leimert Park, only one might be white.
Since the 1960s, Leimert Park had been a cultural hub for African Americans in Los Angeles. Jazz and musical legends like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and comedian Richard Pryor had all lived nearby. To outsiders, it was perhaps more infamously known as a focal point during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Kamau Daoud, a jazz poet from the area, explained that locals still referred to the riots as “the rebellion,” a testament to the community’s enduring memory of the Rodney King beating by white police officers.
It was in the late 1990s when Dr. Hershfield, dressed in his Beverly Hills doctor attire, stepped off the bus into Leimert Park. He walked towards the rhythmic drumming emanating from the park, past Afrocentric bookstores and fabric shops, the air filled with saxophone music. At 43rd and Leimert, he encountered a group of teenagers gathered around the KAOS Network, a community arts center. Spontaneous rap battles and energetic dancing were unfolding on the sidewalk. At the entrance, a young man assessed him with a curious gaze.
“Would you like to hear something?” Dr. Hershfield politely asked.
“Sure, what’s your name?” the man responded.
Dr. Hershfield, in that moment of unexpected artistic genesis, declared, “My name is Dr. Rapp.”
Established in 1984 as a media-production center, KAOS Network was renowned for “Project Blowed,” an open-mic workshop for aspiring rappers. Since 1995, Project Blowed had transformed the dance floor into a vibrant meeting ground for performers from various neighborhoods, predominantly African American teenagers in baggy pants, Timberland boots, and baseball caps.
“It was underground, powerful, strong, and scary for people if they weren’t ready, because it was really volatile,” described Ben Caldwell, the 73-year-old African American filmmaker and proprietor of KAOS Network. “I would have to take a deep breath every time, because it was a bunch of alpha males.” Project Blowed was a challenging environment for rappers aiming to “blow up,” like underground artist Aceyalone or mainstream groups like Jurassic 5. However, Dr. Hershfield was completely unaware of this hip-hop subculture.
“He said he wanted to do a rhyme on the Holocaust,” Caldwell recalled. “I thought that was really insightful. I thought that it would be something good for the kids to hear.” This was unusual, but not against the “da mutha f**ckin rulz” posted at the entrance, which began: “PROJECT BLOWED IS PRESENTED FOR THE LOVE OF HIP-HOP ENTIRELY FOR BLACK PEOPLE.” The sign also warned: “DO NOT GET VIOLENT BECAUSE THIS IS A BLACK-OWNED, BLACK-OPERATED BUSINESS.”
The entrance fee was $2 for performers and $4 for spectators. Rappers were expected to present “a polished piece of music,” as Jooyoung Lee noted in Blowin’ Up, a history of the club. “The open mic is a lot like peer review.” Emcees skilled in freestyle rapping were highly respected. However, unprepared or faltering rappers faced immediate rejection from the crowd, signaled by a resounding chant: “Please pass the mic!”
The DJ asked Dr. Hershfield for his backing music. He handed over a Chopin cassette tape. Classical piano music filled the room. The regulars, known as “Blowdians,” exchanged puzzled glances.
“They all were going, ‘Uh hunh, uh hunh,’” Dr. Hershfield remembered, but the classical music quickly lost their interest.
“Okay,” someone said. “Get rid of that music and let’s hear you rap.”
Alone on stage, Dr. Hershfield grasped the microphone and began:
“God, this is a tough thing to write
The feeling I got in my heart tonight
Just to think of the Holocaust
So deep and sadly blue
And still so many people
Don’t think it’s true.”
The crowd remained silent, observing the older man reciting a poem.
“The first time he was up there, he wasn’t that successful,” Caldwell admitted. Yet, out of respect, the audience refrained from chanting him offstage. Project Blowed, claiming to be the world’s longest-running open-mic session, had never seen anyone quite like Dr. Hershfield. “First of all, he’s Caucasian around all these people of color,” remarked Babu, a regular attendee. “I thought he was some kind of spy.” Dr. Hershfield was also significantly older than anyone else present. As Trenseta, another Blowdian, would say, “If you up in your mid-thirties and still ain’t got it, leave hip-hop alone, and go get you a little job at International House of Pancakes or some shit!” Dr. Hershfield, at 63, was practically a dinosaur in rap years.
Emerging from KAOS Network into the South Central night, Dr. Hershfield overheard Richard Fulton from Fifth Street Dick’s, a neighboring coffee shop, shout, “If you can’t keep up with those kids, then you’d better do something else.” Fulton, a large man with graying dreadlocks, ran a jazz café that was a hub for African American writers and artists. He had witnessed many beat poets try their luck in Leimert Park, none from Beverly Hills’ affluent 90210 zip code. “At that time I thought I was rapping,” Dr. Hershfield later reflected. “I wasn’t rapping. I was just reading poetry. It didn’t have any beat. When you’re on rap street, you gotta have that beat.”
Undeterred, Dr. Hershfield replaced his Tchaikovsky records with NWA and Run-DMC. He played rap music even while bathing, Michiko recalled. When she learned about his plans to participate in rap battles in South Central, she exclaimed, “You’re crazy!” But she couldn’t dissuade him from returning to Project Blowed weekly, sometimes walking the six-and-a-half-mile distance from Beverly Hills.
“Sherman’s leaving at 10 o’clock at night and going to Crenshaw,” she told her son, Scott. “He’s hanging out with kids and rapping.” Scott, a former professional skateboarder turned hip-hop DJ in his 20s, found his stepfather’s new hobby embarrassing.
“Sherman, you’re kinda just rhyming, putting words together, but you know so many Latin words, you should rap about neurology, really get into the science of it … that would be amazing,” Scott suggested, encouraging him to emulate the hip-hop artists he admired, particularly from the East Coast ’90s hip-hop scene and artists like KRS-One.
In the mid-1980s, KRS-One emerged from the Bronx with Boogie Down Productions, releasing the influential album Criminal Minded. As a solo artist, he created Sound of Da Police, a defining hip-hop track, and became a respected rap scholar and lecturer. One evening in October 1999, Dr. Hershfield learned that KRS-One was speaking about rap history at a hip-hop event in Hollywood and decided to attend. “Try to imagine a hip-hop gathering,” KRS-One recounted. “You know, emcees from the hood, breakers, DJs, music is blasting. I’m giving you permission to stereotype. Then in walks this dude.” It was as if Larry David had walked into a Snoop Dogg music video.
During the Q&A session, Dr. Hershfield took the microphone and shared his story, explaining how listening to rap music was helping him recover his language skills after his stroke. “One of which was one of my songs,” KRS-One recalled.
Dr. Hershfield then spontaneously began to rap:
“I started to have a stroke,” he rapped. “Went broke.”
The room fell silent, then he continued:
“I started to think and speak in rhyme. I can do it all the time. And I want to get to do the rap, and I won’t take any more of this crap.”
The crowd erupted in applause. When Dr. Rapp rapped about his personal struggles, rather than historical topics, he truly connected with the audience.
“He got a standing ovation,” KRS-One remembered. He gave Dr. Hershfield his phone number and suggested they collaborate.
Read: The revenge of autobiographical rap
“I didn’t know anything about him,” Dr. Hershfield admitted. “I just knew that he was in the same category as Tupac Shakur.” When Dr. Hershfield told his stepson about his new acquaintance, Scott was astonished. “You know, you should really listen to his music and listen to his lyrics,” he advised his stepfather, though internally skeptical about the unlikely pairing with KRS-One.
A few days later, KRS-One visited Dr. Hershfield at his office, presenting him with a signed copy of his book, The Science of Rap. KRS-One shared his own fascination with neurology, explaining, “I was already talking about the concept of how rapping synthesizes those two hemispheres of the brain.” He proposed an experiment, offering Dr. Hershfield rap lessons.
“When you’re trying to teach someone to rap, you ask them to sing along with a song they might have heard,” KRS-One explained. He played “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. The iconic song began:
“I said a hip-hop / Hippie to the hippie / The hip, hip a hop, and you don’t stop …”
He rewound the track and encouraged Dr. Hershfield to try.
“He nailed it,” KRS-One affirmed. “He had the cadences and the rhythms.” However, he noted that Dr. Rapp needed to refine his delivery, breath control, and enunciation. Thus, an unexpected friendship bloomed between the rap icon and the retired doctor. They shared an interest in spirituality: KRS-One’s name originated from his association with Hare Krishna volunteers during his youth in the Bronx. Both had also experienced significant personal loss: Dr. Hershfield lost his business partner to suicide, and KRS-One lost his DJ, Scott La Rock, in a shooting in 1987, an event that profoundly shaped his music and activism, leading him to launch the Stop the Violence movement.
To KRS-One, Dr. Hershfield was a pioneer in rap theory. “He was talking about neuroplasticity before I heard about it on PBS,” KRS-One recalled. He suggested they collaborate on a book or an album in New York, envisioning Dr. Rapp as “revolutionizing hip-hop.”
Dr. Hershfield returned to Project Blowed, determined to earn the crowd’s respect. The elder members of the Leimert Park community embraced Dr. Rapp, ensuring he had stage time and safe passage home. “People respected him, and he could work on his chops, work on his brain,” Caldwell noted. “It was interesting to see how well we all accepted him.” Caldwell encouraged Dr. Rapp to experiment, even with Jewish chants, which Caldwell found “fucking tight.”
Younger members of Project Blowed also gravitated towards Dr. Rapp. Aspiring rappers in South Central faced constant pressure to “make it” in hip-hop before life circumstances, like gang violence, intervened, as Jooyoung Lee described. Similarly, Dr. Rapp was rapping against time, unsure when his next seizure might occur.
Richard Fulton, the coffee shop owner, became particularly close to Dr. Rapp. Fulton, a cancer survivor and former drug addict, had transformed his life through faith and jazz. His café became a vibrant hub. Fulton’s motto, “Turn the music up,” resonated with Dr. Rapp’s newfound passion.
Erin Kaplan, a journalist familiar with Leimert Park, described Dr. Hershfield and Fulton as kindred spirits, both experiencing “second chances” and living “on borrowed time.” At Fifth Street Dick’s, Dr. Rapp mingled with beat poets, rappers, chess players, and jazz musicians, becoming immersed in the rhythm of Leimert Park.
For years, Dr. Rapp performed weekly at Project Blowed, giving his all on stage, sweating, his glasses fogging, fists pumping. He experienced both electrifying successes and humbling rejections, hearing the dreaded chant, “Please pass the mic!” He learned to promote himself, incorporating “Dr. Rapp” into his lyrics, wearing custom T-shirts, and mastering freestyle rapping. He performed on stage and in impromptu ciphers under streetlights until dawn.
“He was tight,” rapper Myka 9 commented. “He had a little bit of an angular approach. He had flows, he had good lines that were thought out. I remember a couple of punch lines that came off pretty cool.” Myka 9 described Dr. Rapp as “a cult personality in his own right.”
At home, Michiko worried about his safety. “I don’t understand why he goes to that area,” she confessed, concerned about his trusting nature. “I bought him nice clothes, Italian-made suits. A couple of times he came back with dirty clothes—he’d given the nice suit to somebody else.” With his expensive attire and prescription pad, Dr. Rapp seemed a target for robbery. “I keep telling him it’s dangerous,” Michiko said. Dr. Hershfield insisted he was safe, viewing the people in Leimert Park as his friends.
However, not everyone in the hip-hop world welcomed Dr. Rapp. A lawyer representing another artist named Dr. Rap sent a letter, demanding he change his name to avoid legal action. Dr. Hershfield rebranded as Dr. Flow, but his reputation as Dr. Rapp had already taken hold.
In early 2000, Dr. Rapp participated in a panel discussion about violence and rap music at California State University, Los Angeles. Ice-T, a pioneer of gangsta rap, defended violence as inherent to rap culture. “I’m a person who deals with violence always in my music,” Ice-T stated. “Masculinity runs this world. The person who’s violent gets control. Peace gets nothing.”
Dr. Rapp was incensed. “You can’t live by hate!” he exclaimed, leading to a heated exchange that required moderation. Gang violence deeply troubled Dr. Rapp, especially given his own brush with mortality.
When Richard Fulton’s cancer returned, Dr. Rapp was devastated. He joined other Leimert Park regulars at Fulton’s bedside. Fulton, unable to speak due to the tumor in his throat, communicated through notes, aware his end was near. Dr. Rapp, in denial, insisted, “If I can just get him to chant, he’ll recover,” his medical expertise overshadowed by wishful thinking. He began chanting Buddhist prayers. Friends urged him to stop, but he persisted. Fulton, 56, could barely breathe. “We’re going to tap into his life force,” Dr. Rapp insisted. On March 18, 2000, as jazz played softly, Fulton declined morphine and wrote to the nurses, “Turn the music up,” before passing away.
Back at Project Blowed, Dr. Rapp immersed himself even more in his performances. However, the strain of his double life intensified, and his two worlds began to diverge. “His friends in Beverly Hills did not approve of this at all,” Kaplan observed. “They were so shocked. Let’s just say none of his friends showed up at open-mic night.” Prioritizing rap over his medical practice led to another financial crisis. “I think he was more obsessed with rapping than he was going to work,” his stepson, Scott, noted. Sometimes, Michiko mentioned, friends from Leimert Park would lend Dr. Rapp bus fare.
His voice became hoarse from performing, and one hot evening, he collapsed at Project Blowed. “Dr. Rapp had a seizure,” Tasha Wiggins recalled. “Other rappers caught him. Everybody stopped what they were doing, trying to nurture Dr. Rapp.” As he lay unconscious, the crowd began chanting his name.
Survivors of brain injuries with unusual side effects often express gratitude for their altered lives. Tommy McHugh, the artist and former convict, considered his strokes “the most wonderful thing that happened,” granting him “11 years of a magnificent adventure.” Dr. Flaherty described McHugh’s hemorrhage as “a crack that let the light in.” Both McHugh and Dr. Rapp exhibited symptoms of “sudden musicophilia,” an explosion of creativity following brain injury, as described by Oliver Sacks. For Dr. Rapp, rhyming evolved from a symptom to a therapeutic practice.
It seemed the rhyming part of Dr. Rapp’s brain had healed the damaged areas. Brain scans on rappers showed increased activity in areas related to motivation, language, mood, and action during freestyle rapping. Dr. Rapp believed rapping helped control his seizures. Even after collapsing in Leimert Park, he used hip-hop to regain his speech and return to the stage.
Read: Mapping creativity in the brain
Dr. Rapp’s performances at Project Blowed gained momentum. “His name was on the lips of the multitudes,” recalled Los Angeles Times journalist Ed Boyer. Boyer visited Project Blowed to witness Dr. Rapp perform. “I’ve seen Dr. Rapp rock the whole house,” Tasha Wiggins told Boyer. Gabriela Orozco, another Project Blowed member, added, “Oh, I think I’m going to cry. I mean … he’s doing it.”
As Dr. Rapp took the stage, he immersed himself in his rhymes:
“Me, I’m just a beginning medical intern of rap
Trying to express and open my trap …”
Dr. Rapp’s stepson, Scott, remembered the morning he saw a photo of Dr. Rapp in the Times, in an Adidas tracksuit, rapping. “The whole thing was so bizarre,” he said.
Dr. Rapp had finally “blown up.”
Media crews from Canada and England flocked to Leimert Park to interview Dr. Rapp. Ben Caldwell showed footage of a Japanese TV crew filming Dr. Rapp looking like a retiree before transforming into a dynamic rapper on stage. Afterward, he would nap on a couch at KAOS Network. “Everybody liked the doctor, right, even the hard-core gangster types. They liked him for his chutzpah,” Caldwell said.
Dr. Rapp told reporters that Leimert Park broadened his perspective. “There are lots of misconceptions by white people about the area,” he explained. “It’s very cultural, with a lot of interesting places.” He called Project Blowed “the Harvard of rap,” saying, “This is my foundation. I find it very beneficial.”
Although he never recorded an album with KRS-One, Dr. Rapp credited KRS-One for his rap career. KRS-One said, “He mentioned one of my songs brought him back. He was in a coma—they were playing music for him to try and wake him up. [Hershfield] saying rap healed him … that just stayed with me … It’s part of my confidence in hip-hop.”
Instead of seeking mainstream fame, Dr. Rapp continued to perform at Project Blowed weekly, remaining true to his underground roots. He appeared in a documentary about Leimert Park as a respected member of the community, not a novelty act. “I can’t clearly tell you whether [rap] helped him,” Michiko said, “but I can tell you he was happy when he was doing rap music.” Dr. Rapp continued to represent Project Blowed until his health declined, forcing him to retire from both music and medicine. He passed away from cancer in Los Angeles on March 29, 2013, at 76.
Project Blowed continues to thrive at KAOS Network in Leimert Park. The area remains a vibrant cultural hub, now facing challenges from gentrification. Caldwell believed Dr. Rapp was accepted at Project Blowed because he was open-minded and willing to learn. “That’s one wonderful thing I like most about black American communities,” Caldwell said. “As long as you don’t try to tell them how to do their own culture, you’re good.” Since Dr. Rapp’s time, Project Blowed has welcomed performers from diverse backgrounds. But the tradition remains: any falter on stage is met with the enduring call, “Please pass the mic.”
