Sean Forbes: Deaf Rapper

What could be more ironic than a Deaf rapper?

28-year-old Sean Forbes has been profoundly deaf since he was a baby.  His parents are musicians, and he grew up loving the low-frequency bass of drums and hip-hop music.  In 2006, Sean co-founded the Deaf Professional Arts Network (D-PAN), which remakes music videos of popular songs using ASL, including Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change”.  (Unfortunately these videos aren’t captioned, but subtitles are available on D-PAN’s DVD of these and more music videos.)

Sean recently signed a contract with the recording label Web Entertainment, which launched the career of rapper Eminem.  His first single, “I’m Deaf,” features Sean singing in English while simultaneously signing in ASL.  It is available for digital download on iTunes, and the CD (and t-shirts) can be purchased on Sean’s website.  The video for “I’m Deaf” is below, and I personally think it’s awesome.  Even Brandt, who usually hates music, said it was “very interesting”—which is high praise coming from him!

If you’d like to see more about Sean, there is a great captioned news report about him (although they should have said “Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing” instead of “Hearing-Impaired”!)