The art of beatboxing is unparalleled – intricate layers of booms and clicks produced by a single person’s mouth in ways that seem almost super-human. Watching a great beatboxer turn out a series of vocal tricks can give anyone watching a distinct sense of, “WTF? How did they do that?” Luckily, science is now trying to find the answer.

Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory have been using real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to examine exactly what “paralinguistic mechanisms” beatboxers are using. And, according to their most recent study on the matter, what they’ve found is that a beatboxer can use mechanisms found in many diverse languages — even ones they don’t speak. Their research also shows beatboxers can create an illusion of singing while making a beat, a skill that provides insight into the relationship between speech production and perception.

“We were very surprised to discover how closely the vocal percussion sounds resembled sounds attested in languages unknown to the beatboxer,” the study’s lead author Michael Proctor said in an email to Wired. “Even though his goals were musical, the beatboxer converged on methods of sound production which have been harnessed in the phonology of other human languages.”

‘Even though his goals were musical, the beatboxer converged on methods of sound production which have been harnessed in the phonology of other human languages.’ — linguistics professor Michael Proctor

For years hip-hop fans have been amazed by the vocal abilities of artists like “Human Beat Box” Doug E. Fresh. (The study’s co-author Shrikanth Narayanan told Wired he was “astonished” by the work of his subject “and the accuracy with which he could control the sounds and rhythms.”) Yet the actual skill of beatboxing has remained something that is only vaguely understood and largely self-taught – you either “get it” or you don’t. But now, with the help of science, researchers are able to learn a little bit more about how it works and how it relates to linguistics.

“We hope to continue this work by looking at vocal percussion sounds produced by other beatboxers — do all artists produce kick drum and cymbal effects the same way? Or are there individual differences, depending on the languages that the artists speak, or the individual details of their vocal tracts?” Proctor said.

As part of the study [PDF] — set to appear in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America — the researchers placed a 27-year-old beatboxer from L.A. in an MRI scanner and asked him to make all the percussion sounds in his repertoire. (See a video of a beatbox MRI in action below.) They made 40 recordings of his work — from percussion sounds to composite beats, raps, sung lyrics and freestyle combinations of all of them. MRI videos of the performances were combined with his recorded vocals and the various effects he created were then analyzed to figure out how the artist’s mouth was actually able to make each sound.

In another interesting finding, the researchers were able to annotate all of the sounds made by their beatboxing subject using the International Phonetic Alphabet — the system designed to describe meaning-encoding speech sounds, like intonation. And even though the subject was only a speaker of English and Spanish, he was able to produce many sound effects typical of other languages. “The effects … used to emulate the sounds of specific types of snare drums and rim shots appear to be very similar to consonants attested in many African languages,” the study found, adding that the mechanisms used to make snare and kick drum sounds had phonetic properties similar to those of languages like Nuxálk and Chechen.

The study’s findings, of course, are limited to just one subject at this point, but still are indicative of something that could turn part of the art of hip-hop into something integral to understanding speech.

“Because beatboxing is a highly individualized artistic form,” the study noted. “Examination of the repertoires of other beatbox artists would be an important step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the range of effects exploited in beatboxing, and the articulatory mechanisms involved in producing these sounds.”

Translation: Beatboxing is even more awesome than we originally thought. Sorry, haters.