Dana Horst works for nonprofits, writes things, and turns the bass up.
“Even if it’s not laid out in perfect sentences – is any rap? – you’d have to be an idiot to not at least grasp a few things from these songs, or have had no interest in pulling anything from them in the first place.”
-Aesop Rock
Common
“One Day It’ll All Make Sense”, Common says, in his new autobiography, and between that, the forthcoming album The Dreamer, The Believer, his afterword on The Anthology of Rap (edited, in part, by Adam Bradley), and his upcoming CHF lecture on the history of hip-hop on Nov. 4th, there’s a rich vein of material to discuss.
I just finished reading The Anthology of Rap, and I wonder: does hip-hop have a canonical text? Should it? Or would that reduce a living, vibrant art form (beats, rhymes, and life) to a series of arguments about whose work is included, whose is excluded, and create artificially limiting boundaries around an art that includes not only rap, but dj’ing, b-boying, and graffiti?
The Anthology of Rap does not claim to define the canon, but samples it (pun intended). Though you can read The Anthology of Rap cover to cover in an academic binge on hip-hop, I think it’s most useful as a point of reference.
It’s not written to be the all-time-forevermore definitive resource for all of hip-hop culture: the focus is lyrics and small bites of context for each featured artist. So, who is The Anthology of Rap written for: academia or the hip-hop head? (Oh, such discussions to be had about if and when and how those two simplistic categories intersect! Do I get to call myself an academic? Or a rabid rap fan? And if I get to be both, then I want a book that gives me the historical, cultural, and literary contexts as well as well-transcribed and well-diagrammed lyrics! Oh, and track samples. So I want an encyclopedia with music samples happening as I turn every page.)
For the academic, there are two portions that I think are exceptional: NWA’s one-page contextual introduction gives a remarkably thorough overview of that group’s importance in a few short paragraphs (pp.232-233); and the discussion in the introduction to “1993 – 1999: Rap Goes Mainstream” (pp. 325-332) includes a concise but multifaceted discussion of the mainstreaming of rap via visual media, and the sexual politics linked to those visuals.
Any academic discussion of the form and content of rap lyrics would be expected, following the discussion of Aristotle, Demetrius, Cicero, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, et al. (yes, really: p. 126), to include significant scanning of texts and diagramming of the complexities of the rhymes. For example, the Cold Crush Brothers’ “Fresh Wild Fly and Bold” gets a diagram of the internal rhymes, but there are still post-its stuck to my book with notes like “I WISH THIS HAD BEEN SCANNED OUT” (Eric B. & Rakim’s “Eric B. Is President” and “Check Out My Melody”; yes, really, I did scribble that note in all caps), and “I want to see the diagramming of these internal couplets!” (Kool G Rap’s “Road to the Riches”).
Anthology of Rap co-editor Adam Bradley
Then again, if you aren’t coming to The Anthology of Rap for scansion, you’re coming to it for the lyrical content. But I can’t imagine that too many hip-hop heads don’t want to hear the delivery of the rhymes. I can’t tell you how many times I paused my reading to bring up a track and to hear the lyrics in their natural habitat, over beats (“you’re bobbin’ your head so hard you’re left with a permanent injury to your neck”, from Eyedea & Abilities’ “Reintroducing” ).
If I get to make demands, I want to hear the performance and the voice, not just consume the words. And if I’m to be limited to the words on their own, I want to know more about the words: their structure, their playing and breaking conventions of poetry, narrative, and songwriting. I want more of what I saw in the entry on Twista, the first mention of how form shapes content.
Other notes:
It’s well worth reading more about Sylvia Robinson, the Sugarhill Gang, and the well-acknowledged theft of Grandmaster Caz’s lyrics for “Rapper’s Delight”. It’s especially interesting in light of these “Rapper’s Delight” lyrics: “But whatever you do in your lifetime/ you never let a MC steal your rhyme”.
Upon reading Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s entry, featuring “Tha Crossroads”, I wonder if there’s a chapter or a book yet to be written about the “dearly departed” memorial rap.
Two entries that surprised me: Canibus’ “Poet Laureate Infinity 3” reads like a Greek epic and sounds like a deranged verbal manifesto; Foxy Brown’s “My Life” shows a storytelling depth that I don’t associate with her. The mix of disappointment, anger, and heartbreak comes through in the text, and sent me back to this song for a fresh listen.
If you want to geek out and read more: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang and The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop by Dan Charnas.
UIC Forum: Nov. 5, 6:00 PM
Tags: Common, Adam Bradley, rap, hip hop, hip-hop, Eric B., Rakim, NWA, Kool G Rap, Eyedea, Abilities, Canibus, Foxy Brown
