Word: hip-hop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Spoken word posterboy Saul Williams has published three volumes of poetry, when not inviting “99 Problems” producer Rick Rubin to lay the beats down on his hip-hop records. DJ Spooky, a Bowdoin graduate with a double major in French and philosophy, who performed at Sanders Theatre in March, weaves webs of aural, visual, and textual references ranging from Derrida to De La Soul...
This discourse between hip-hop and academia is starting to flow both ways. Courses like Literature and Arts A-86, “American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac” pack lecture halls at Harvard. After reading Aesop’s lyric “the villain of my Kabuki hologram cuz I hobble with hollow hands” (from the titular track of 1999’s “Float”), an enthusiastic Professor of English and American Literature and Language Gordon L. Teskey felt compelled to mention that “a good...
Complete poetic abstraction is still somewhat of a rarity in the hip-hop world, perhaps because only a few of the rappers working at these boundaries of lyrical representation have been able to achieve some modicum of national visibility. Some stars of this subset include much of the roster of Aesop’s home label Definitive Jux (Cannibal Ox, El-P, Mr. Lif), shapeshifting scene veteran Daniel Dumile (MF Doom to most), and Anticon Records’ obscurantist crew (Sole, Dose One, Sage Francis...
Also, reports of the Benz/backpack dichotomy between mainstream and underground rap that Kanye West claims to have transcended seem to have been greatly exaggerated. Hip-hop legends like Wu-Tang Clan, Rakim, Nas and Notorious B.I.G. have been weaving abstract rhymes into their oeuvres for years (albeit less pretentiously), along with left-field heroes like De La Soul, 3rd Bass and the Native Tongues Posse (Q-Tip’s nickname is even “the Abstract?...
...thing Teskey mentioned in his analysis of “Float,” before any mention of media theory or tumbling measure, was a simple and immutably subjective judgment: “I like it.” As the academy warms up to the rigorous analysis of hip-hop, it is finally beginning to appreciate Aesop’s dedication to “spittin’ the illest shit,” whether he likes...