Stairway said:
My problem with rap music is the message (or lack thereof). I personally have no interest in listening to someone talk about their materialistic possesions, to a computer generated / recycled beat. Listen to: "The Doors - The End" and then perhaps you will understand what true musical talent is.
like i said, only ignorant ppl would make this kind of statement.
you obviously dont know much about hip hop. do you even know the difference between hip hop and rap? do you even know how hip hop started??? you do know 2pac's message and poetry are used at many many colleges for its political, sociological, literature stuff(harvard, yale, ucla,cal, princeton,cornell,uc san diego, nyu,etc) i was the hip hop club president at columbia university(ivy league), so you dont want to go there!
In the
Poetry for the People program I direct at Berkeley, I include hip hop lyrics in our study of poetry.
While there are a few individual songs that I've isolated (Aceyalone's "The Balance," Talib Kweli's "The Proud," and 2Pac's "Dear Mama" in this year's reader), I've yet to figure out which artists' entire lyrical oeuvre, on paper, stand out as a collection of "poems."
In your opinion, which MCs' writing consistently distinguishes them as "poets"? Indeed, is there any rapper worth putting along side the Nikki Giovannis, Martin Espadas, and Naomi Shihab Nyes of the world?
Keep in mind that in asking this question, I'm asking you to ignore any artist's (a) voice, (b) flow, (c) beats, (d) production, (e) dance moves, (f) videos, (g) style, (h) attitude, (i) street credibility, (j) wheels, etc.
For example, consider Notorious B.I.G. I love Biggie. I appreciate his baritone voice, his flow and command of breath, his stage presence, and his personality contrasted with Puffy's radio-friendly production. But in my opinion, rarely has Big Poppa ever written lyrics that stand out on their own as poetry.
I probably wouldn't put this in my course reader:
When the la-la hits ya
Lyrics just split ya head so hard
That ya hat can't fit ya
Either I'm witcha or against ya
Format venture
Back through that maze I sent ya
Talkin to the rap inventor
Langston Hughes, he ain't.
Now, don't get me wrong: there's a grip of reasons to study and pay homage to what Biggie does. But I'm not sure that his words work as well on paper as do others' lyrics.
Ultimately, I would defend all MCs as poets.
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