by Adam Bradley
22 “You may not realize it”: Robert Frost, “The Way There” (1958), Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (New York: Library of America), 847.
25 “If he uses ten syllables in a line, I’m going to use fifteen”: Jon Caramanica, “Bun B,” The Believer, June-July 2006.
29 “Rhythm science is not so much a new language”: Paul D. Miller, Rhythm Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 72.
32 “an individual time signature”: Cobb, 87.
37 “What you find with a lot of rappers”: “Dead Cert,” The Observer, April 25, 2004.
39 “I think a lot of artists that rap”: “Twista: Fast Talk, Slow Climb,” MTVNews.com, 2005.
40 “If, in rap, rhythm is more significant”: Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 175.
41 “My style of writing”: Tom Breihan, “Status Ain’t Hood Interviews Rakim,” Village Voice, June 6, 2006.
42 “I had long had haunting my ear”: Gerard Manley Hopkins, July 24, 1866, journal entry, reprinted in Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (New York: Penguin, 1953), 185.
43 “Once I figure out in my mind”: Caramanica, “Bun B.”
44 “In early hip-hop”: The RZA, 108.
47 “Crafting a good flow is like doing a puzzle”: Stic.man, The Art of Emcee-ing (New York: Boss Up, Inc., 2005), 53.
TWO Rhyme
50 “Along with word choice and sound patterns”: Frances Mayes, The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2001), 167.
52 “Where there is no similarity, there is no rhyme”: Alfred Corn, The Poem’s Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody (New York: Story Line Press, 1997), 77.
54 “The coincidence of sound in a pair of rhymes”: Corn, 75.
54 “MCing, to me”: Common, “The Greatest MCs of All Time,” MTV.com, 2006.
55 “The search for a rhyme-word”: Steve Kowit, In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House Publishers, 1995), 161.
55 “The imagination wants its limits”: Derek Walcott, Conversations with Derek Walcott (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995), 105.
58 “Perfection of the rhymes”: James G. Spady, Street Conscious Rap (Philadelphia: Black History Museum Press, 1999), 550.
59 “Some artists use line after line”: Emcee Escher and Alex Rappaport, The Rapper’s Handbook: A Guide to Freestyling, Writing Rhymes, and Battling (New York: Flocabulary LLC, 2006), 28.
69 “a constraint to express many things otherwise”: John Milton, Selected Prose (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 404.
69 “popularitie of Rime creates”: Thomas Campion, “Observations in the Art of English Poesie” (1602), reprinted in Renascence Edition (Eugene: University of Oregon, 1998).
70 “Staying in the unconscious frame of mind”: Benjamin Hedin, Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 215.
70 “It gives you a thrill to rhyme something”: Hedin, 215.
79 “When I started out as a DJ”: Fricke and Ahearn, 79.
79 “So different DJs started embellishing”: Fricke and Ahearn, 79.
82 “When we first started rhyming”: Fricke and Ahearn, 74.
THREE Wordplay
87 “shunned expressions of disposable people”: Cobb, 6.
87 “Thus if these [vernacular] poets”: Ralph Ellison, “Some Questions and Some Answers,” The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (New York: Random House, 1994), 295.
87 “When I was young”: And You Don’t Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop, VH1, 2004.
87 “Hip hop has so much power”: “Resurrection: Common Walks,” PopMatters music interview, September 21, 2005.
87 “The great body of Negro slang”: Ellison, “What These Children Are Like,” 555.
88 “A language comes into existence”: James Baldwin, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” New York Times, July 29, 1979.
88 “People may look at it like”: Anthony DeCurtis, “Wu-Tang Family Values,” Rolling Stone, July 24, 1997.
90 “Rather than being about experience”: Mayes, 427.
90 “It’s just a vehicle”: H. Samy Alim, “Interview with Ras Kass,” James G. Spady, et al, The Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (Philadelphia: Black History Museum Press, 2006), 241.
90 “defamiliarizes words”: Hirsch, 12.
91 “It’s one thing to say ‘I sell bricks, I sell bricks’”: John Caramanica, “Keep on Pushin’,” Mass Appeal 39, 72.
92 “All poetry implies the destruction”: Ellison, “Society, Morality, and and the Novel,” 702.
FOUR Style
122 “We develop schemas”: Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Penguin, 2007), 117.
124 “history, geography, and genre all at once”: Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 48.
125 “a dynamic process”: Ellison, “Going to the Territory,” 612.
126 “Hip-hop is a beautiful culture”: Richard Cromlein, “Mos Def Wants Blacks to Take Back Rock Music,” Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2004.
128 “Queens rappers have a special style”: And You Don’t Stop.
132 “Technically, Tupac wasn’t a great rapper”: The Vibe History of Hip-Hop (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), 93.
133 “Biggie’s gonna win hands down”: The Art of 16 Bars, Image Entertainment, 2005.
135 “A distinct voice tone is the identity”: KRS-One, 247.
136 “I suspect that the freshest and most engaging poems”: Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 14.
136 “the language of a poem is constitutive of its ideas”: Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 2.
137 “It’s like if you wanna rap like Jay[-Z]”: Jake Brown, Kanye West in the Studio: Beats Down! Money Up! (Phoenix: Amber Books Publishing), 40-41.
140 “I didn’t know what I was doing”: 50 Cent and Kris Ex, From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens (New York: MTV Books, 2005), 163.
141 “I wasn’t a good writer”: And You Don’t Stop.
141 “Obviously, I was young”: Eminem biography, eminemonline.com.
142 “My style of writing”: Breihan, “Status Ain’t Hood Interview: Rakim.”
142 “But as far as what makes me unique”: Cedric Muhammad, “Hip-Hop Fridays: Exclusive Q&A with Ludacris,” blackelectorate.com, May 9, 2003.
143 “I was speeding”: Kelefa Sanneh, “Uneasy Lies the Head,” New York Times, November 19, 2006.
144 “I honestly never sat down”: Caramanica, “Bun B.”
144 “Style is almost unconscious”: William Butler Yeats, Yeats’ Poetry, Drama, and Prose (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), 308.
144 “characteristic words and images”: Mayes, 375.
145 “Today we take rhyme styles for granted”: Brian Coleman, Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (New York: Villard, 2007), 91.
149 “I wish there could be some control of it”: Ellison, “Ellison: Exploring the Life of a Not So Visible Man,” Hollie I. West (1973), published in Conversations with Ralph Ellison, eds. Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995), 251.
149 “I’m not a separatist”: Ellison, Conversations, 235.
151 “Writing for Biz was in a whole different style”: Coleman, 37.
153 “I really pride myself on being a vocalist”: Rikky Rooksby, Lyrics: Writing Better Words for Your Songs (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2006), 107.
FIVE Storytelling
159 “I come from a literary background”: Ken Capobianco, “Lupe Fiasco Accepts the Outsider Label as a Positive Rap,” Boston Globe, November 13, 2006.
160 “It was al
most like a diary”: Coleman, 419.
163 “The first is the poet talking to himself”: T. S. Eliot, “The Three Voices of Poetry” (1955), reprinted in Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), 120.
164 “poems spoken by a character”: John Drury, The Poetry Dictionary (Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2006), 78-79.
164 “On 99 percent of the songs”: Spady, “Interview with Pharoahe Monch,” The Global Cipha, 141.
165 “In both Stagolee and the dramatic monologue”: Cecil Brown, Stagolee Shot Billy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 221.
166 “It may be of great interest to discover”: “Persona,” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 900.
166 “The same respect is often not extended to hip-hop artists”: David Banner, “David Banner’s Speech to Congress Over Hip Hop Lyrics,” ballerstatus.com, September 27, 2007.
167 “In hip-hop, the whole ‘keep it real’”: Jay-Z, Stop Smiling No. 33, 2007, 45-46.
167 “I’d say 60 percent is really”: Jason Newman, “Everybody Plays the Fool (Sometimes): Devin the Dude is Hip-Hop’s Court Jester,” Wax Poetics, No. 28, December-January 2008, 52.
172 “Narrative is a verbal presentation”: “Narrative Poetry,” New Princeton Encyclopedia, 814.
SIX Signifying
176 “The ability of the live performer”: Derek Collins, Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), x-xi.
177 “People compare rap to other genres of music”: Cobb, 79.
177 “I don’t write, homie”: “Lil Wayne Interview,” ign.com, June 5, 2004.
178 “I could be at my happiest moment”: ign.com.
178 “When you write a rhyme”: The Art of 16 Bars.
178 “All the lyrics on there were written down”: Coleman, 384.
179 “I think in freestyle”: Spady, “Interview with N.O.R.E. a.k.a. Noreaga,” 92.
181 “the rhetorical principle in Afro-American vernacular discourse”: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 44.
188 “In hip hop—and inside the broken histories of black men in America”: Cobb, 80.
190 “‘Signifying Rapper’ . . . is a tour de force”: William Eric Perkins, Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 17.
191 “an outsized hero that has more sex”: And You Don’t Stop.
191 “The persona overshadows”: And You Don’t Stop.
191 “Exaggerated and invented boasts”: Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 37-38.
192 “When my dad would teach me lessons”: Coleman, 241.
195 “Commercial success and artistic integrity”: Stic.man, 15.
196 “I just think in general our society limits”: Byron Hurt, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (2007).
196 “is allowed to be introspective”: Scott Thill, “Eminem vs. Robert Frost,” Salon.com, March 18, 2004.
199 “to start with the stereotype”: Ralph Ellison, Shadow & Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 43.
199 “Rap is really funny, man”: Vibe, 93.
200 “Hip hop doesn’t place as high a premium on irony”: Cobb, 24.
201 “The blues is an impulse”: Ellison, 129.
201 “Timeless music”: Jay-Z, XXL, 2006.
202 “All I know is I wanted to feel a certain way”: Jason Genegabus, “Mos Def: From Film to Fashion to Music, He’s a Tough Act to Follow,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 18, 2005.
EPILOGUE
209 “The way you do that”: Tom Breihan, “Status Ain’t Hood Interviews Rakim,” VillageVoice.com, June 6, 2006.
210 “Rappers should always remember”: KRS-One, 247.
Index
“6 ’N the Mornin’” (Ice T)
Ab Liva
Accentual meter . See also Meter
“Adventures of Super Rhymes (Rap)”
“Ain’t No Joke” (Rakim)
Ali, Muhammad
Ali Rap
“Alive on Arrival” (Ice Cube)
Alliteration
Altered pronunciation
Alternate reality
American Gangster (Jay-Z)
American Idol
“Amongst Kings” (Nas)
Anaphora
Andre 3000
Annabel Lee (Poe)
Antanaclasis
Apocopated rhyme
Aristotle
The Art of Emceeing (Stic.man)
As You Like It (Shakespeare)
Assonance
Authenticity
Autobiography
AZ
“Baby Don’t Go” (Fabolous)
Bad Lieutenant (film)
Badu, Erykah
Baldwin, James
Ballad form
Ballad meter (common measure) . See also Meter
Banner, David
“Barry Bonds” (Kanye West)
Battle rap. See also Signifying
Beastie Boys
Beat and flow
“Beat Street” (Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)
Beowulf
Beyoncé
Bible
Big Bank Hank (Henry Jackson)
Big business
Big Daddy Kane
Big Noyd
Big Punisher
Biggie. See Notorious B.I.G.
Biggie/Tupac debate. See also Notorious B.I.G.; Shakur, Tupac
Biting (co-opting)
Biz Markie
“The Bizness,”
The Black Album (Jay-Z)
Black English
Black Thought
“Blaze a 50” (Nas)
“Blue Magic” (Jay-Z)
The Blueprint (Jay-Z)
Blues
Boasting. See also Braggadocio; Signifying
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Borrowing
Braggadocio
and autobiography
See also Boasting; Signifying
Break
Breath control
“Brenda’s got a Baby” (Shakur)
“Bring the Noise” (Chuck D)
“Broken Language” (Smoothe da Hustler with Trigga Tha Gambler)
Broken rhyme (split rhyme)
Brown, Cecil
Brown, H. Rap
Browning, Robert
Bryant, Kobe
Bun B
Busta Rhymes
Byron, Lord
Cadence
“California Love” (Shakur)
Campion, Thomas
Cam’ron
“Can I Get A. . . .” (Jay-Z)
“Can’t Tell Me Nothing” (Kanye West)
Capping
Carey, Mariah
Cee-Lo
Chain rhyme
Chamillionaire
Chang, Jeff
Chic
Childhood songs
“Children’s Story” (Slick Rick)
“Childz Play” (Cee-Lo with Ludacris)
The Chronic (Dr. Dre)
Chronicles (Holinshed)
Chubb Rock
Chuck D
Cipher. See also Signifying
Clarity
Clark Kent
Clinton, George
Clipse
CNN
Cobb, William Jelani
Coercive rhyme
Coke La Rock