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Rap crash course fails to satisfy
By Baz Dreisinger |
September 20, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ARE you a hip-hop fan who can't tell assonance from alliteration? An English major who doesn't know Biggie from Tupac? Adam Bradley's "Book of Rhymes" is the crash course for you. The book is an analysis of what Bradley calls "the most widely disseminated poetry in the history of the world" -- rap, which he says "is poetry, but its popularity relies in part on people not recognizing it as such."
Bradley, who teaches literature at Claremont McKenna College in California, distinguishes himself from the growing glut of hip-hop scholars by writing a book about rap, as opposed to hip-hop: not a study of the culture or a history of the movement, but a formalist critique of lyrics -- almost an anachronistic effort in the era of cultural studies.
Like so much work in the genre, though, it's by and for the already-sold: those interested enough to care whether 50 Cent's rhymes are monosyllabic or disyllabic, invested enough to wonder why rappers prefer similes to metaphors (because similes "shine the spotlight on their subject more directly than do metaphors," Bradley says).
To that end, the first half of the book is a triumph of jargon-free scrutiny. Bradley takes on rhythm -- from the Greek rheo, meaning "flow," which is apt: flow is what rappers possess -- and dissects rap's "dual rhythmic relationship," its marriage of rhymes and beats (with the beat defined as "poetic meter rendered audible").
Next comes rhyme.
"A skillfully rendered rhyme strikes a balance between expectation and novelty" -- e.g. "My grammar pays like Carlos Santana plays," per Lauryn Hill -- and for rappers, rhyme "provides the necessary formal constraints on their potentially unfettered poetic freedom."
The chapter entitled "Wordplay" is the strongest, and that's appropriate, since play is what hip-hop does best.
But the rest of the book disappoints. Bradley wants to legitimize rap by setting it in a canonical context, but aren't we past the point of justifying it?
He seems to forget that hip-hop now earns highbrow props worldwide.
After three decades, it doesn't require a defense attorney.
Bradley, who teaches literature at Claremont McKenna College in California, distinguishes himself from the growing glut of hip-hop scholars by writing a book about rap, as opposed to hip-hop: not a study of the culture or a history of the movement, but a formalist critique of lyrics -- almost an anachronistic effort in the era of cultural studies.
Like so much work in the genre, though, it's by and for the already-sold: those interested enough to care whether 50 Cent's rhymes are monosyllabic or disyllabic, invested enough to wonder why rappers prefer similes to metaphors (because similes "shine the spotlight on their subject more directly than do metaphors," Bradley says).
To that end, the first half of the book is a triumph of jargon-free scrutiny. Bradley takes on rhythm -- from the Greek rheo, meaning "flow," which is apt: flow is what rappers possess -- and dissects rap's "dual rhythmic relationship," its marriage of rhymes and beats (with the beat defined as "poetic meter rendered audible").
Next comes rhyme.
"A skillfully rendered rhyme strikes a balance between expectation and novelty" -- e.g. "My grammar pays like Carlos Santana plays," per Lauryn Hill -- and for rappers, rhyme "provides the necessary formal constraints on their potentially unfettered poetic freedom."
The chapter entitled "Wordplay" is the strongest, and that's appropriate, since play is what hip-hop does best.
But the rest of the book disappoints. Bradley wants to legitimize rap by setting it in a canonical context, but aren't we past the point of justifying it?
He seems to forget that hip-hop now earns highbrow props worldwide.
After three decades, it doesn't require a defense attorney.
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