| Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop | |
 | |
| Author | Adam Bradley |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Keenan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Hip hop |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Basic Civitas Books |
| Publication date | February 23, 2009 |
| Pages | 272 pp |
| ISBN | 0465003478 |
Wikipedia
Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop is a book by music scholar Adam Bradley which looks at rap’s literary techniques and argues “that we must understand rap as poetry or miss the vanguard of poetry today”[1]. The Dallas Morning News describes it by saying, “you'll find Yeats and Frost alongside Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan, together forming a discussion on meter and accent, scansion and slant rhymes”[2]. Bradley is an assistant professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College, with a Phd in English from Harvard University[3][4].
Contents[hide] |
Contents
The book breaks rap’s poetics down into the following parts[5]. –
Reception
The book has been praised by various press outlets such as the Los Angeles Times[6], The Dallas Morning News[7], and the Boston Globe[8].
In particular, the book is praised for focusing on the poetics of rap rather than examining the outlying societal factors – the Los Angeles Times notes, “as a key part of America's youth culture and a central battlefield in our culture wars, hip-hop often seems to have forfeited the right to be discussed as art. Most academic and popular writers subjugate its aesthetics to its politics… until very recently, such writers could be counted on to begin around the time of hip-hop's birth and attempt to tackle the entire culture… luckily, a new paradigm of scholarship is emerging, and Adam Bradley's "Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop" is a solid contribution”[9], and The Dallas Morning News comments, “where so many hip-hop studies lean heavily on politics and sociology, Book of Rhymes is a welcome and thorough exploration of rap aesthetics that isn't afraid to be learned”[10].
References
- ^ http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/civitas/book_detail.jsp;jsessionid=7D7C5F530ACD72F8169DEE636EA9DD22?isbn=0465003478
- ^ http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_rhymes_0419gd.State.Edition1.4a68c86.html
- ^ Bradley, Adam, 2009, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, Basic Civitas Books, back cover.
- ^ http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_rhymes_0419gd.State.Edition1.4a68c86.html
- ^ Bradley, Adam, 2009, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, Basic Civitas Books, p. vii.
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/19/entertainment/et-book19
- ^ http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_rhymes_0419gd.State.Edition1.4a68c86.html
- ^ http://adamfbradley.com/rhymes.php
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/19/entertainment/et-book19
- ^ http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_rhymes_0419gd.State.Edition1.4a68c86.html
External links
Def Poetry
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 — essentially English 101 meets Hip-Hop Studies 101 — is an analysis of what Bradley calls “the most widely disseminated poetry in the history of the world”: rap, which he rightly says “is poetry, but its popularity relies in part on people not recognizing it as such.”
BOOK OF RHYMES
The Poetics of Hip Hop
By Adam Bradley
248 pp. Basic Civitas Books. Paper, $16.95
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: “the music M.C.’s make with their mouths.” “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. We’re treated to lyric upon juicy lyric — not just from the usual suspects, to Bradley’s credit — filled with similes, conceits, personification, even onomatopoeia (“Woop! Woop! That’s the sound of da police,” KRS-One rapped).
But the rest of the book disappoints. There are labored discussions of style, that mélange of voice, technique and content; of storytelling (rap has its screenwriters, investigative reporters, memoirists, children’s authors and spiritualists, Bradley notes); and of signifying, otherwise known as swagger, derived from African-American oral traditions like the dozens and the toasts. The author delivers unrevelatory revelations: “All rappers are poets; whether they are good poets or bad poets is the only question.” And he asks questions — “Can rap be both good business and good poetry?” “Why is braggadocio so vital to the art form?” — that have long since been answered by others.
Throughout, Bradley draws surprising connections. Langston Hughes’s 1931 poem “Sylvester’s Dying Bed” is set alongside Ice-T’s classic gangsta track “6 ’n the Mornin’ ”; they employ the same form, and both make ample use of the vernacular. Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is analogous in structure and storytelling style to the Sugarhill Gang’s landmark “Rapper’s Delight.” Robert Browning’s portentous dramatic monologues are akin to Eminem’s. And the Brooklyn rapper Fabolous’s brusque style earns comparisons to John Skelton’s chain rhyming — which might as well be hip-hop, 16th-century style: “Tell you I chyll, / If that ye wyll / A whyle be styll, / Of a comely gyll / That dwelt on a hyll.” Such parallels are vital to Bradley’s central claim: “The best M.C.’s . . . deserve consideration alongside the giants of American poetry. We ignore them at our own expense.”
But who’s the “we” here? Bradley wants to legitimize rap by setting it in a canonical context, but aren’t we past the point of justifying it? True, CNN is clueless enough to ask, as it did on a 2007 program, “Hip-Hop: Art or Poison?” But no one is really still debating whether hip-hop is a bona fide art form. “Rap rhymes are often characterized as simplistic,” writes Bradley, who admits to finding himself “in the position of defending the indefensible, of making the case to excuse the coarse language and the misogynistic messages.” He needn’t try so hard; in his tone of unwarranted protectiveness, 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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