Decoding Hip and Rap

I listen to a lot of hip hop. As a former English major, I always appreciate the alliteration, assonance and hyperbole that rappers use. But as much as I love the sound of hip hop, I don’t always relate to the lyrics. Luckily there are some insightful books out there to remind me why this music deserves to be taken seriously.

In Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop, Michael Eric Dyson discusses rap lyrics from a philosophical and academic perspective. As Jay-Z says about Dyson in the book’s introduction, “How many folks out there can talk about pimping in terms laid out by Hegel?”

Jay-Z himself discusses his lyrics and the stories behind them in his memoir Decoded. It’s an attractive book full of photos and stories from Jay-Z’s life. Besides giving detailed explanations of some lyrics, the book provides the context in which to view them,  something that a listener might be wise to do before criticizing the stories Jay-Z tells in his songs.

In The Anthology of Rap, editors Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois give readers a chance to read lyrics (in chronological order ) by hundreds of rappers from Afrika Bambaataa to The Wu Tang Clan. The act of reading them is profoundly different from listening to them, in some cases ruining songs I loved and in others making me see the wisdom in artists I had overlooked.

Whether you love hip-hop or cringe every time you hear it ringing out from a teenager’s headphones, it is, like all art, an important part of our culture. And the more you understand it, the easier it is to appreciate.

~Allison R., Beacon Hill Branch