All Things Relavant Magazine

24 All Things Relevant April 2012 All Things Relevant April 2012 25

All

April 2012

Drake : Eminem : J. Cole

Jay- ZOn his book

Decoded

Is Rap

Poetry?

T h i n g s R e l e v a n t

J. Cole How poetry influennces

his music

Contents

J. Cole

But is Rap Poetry?

Poetry by Jennifer Kathleen Phillips

Poetic Lyricist

26

27-28

29

31


po·et·ry[poh-i-tree]po·et·ry

There are many forms of poetry. Some are best read while others are best

viewed and in the future we may add that some are best felt or experienced.

Some think that “good poetry” must rhyme while others think that “good”

poetry “speaks” giving a clear or profound message. Others may call poetry that be-‐

haves like a springboard, launching creative responses in those who share it, the best,

but however it is viewed poetry like fashion is clothed in styles that affect their accept-‐

ability and/or respectability and promotion and all poetry is about communication. It

publishes, records or makes visible our experiences as well as showing things that have

-‐

cation experience.

-‐by Jennifer Kathleen Phillips

One of the best comic subplots in Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty concerns the wary al-liance of Carl,

a brilliant but un-schooled rap-per, and Claire Malcolm, the well-mean-ing poet who enrolls him in her col-lege writing workshop. Claire !rst hears Carl perform when she takes her class to a spo-ken word night at a local cafe: the purpose of the trip, Smith writes, is “to show her new stu-dents that poetry was a broad church, one that she was not afraid to explore.” But even Claire is surprised when Carl takes the microphone and throws out “compli-cated multi-syl labic

lines with apparent ease,” telling “a witty, artic-ulate tale about the various obstacles in the spiritual and material progress of a young black man.” Impressed by his gi", the poet immediately takes it upon herself to edu-cate the rapper, Henry Higgins-style: “Are you interested in re!ning what you have?” she asks Carl. “We’d like to talk to you. We have an idea for you.”

#e idea, Claire reveals, is that Carl is a John Clare for the twenty-!rst century--a proletarian genius who only needs to

be taught iambic pentameter in order to write great poetry. (“You’re almost think-

ing in sonnets already,” she reassures him.) Smith shows that Carl is

both attracted by this kind of attention from the

literary-educational establishment and rightfully suspi-cious of it. He tells the workshop that his writing is “not even a poem. . .It’s rap.... #ey two di$erent things. . .two di$erent art forms. Ex-cept rap ain’t no art form. It’s just

rap.” Smith cap-tures the comedy of

cross purposes: to the poet, turning a rap-

per into a poet is a cultural

promo-

tion; t o

t h e rapper, it looks more like a forfeiture of au-thenticity. And it is hard to imagine why any rapper would want to make such an ex-change. If Carl hits it big as an MC, he can look forward to becoming rich and famous, with an audience of millions of passionate fans. If he succeeds as a poet, he can look forward to--tenure.

No wonder that, in the real world, poets have been more interested in what they can learn from rap than vice versa. Ironically, poets who are considered aesthetic conser-

vatives have been most enthusiastic about hip-hop. #e premise of “new formalism,” to use a term almost as old as the Sugarhill Gang, is that rhyme, meter, and narrative are the de!ning elements of poetry, and that their absence from most contemporary po-etry explains the genre’s unpopularity and cultural irrelevance. #e huge popularity of rap, which is committed to all those tradi-tional techniques, seems to clinch the case. Dana Gioia, in his 2003 essay “Disappearing Ink,” called rap “the new oral poetry,” and hoped that it could spark a “renovation from the margins” of literary poetry. “While the revival of form and narrative among young literary poets could be dismissed by critical tastemakers as benighted antiquarianism and intellectual pretension,” Gioia writes, “its universal adoption as the prosody-of-choice by disenfranchised urban blacks. . .is] impossible to dismiss in such simplistic ideological terms.”

Yet while the editors acknowl-edge that “reading rap will never be the same as listening to it,” The Anthology of Rap is meant to be more than a collection of song lyr-ics. As scholars of poetry, they natu-rally believe that reading is a more digni!ed form of apprehension than listening--DuBois is the editor of a book called Close Reading: The Reader--and the premise of this an-thology is that MCs are essentially writers: “This is not, after all, a col-lection of lyrics from rap’s greatest hits, but rather a collection of rap’s best poetry.”

But is Rap Poetr y?


The popularity of Rap music has elic-ited a variety of critical responses, but very little focus on the poetry itself. #is essay discusses Rap’s

ties to earlier forms of African-American folk-poetry and analyzes the conventional structures of rhetoric, rhythm, and rhyme within which Rap artists operate.

Twenty years a"er its gen-esis, Rap poetry remains a vast-ly popular art-

form across the continent and around the world, although its importance as a new type of poet-ic expression has been virtually unexplored by the scholarly com-munity and by most poets. #e reasons for this lack of atten-tion include cultural di$erences between Euro-American and African-American sensibilities, the re-luctance of academ-ic poets and critics to embrace popular culture, and the inability of print-based analysis to deal adequately with oral artistry. Recently, however, a number of critics have begun to explore Rap from a variety of perspectives. Richard Shuster-man (1991), for example, presents a case for Rap as a postmodern art-form by focusing on the music’s technological aesthetic and rampant intertextuality. Houston Baker’s Rap, Black Studies and the Academy (1993) treats the roles of race and class in deter-mining attitudes toward Rap. Russell Pot-ter’s Spectacular Vernaculars (1995) pulls back the various facades of Rap to rev eal an inspiring subversive politics. Other critics, like Tricia Rose (1994), take a sociological perspective, while still others, such as Tim Brennan (1994) and Robert Walser (1995), focus on the musical aesthetic.

While each of these stud-ies has its own obvious merits, what seems most required at this point is a

more basic and “poetic” approach, one that would give poets and scholars some context and keys to understanding Rap as poetry and not merely as a phenomenon of popular culture. What is needed, in short, is a focus on the three R’s which form the material es-sence of Rap: rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric. #us, in the following essay, I will attempt to demonstrate that Rap is a contemporary form of the ages-old tradition of folk-po-

e t r y and that it derives its rhetorical power

from a unique use of rhythm and rhyme. Specif-ically, in the !rst part of this essay I will show how the rhetorical tradi-

tions of African-Amer-ican folk-poet-ry co-evolved with electric com mu n i-cation tech-nology and how both eventually came to-gether to form the Rap style. T h i s overview will pro-vide the n e c e s -sary con-

text for the second

part of this essay, in which

I will illustrate the interrelationship between the three R’s of rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric through an analysis (and attempt to chart the beat) of the recordings of several well-known, com-mercially successful Rap artists, all of which should be readily available (for listening pur-poses) in libraries and used-record shops.

A lot of rap music features as much Shake-

William Blake -

Heart in Hip-Hop is like the core of the Earth; it’s what everything thrives off of. Few artists today have real

heart, real honesty. Commercial rap with little meaning and random “clev-er” lyrics might’ve shined a light for those who otherwise wouldn’t have discovered Hip-Hop, but that’s about all it’s good for. This pop rap brings in misguided newcomers who believe Hip-Hop started with Lil Wayne and carries on with Drake. But true Hip-Hop presents the center for what makes good music and good poetry: striking truth and genuine passion. J. Cole’s “Cole World: The Sideline Story” is

bit more.

Imagine taking a dash of Tu-pac’s poetic honesty, a teaspoon of Kanye’s orchestrating genius, some spoonfuls of Jay-Z’s swag

do you get? You get J. Cole, the up-and-coming rapper whose talent has quickly shot him to the head of Hip-Hop’s junior league (followed only by Yelawolf and Kendrick Lamar). This man has skills – skills unmatched by anyone in his class. I’ve listened to Hip-Hop all my life; I was raised on Hip-Hop, and I’ve long been fascinated with words and writing. Studying Hip-Hop has shown me the power words

can have. Stating that, I must say J. Cole is our generation’s next power-ful poet. Before him lies Kanye, Jay-Z, Eminem and, of course, the gods of Hip-Hop, Tupac and Biggie. “The

both meaningful and invigorating. Listening to the beat-banging “God’s Gift” will have your head rocking and your brain buzzing. “Cole World” will keep you hyped up with a hard-hitting beat and explosive lyrics. The slow, cool “In the Morning” is a nice ro-mancing song that helps chill out the

Drake’s somewhat incestuous verse. J. Cole has something distinctly new about his style of rapping. He some-times utilizes the clever, punch line

-ingful way. Yet, it’s Cole’s metaphorical and storytelling skills that remind me so much of Tupac’s. While Cole isn’t on the poetic level of Pac (saying so is sort of like blasphemy), one can clearly see

not a pointless rapper.

Cole’s understanding and anal-ysis of female-male relations border on modern philoso-phy and are amazing. The

back-and-forth perspectives about child birth on “Lost Ones” is a perfect example of this. Let’s be clear: “Side-line Story” is not a boring and overly

and uninteresting lyrics. Cole is also an amazing beat maker, and his songs sound as powerful as their message. The memorable, radio-loved “Work Out” is a prime example of what Cole does best. He gives you a wonderful sound, coupled with crafty, interest-ing, intelligent lyrics. His grind and struggle are presented through every line he uses. One can feel him push-ing every metaphor, simile and anal-ogy to the max. “Cause the ones y’all thought would save the day can’t even tie my boots/The ones y’all thought could hang with me can’t even tie my noose!”And his meaningful tales will captivate you all the way to the end. “Breakdown” is one of the most hon-est, heartfelt songs I’ve heard in a long while. The album is both intelligent and relevant. And solely producing 12 of the songs off the album, Cole

time I heard J. Cole on “Who Dat” and -

time I’m glad to say I was completely wrong. Take an hour out of your life, sit down and listen to this album from beginning to ending. “The Sideline

and I would highly suggest getting the deluxe edition of the album; the extra songs are absolutely worth it.

DiscographyMixtapes

#e Come Up (2007)

#e Warm Up (2009)

Friday NIght Lights (2010)

Studio AlbumsCole World: #e Sideline Story (2011)

J. Cole


“I hope readers take away from this book that rap is poetry. It’s thought-provoking; there’s thought behind it,” he said. “There’s great writing in rap as well. You never hear rappers being compared for like the greatest rap writers of all time. You hear Bob Dylan. So is Biggie Smalls in a Hitchcock way. Some of the things that Biggie wrote... Rakim, I mean, listen to some of the things he wrote, if you take those lyrics and you pull them away from the music and put ‘em up on the wall somewhere and someone had to look at them, they would say, ‘This is genius! This is genius work!’ I want people to take that away.”

-On his book Decoded

Jay- Z

Baby you summertime !ne, I let you get on top, I be the underline

Im trying to get beside you like the number 9, dime

You !ne as hell,

I guess I met you for a reason, only time can tell

But well,

Im wondering what type of shit you wantin’

Do you like the !ner things or you a simple woman

Would you drink with a n-gga, do you smoke weed

Don’t be ashamed, it aint no thing, I used to blow trees

Gettin li"ed,

I quit but sh-t, I might get high with you

Its only !tting cause Im looking super #y with you

A #ower, you are powerful,

you do something to me

cause girl I caught the vibe like you threw something to me So i threw em back,

now all my n-ggas hollerin, who was that

Oh boy, she bad n-gga, what you bout do with that

I’m !nna take you home,

just sip a little patron

Now we zonin’,

baby you so !ne

In The Morning -J. Cole verse 1

Black Hippy

Interscope and AftermathPresents...

Album Coming Soon...


In the last few years, rap music has risen to the surface more than ever and has seemingly become more

mainstream than pop. One of the rap artists responsible for helping it cross over from the underground is Eminem, a white rapper from the bad side of Detroit. His fans adore him because he is good looking and tough, unafraid to say what he thinks, and most of all, one of the most talented mc’s to walk into the limelight. His critics hate him for some of the same reasons, but most notably, because his

messages of violence, drugs, rebellion and profanity.

Unfortunately, not many people are

talking about his lyrics as poetry. His poems are beautifully constructed much like a Bach fugue, with accents falling in and out of syncopation, rhymes that cover and surpass the complete textbook of rhyming schemes, and subject matter that could only be culled from real life experiences. Mix all of that with incredibly passionate delivery and you have Eminem, one of America’s greatest living poets.

Like Emily Dickenson, Eminem often uses near-rhyme in his

prose. This technique proves interesting in rap-music because the artist has the choice of pronouncing the syllables exactly

as they are written or, in the case of Eminem, bending the sounds to make them seemingly rhyme. By pronouncing the words to sound similar, Eminem can use a greater range of near-rhymes, increasing the palette of words from which to paint from. Eminem’s lyrics appear to be based on his own life stories and experiences, giving us an artistic insight into his troubled world. Most of the greatest poets write about their own world and perspectives, bringing the reader or listener into it for a brief moment in time. Eminem’s stories are fascinating, and

like Shakespeare, his tales are often Tragedy or Comedy, with complexities similar to some of Shakespeare’s plays.

As a wordsmith, he is a master. He carefully

constructs combinations that aren’t cliche or normally used in rap music, so that his songs leave you with a fresh feeling of hearing something original and out of the ordinary. As for his use of profanity, art imitates the society in which it is created.

language and what some people call a change in moral structure. Eminem’s music certainly

my opinion, properly.

As a rap star, Eminem is unique, but when

examined as a poet, his work

greatest poets that ever lived.

Poetic Lyricist

Bad Meets EvilOne os his more recent works

34 All Things Relevant April 2012

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