close readings of rap music

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The only thing i've found that attempts this (lamely) is that Adam Krims book.

― peter $.., Friday, 1 October 2004 03:43 (twenty years ago) link

of rap lyrics or rap music? what do you mean by "close readings"?

close readings of rap lyrics would only be valuable if the author understood the nature of rap lyrics, the gamesmanship and wordplay and allusiveness of them, and didn't read them as some kind of work of literature with "themes" and a "point" (well maybe rakim has a point but he's boring).

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:10 (twenty years ago) link

...which is a tall order considering the dense-ness of most academics doing work on popular music these days.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:10 (twenty years ago) link

maybe djdee could ask his lecturer

― gaz (gaz), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:11 (twenty years ago) link

Oh, you didn't like the IASPM stuff?

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:12 (twenty years ago) link

(Not that I totally disagree, necessarily.)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:15 (twenty years ago) link

i'm often astonished at how imaginatively allusive good rap lyrics are, how they have this bizarre body of references and knowledge and verbal shortcuts that the audience is presumed to know, and the lyrics are able to draw on those, often very obliquely, on the way to an incredibly dense web of "meaning" (i use "meaning" only the loosest sense, i.e. the moment to moment signification of the words, not some overall project or argument). it's doubly interesting when a rapper with a long following can basically introduce a new vocabulary himself (or with the help of others), and then play off that in subsequent lyrics. sorry if this sounds too eggheady. i'm mostly just incredibly impressed with hip-hop (the good stuff) and it always pains me when writing about it strays so far from capturing what is exciting about it.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:18 (twenty years ago) link

what was the IASPM stuff? is what the link you showed me earlier? sorry, i haven't had much time to track this stuff down lately. in three months i'll have the time to look at it in earnest.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:20 (twenty years ago) link

Yeah, I wondered if you were referring to that with your comment about academic writing on pop being dense. But I guess you weren't.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:40 (twenty years ago) link

(or the academics themselves being dense!)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:41 (twenty years ago) link

i meant dense as in "thick" uh i mean as in "oblivious"

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:48 (twenty years ago) link

There's several books available on just this sort of thing. The hip hop book of lists and O-Dub's book and SEVERAL on Tupac.
Wasn't there a class at Rutgers on 'Pac's lyrical content?

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Friday, 1 October 2004 04:58 (twenty years ago) link

Who exactly is 50 Cents calling "shorty"?

― Sasha (sgh), Friday, 1 October 2004 05:33 (twenty years ago) link

ts: close reading vs. getting all up in your grill

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 1 October 2004 05:37 (twenty years ago) link

David foster wallace did a bit of this in his largely embarassing "Signifying Rappers"

― \(^o^)/ (Adrian Langston), Friday, 1 October 2004 06:12 (twenty years ago) link

I somehow managed to get a senior honors thesis paper proposal approved that may or may not involve a bit of close reading of hip hop. Things are still a bit vague at this point, but does anybody know of a few more good examples of "close readings" (specific titles that I could look up) that might give me an idea of what a close reading of hip hop is (cos I really only have a slightly better idea of what that means than the idiot professors who approved my thesis proposal do.)

Also, what might be the pitfalls to avoid in doing a close reading? Besides trying to OED "skeet," that is.

And yes, I've decided that OED is now a verb.

― if only i could afford a backpack, Saturday, 2 October 2004 01:07 (twenty years ago) link

Also, what might be the pitfalls to avoid in doing a close reading? Besides trying to OED "skeet," that is.

trying to impose critical categories developed for other artforms onto rap music would be pitfall #1

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Saturday, 2 October 2004 01:11 (twenty years ago) link

yikes, a close reading of hip-hop would entail for me rewinding constantly; i see hiphop as thriving on the cusp of meaning and sound so obv. you couldn't just read it as poetry. maybe stick to the sociallly conscious shit, heh. i guess it depends on your discipline; seems like it'd be fun to do a linguistics thesis on hip-hop

― jake b. (cerybut), Saturday, 2 October 2004 06:29 (twenty years ago) link

jake, right on abt linguistics. i'd like to see steven pinker handle some rap.

but does anybody know of a few more good examples of "close readings"
i've posted abt these a few times before, but the adam krims i refd up top is called Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, and despite its dated and mediocre analyses of AZ's lyrics, it covers the reorchestration of music theory quite well (as i'm sure countless non-rap pop academics have).
this is just a crackpot theory of mine, but there is a book called Dylan's Vision of Sin that reads (listens) Dylan's stuff against poetry classics and the seven deadly sins, and that might be a good starting point for any modern music analysis (esp rap re sin).

amat, i'd think the music and lyrics of rap would go hand in hand in a good system of reading.

― peter $.., Saturday, 2 October 2004 06:54 (twenty years ago) link

yes, so the method employed would have to be attentive to the nuances of both music and lyrics and how they interact.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Saturday, 2 October 2004 07:16 (twenty years ago) link

I think the problem that would face most readings of rap lyrics would be the level of attention to intertextuality that would be required. I'm not sure if it would be possible to do a meaningful close reading of the lyrics of one rap track (or even the lyrics of just one artist) in isolation. With rock the intertextual references are less dense, and generally more easily parsed by the novice as well I suspect.

(I wonder if the "Jay-Z got corny" meme is in relation to this? Does it really refer to the decreasing intertextuality of his lyrics on his albums?)

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 2 October 2004 07:26 (twenty years ago) link

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