Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop

by Adam Bradley

Overview

If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured hip hop's revolution of poetic craft and experience: Only in rap music can the beat of a song render poetic meter audible, allowing an MC's wordplay to move a club-full of eager listeners.

Examining rap history's most memorable lyricists and their inimitable techniques, literary scholar Adam Bradley argues that we must understand rap as poetry or miss the vanguard of poetry today. Book of Rhymes explores America's least understood poets, unpacking their surprisingly complex craft, and according rap poetry the respect it deserves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465094400
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	345,943
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Adam Bradley is a professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder where he directs the Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture. The author or editor of six books, Bradley has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, among others. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Table of Contents

Prologue xi

Rap Poetry 101 xiii

Rap Poetry 201 xxv

Part 1

1 Rhythm 3

2 Rhyme 41

3 Wordplay 73

Part 2

4 Style 103

5 Storytelling 133

6 Signifying 149

Epilogue 173

Appendix 181

Acknowledgments 211

Credits 215

Notes 217

Index 227

Editorial Reviews

"Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes is a marvelous exploration into the genius of rap and the cultural gravity of hip hop. His analysis is subtle, sophisticated, and soulful!"—Cornel West

"I [am] fascinated by what I would call the emergent 'artcademic' perspective [Bradley] was describing. Here was someone who grew up with the music and had gone on to study it in a social context as well as 'getting down to it' on the level of language."—Chuck D

'Bradley delivers the intellectual dynamite with this astonishingly researched, passionately argued glove-across-the-face challenge to traditional hip hop scholarship. Superb on every level, a revelation and a joy to read."—Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

So many books have been written about hip hop's history—that time and that magic—but if you don't get it from reading Book of Rhymes, then you're just not going to get it."—Schoolly D

Where some hear noise, Adam Bradley hears the past and future of poetics. With taste, precision, and style, Book of Rhymes explains the art of rap in ways as bold, lyrical, and imaginative as the art form itself. Heads and theorists will find much to love and argue with in this fine work."—Jeff Chang, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

"Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes is the crash course for you."—New York Times Sunday Book Review

"A manifesto.... For Bradley, a couplet by Tupac Shakur [is] a small marvel or 'rhyme (both end and internal), assonance, and alliteration,' given extra propulsion by Shakur's exaggerated stress patterns."—New Yorker

"[Bradley] lays out a nuanced, academically rigorous argument that the best hip hop deserves attention as genuine artistry."—Boston Globe

"[Adam Bradley's] insights are compelling."—Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher

…essentially English 101 meets Hip-Hop Studies 101…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.
—The New York Times

Baz Dreisinger

With hip-hop's tremendous growth over the last decade, the amount of literature covering the genre has increased considerably. Yet, few books have been devoted exclusively to the poetic elements of hip-hop. Having studied under such luminaries as Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr., Bradley (literature, Claremont McKenna Coll.) is emerging as a pioneering scholar in the study of hip-hop. Here, he shows that rap can be analyzed as literary verse while recognizing its essential identity as music. Dissecting hip-hop's dual rhythmic voice-rhymes over beats-Bradley uncovers rap's poetic tradition as well as its progressive contributions to the medium of poetry. He explains terms such as assonance and consonance through the lyrics of Keats and Eminem. Rap is a relatively new genre of music, but lyrical analysis reveals the use of intricate structures steeped in poetic tradition. This refreshing read challenges common assumptions that hip-hop is simple or mundane. Recommended for all public and academic libraries; this will particularly appeal to hip-hop artists and aficionados, poets, and literature students and scholars of the hip-hop generation or younger.
—Joshua Finnell

Library Journal