Sexton, A. (ed.). (1995). Rap on rap: Straight-up talk on hip-hop culture. New York City: Delta.

OVERVIEW

Sexton argues the following about rap music:

• It should be taken seriously as art.
  • Neither instruments nor training was available to the inventors of rap.
  • It takes instrumental and vocal skill.
  • It includes challenging poetry—some with classic patterns of rhyme schemes as in Kool Moe Dee’s, "Birdland." (AABA-CCDC-EEFE-GHG).

• Its four basic components should be recognized.
  • "The crucial backing tracks" (including, but not always limited to, samples-funk or disco music borrowed from original sources).
  • Lyrics.
  • A rapper’s delivery or ‘flow’—articulation, phrasing, and the like.
  • Everything else, more or less: "look," originality, aura of legitimacy, charisma. The hard-to-quantify stuff." (p. 8)

• Rap should be critiqued.
  • Snoop Doggy Dogg is arguably the most inventive vocalist in popular music since Sam Cooke. But that doesn’t make the brutality of Snoop’s ‘mostly wearying and obnoxious’ lyrics any less abhorrent. Big Daddy Kane, too, possesses virtuosic talent as a rapper, as well as an outsized persona, but Kane’s killer chops are rarely equaled by the banal music behind him. (p. 9)
• Rap is inadequately critiqued by blacks and whites.
  • Perhaps some black critics fear that they will be accused of disloyalty if they criticize freely. African-American writer Bell Hooks has written (in the anthology Black Popular Culture), "I often confront audiences that are enraged by rigorous criticism...rooted both in the general fear and suspicion of intellectuals and in the traditional black modes of practicing the art of critique which make it appear solely a negative act." (pp. 5-6)
  • There is a fascination and attraction to black culture on the part of many young whites that hinders critique from that quarter.

When Greg Tate allows that Public Enemy’s impromptu lyrics about the racism of the U.S. power structure works, but agrees that their dehumanization of gags, women, and Jews does nothing toward black freedom—that is an example of solid criticism according to Sexton. On the other hand, Vibe magazine’s three-hundred word review of Doggystyle includes only one sentence regarding Snoop Doggy Dogg’s "relentless misogyny." Vibe states, "As for the ‘b---- this, ho that’ rhymes that make up the bulk of Doggystyle (and the ghastly cover cartoon), they’re mostly wearying and obnoxious." Sexton takes Vibe to task for such minimization of a serious flaw.

Kephura Burns provides some historical background for rap and the dozens:

Be we preachers, players, or just plain folks, our ability to wield words with wit and rhythm has given us power when there was little within our grasp. We are a race of rappers from way back.

In the 1950s, when the brothers on my block were rhythmically slapping their chests and thighs, ‘doin’ that crazy hand jive,’ it seemed as novel to us then as rap must have seemed to kids in the South Bronx a generation later. Come to find out, we were ‘rapping’ in the 1850s-trading tall tales, handing out verbal abuse in rhymes, and providing our own rhythmic, chest-whacking, thigh-slapping, accompaniment. Back then it was called ‘pattin’ juba.’

Among the Rundi of Burundi in east central Africa, everyone plays the game of matching wits through verbal thrusts and parrying...In the Caribbean, Trinidadians put music to the dozens and invented Calypso...The Hausa say uwarka (‘your mother’), which is really short ka ci uwarka (unprintable). In the Creole-speaking Caribbean, manman ou and koukoun manman ou mean roughly the same thing.

Tensions are dissipated through words that fly fast and sting but also provoke laughter and inspire admiration for cleverness and skill in using language creativity. It tests our ability to remain cool under pressure. And verbal dueling provides young brothers and sisters a training ground for adulthood in a society where firepower and sheer numbers dictate that we do battle with whites verbally rather than physically. (Sexton, 1995, pp. 31-36)

This book enters the hip-hop scene and provides its reader with understanding to appreciate and critique rap music. Here you will find provocative essays, insightful interviews, and many rap lyrics.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What was added to your understanding of rap from this brief article?
2. What questions do you want to raise or see discussed?
3. What does rap tell us about urban realities and hip hop culture?
4. How might rap be prophetic, survivalist, and exhibitionist?
5. Why, do you think, is rap popular among many rich, white, junior high girls?
6. In what order would you place the elements of rap that make it popular across so many kinds of young people today?
7. How does rap need to be critiqued?

IMPLICATIONS

When young black males were rendered silent in our society, they found a voice. When their plight was ignored, rap helped them get attention. As underemployed, they found a way to make white society pay them for complaining. If the suburbs were a way of getting away from the problems of the city, rap found its way to suburbia. Though we may ignore rap, our children will not.

Dean Borgman cCYS