![]() I wonder where this criticism of content is articulated about other folk music. Similar to writing a Constitution that ignored the institution of slavery, or going abroad to spread the gospel of democracy while stifling the right of women and black people to vote, ignoring the literary genius in hip-hop’s 40-year-old body of work is so negligent that it is as flagrant as a bald-face lie.ĭetractors ignore the structure and criticize the content. Unfortunately, comments such as those by O’Reilly and Lemon remind me that our country also has a long-standing pathology of dishonesty. They have articulated an etymological perspective with an original slang lexicon and have presented the world with a previously untold story of American life. Hip-hop artists have mastered the English language, with all its nuances and transmutations. I suspect that O’Reilly and Lemon missed it when Lil Wayne said that “Real Gs move in silence like lasagna.” But our young black boys didn’t because they are brilliant. ![]() Scott Fitzgerald’s use of extended simile. Some comparative associations from Kanye West and Lil Wayne resemble F. The character-building methods of Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G., for example, resemble those of H.G. Other literary techniques can also be found in hip-hop. Hip-hop compositions are masterful poetry: The form of the standard hip-hop song is three verses of 16 bars written to various beats-per-minute patterns, which mirrors Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter. Mos Def) calls a contemporary form of black folk music, is replete with literary techniques that have largely been elided from the historical canon of great compositions. Hip-hop, which legendary rapper Yasiin Bey (a.k.a. Socrates is credited with saying that “the unexamined life is not livable for a human being.” There is unexamined genius in the literary work of hip-hop. I’ve developed an entire curriculum, Words Liive, that teaches Common Core State Standards texts through the literary genius of Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Tupac and others. For the past year, I’ve worked with young black and brown boys and girls in the Washington area and watched them consume, comprehend and codify literature ranging from Beowulf to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail. Economics should be the focus, because the effects of music are varied. The real issue is that men, both black and white, are no longer able to support families like they used to when men actually built things in this country. Neither man noted that, of the 25 million children being raised by a single parent in this country in 2011, the largest share by race, 9.5 million, were white, according to the National Kids Count Data Center. The lack of employment opportunities was strangely absent from their analysis. Not long ago, pundits O’Reilly of Fox News and Lemon of CNN asserted that hip-hop music and children raised out of wedlock are root causes of all ills in the black community, including the epidemic of violence in urban areas. ![]() Like many who go to soulful music concerts and experience the rhythms yet are unable to move to the beat, O’Reilly and Lemon have heard hip-hop (allegedly) and completely missed the literary prowess of the music. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that neither Bill O’Reilly nor Don Lemon is a good dancer. ![]()
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