Comments on: Sylvia Plath—original hip-hop poet

By: JeFF Stumpo

JeFF Stumpo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:36:04 +0000

@Michael Robbins – Regarding the music, I agree with you completely regarding El-P. I will admit to listening to Aesop Rock only as remixed by J.Kingz (look up the Rockhead EP) – Bazooka Tooth vocals over Portishead music. It works. It really works.
As far as the elliptical vocals, they’re hit or miss for me. In this case, I thought that the garbled word salad in “Babies with Guns” was impressive, if one enjoys elliptical lines (and I do – though I’d rather listen to Aesop Rock repeat these lines than, say, almost anything by Bernstein…check that, Bernstein can amuse me for up to 5-10 minutes…after that, it gets old). Many of Aesop’s other songs don’t do it for me, on first, second, or third listening. Thus I don’t bother bringing them up here. Similarly, I dig Christine Hume’s poetry. It’s complex and odd and says very different things to very different people. I don’t dig Gertrude Stein’s…creations, which I find do the same thing in a million small variations.
@Aaron Fagan – I’m not going to get into arguments over who is the best rapper (nor who is the best poet), just over what lyrics are good/useful (I’ll make a distinction there). Yes, it’s nice to make these kinds of lists, and we all feel good for being in the know about who can out-spit whom (also, different from who can out-write whom). But really, for these kinds of dialogue to be taken seriously in this context, that of THE POETRY FOUNDATION (in all its monolithic glory, may we bask therein) etc, etc, etc, it’s got to be somewhere beyond “stunt sheep” and all the nicknames for Kool Keith. Paste some Kool Keith lyrics and let us know why we should respect them. That’s what I do with my creative writing students if we get onto the subject (please note, I’m not condescending to you as one of my students, just using an anecdote). I may have been a bit snarky in tone there – my apologies if so.
@Alan Gilbert – Thanks. As a poet who works both page and stage (yeah, you can see me doing stuff on YouTube and in the pages of Fence), part of my “job” is to examine how/why certain things work. I hear some amazing work in hip-hop, even, from time to time, in mainstream/radio hip-hop, and I have to be able to explain why to colleagues and students alike. This is a great dialogue – thanks for starting it!
@Everybody – Thanks for new artists to check out!

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:33:18 +0000

Yes, Burial's two records keep getting deeper. You might check out The Bug's London Zoo, Alan, if you haven't already. "Change Clothes" is indeed vile -- & it's the Neptunes, too, as I recall! But to judge from The Blueprint Vol. 2, Kingdom Come, & American Gangster, Jay-Z has, alas, fallen off -- & not just from a small height, bruising his shins. Splattered, rather, across the sidewalk.

By: Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:53:20 +0000

I’m glad people are contributing to this thread. I’d like to see hip-hop taken seriously as poetry, and Jeff Stumpo’s close reading of DMX and Aesop Rock lyrics is exactly what the dialogue needs. Really fabulous. Thanks.
Again, the Jay-Z lyrics are not meant to represent his best. He’s actually a tremendous lyricist (as Michael Robbins points out), even if the “money, cash, hoes” motifs can start to wear a little thin. (At the same time, he’s responsible for one of the worst songs—and not just hip-hop—ever: “Change Clothes.” It’s right up there with Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City.”)
John Sakkis, you turned me on to some of the Anticon stuff, so I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a falling out with it. Actually, some of their recent releases have disappointed me as well. But I do like that Why? CD a lot. My new DJ /rupture (not that I’ve stopped listening to him)? Burial. Although I’m sure that’s old news to you.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:43:29 +0000

I’m actually more excited about hip-hop’s populist analogue this year, with great records already by Ashton Shepherd & Sugarland & a new Taylor Swift due in the fall.
This might be the most memorable hip-hop moment in a minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sg2DAHGHlw&feature=related. Notice all the fans singing along — what chance of headz breaking out in “Tim McGraw”?

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:07:52 +0000

Aesop, etc. are stunt sheep. Real is:
Kool Keith
AKA Dr. Octagon
AKA Dr. Dooom
AKA Mr. Nogatco
AKA Black Elvis

By: John Sakkis

John Sakkis — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:00:44 +0000

hi alan,
busdriver’s roadkillovercoat is still the most memorable rap record to come out last couple years…07 right?
BARR is making amazing “rap” music…
there’s nothing that bores me more than retro-rap a la spankrock (a la booty/ miami bass)…actually The Cool Kids don’t bore me (i liked 1988 as a year), but i don’t think they need to release more than one album…i mean, why would they?
nerd-hop is dead, folk-hop is dead, RIP goth-hop (Alias), project blowed is done (or should be), def jux is still putting out good things when they do, slut-rap is just totally boring (goodbye Peaches thank god…), backpacker rap has been gone for at least 8 years now. and nobody in the Bay Area misses it…
i made a mistake, every boy goes through his Anticon phase right? mine lasted 4 years…i can’t really listen to that stuff anymore…sadly including Why?’s masterpiece Alopecia (which i own, which is currently collecting dust…)
M.I.A.’s paper airplanes might be this year’s best single…you kind of can’t mess with that The Clash beat…
otherwise, yeah, man, hip hop…i just don’t care anymore…this makes me sad…i’m waiting to care again…
alan, i miss trading music…hip me to something that will make me believe…like, give me another DJ Rupture…
i have sets to play, but i mostly just play psychedelic rock now…people like it…i think if i played hip hop at the places i play in SF i might be boo’d…and i wouldn’t blame them…if i was on myspace my mood would be “cynical”…
xo-johnny

By: michael robbins

michael robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:53:00 +0000

I don’t mind Aesop Rock but I don’t think he has a tenth the talent of Jay-Z, as a lyricist or as a rapper — & I tire easily of El-P’s increasingly one-note cacophonies (contradiction intended).
Aesop’s word salad ADD reminds me of a lot of contemporary “elliptical” or, as one wag has it, “umbilically garped fraggle” poetry. Clever the first time around, the second time around ask someone who made it that far.

By: JeFF Stumpo

JeFF Stumpo — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:00:45 +0000

To toss out two examples of exceptional lyricism in rap, I offer up “Who We Be” by DMX and “Babies With Guns” by Aesop Rock.
DMX’s rough iambs are deceptively simple – “The projects, the drugs, the children, the thugs, / the tears, the love, the hugs, the slugs.” Rather than the sloppy bouncing among subjects of an amateur, these quick shifts serve to level everything about which he talks. He’s consciously making children and the projects, love and bullets, sonically equivalent. It’s a despair created through the rhythm/sound as well as the content. The first verse in particular sets up a distinct heartbeat rhythm that doesn’t let up, even without the beat behind it. Everything is contained in these short bursts (also appropriate to the violent subject matter).
By the second verse, the lines are straining to get out of that design:
“The streets, the cops, the system, harassment,
The options, get shot, go to jail, or getcha ass kicked
The lawyers, the part they are of the puzzle
The release, the warning: ‘Try not, to get in trouble’…”
And finishing off that second verse:
“The riot squad with the captain, nobody knows what happened
The two years in a box, revenge, the plots
The twenty-three hours that’s locked, the one hour that’s not [note especially how here, in reference to physical confinement, the rhythm breaks]
The silence, the dark, the mind, so fragile
The wish that the streets would have took you when they had you
The days, the months, the years, despair
One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer”
The punctuation may be a bit different in the published lyrics, but you can easily read the proper cadence, and its desire to break itself, in a line like “The wish that the streets would have took you when they had you.” This is actual poetry in rap – form and content supporting and augmenting each other.
For Aesop Rock’s “Babies With Guns,” the lyrics alternate between easily accessible:
“If the Jesus piece around your neck is bigger than your pistol
It makes homicide okey-dokey, and your god will forgive you.
Just show the saints at heaven’s gate you should be on the list.
I hear he overlooks manslaughter for a tatooed crucifix.”
or
“When global terrorism’s all the rage your folk get smoked local.”
I could argue that the internal rhyme of that second selection is superb, bursting forth and increasing in density as it approaches the punchline/endpoint (i.e. the way the long O’s stack up 3:1 in the latter half of the line). Just say it aloud.
However, a more interesting point with this same poem is to point out its desire to be listened to more than once, to create odd and interesting metaphors that require active listening on the part of the audience. Consider, for example:
“…after you thumb sucking diaper chains
Give birth and shoot the school up
I duel, too, but only to exploit no brainers
Teenager beef past alligator teeth
And extra-curricular flagpole scrappin’
Amongst tadpoles that have yellow backbones
Team mechanism brought airborn shrapnel scraps to hassle captain
By the itchy index of an umbilically garped fraggle baby”
I’ve already taken up so much space, I won’t try to offer a reading of what’s going on here (as well as admitting that I don’t have a definitive interpretation for all the lines). But I want to point out that active interpretation is indeed necessary here. This isn’t slang, coded language that will immediately be understood by the proper sub-group. “Thumb sucking diaper chains” is not a key to which every hip-hop listener will say, “Oh yeah.” It’s a metaphorical poke at adults who never stopped being children. And, while it’s highly political, it’s complex. Perhaps too obscure as well, but certainly beyond the simplicity of the Jay-Z lines quoted in the article.

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:35:48 +0000

Flow is a vocal call and response to the breaks. Flow doesn’t necessarily mean seamless. A person can be dirty and still have great flow.

By: Vijay Chaudhoury

Vijay Chaudhoury — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:07:00 +0000

“Still, thinking about the album makes me realize how hip hop albums succeed and fail when they try to get political in much the same way that poetry does. That’s probably why less and less poets seem to do it (I’m sure someone is going to correct me) and less and less rappers seem to do it (again I’m sure someone will correct me).” This is very interesting to me. But also confusing. It seems to say that something is always true, that hip hop and poetry fail when they try to get political. But then it also says that there is change over time, less political stuff. So there’s this big always truth and rappers and poets are gradually responding to it?
I wonder if there’s a different way to see things. Not a correction, just a question. In hip hop there was this high tide for political rap, in the second half of the eighties, when Afrocentric ruled. And at that time political rap was often better than non-political rap and also really caught an audience, like PE and KRS. But by a decade later and even now that isn’t true any more, and the best rap isn’t especially political and gets no dap. So maybe it’s not always true about political hip hop, but only true sometimes, and instead of having a big rule about it someone could wonder why some times are better for political rap than other times? And the same question for poetry?
And what does “flow” mean anyway? Technically speaking, beyond “siad it in a cool way”?