Hanif Abdurraqib on Rap's Supposed 'lack of lyricism'

Paris Review shares an excerpt from Hanif Abdurraqib's new book, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, in which Abdurraqib talks about lyrical style. "The question I spent most of my time answering in 2017," Abdurraqib recalls, "was how I felt about what is now called 'mumble rap' in the popular discourse—rappers who eschew lyrical prowess in the name of drum-heavy trap beats and melodic choruses." From there: 

If there’s one thing that’s for sure, changing trends in music will forever have their scapegoats, and because the trends in rap music shift so rapidly, scapegoats appear and then are replaced by new scapegoats nearly every two or three years. Shiny-suit rap was a scapegoat once, back after Biggie was murdered, and Tupac murdered before that, and conservative media outlets were delighting in what surely was soon to be the death of the genre they hated most. But then songs about money and partying and living like no death would ever arrive for you ended up on the radio. Auto-Tune was a scapegoat for a while, until Kanye West made 808s & Heartbreak in 2008 and people decided Auto-Tune was a worthwhile artistic endeavor—until Jay-Z released the song “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” in the summer of 2009, and then it was done for good.

“Mumble rap” is the most active and vigorous scapegoat rap has had in years, in part because the internet—particularly social media—has created a landscape for it to thrive and be a hotly debated topic, engaging with ideas of language and whether or not rappers should have to adhere to them, and whether or not this so-called mumble rap is actually pushing the genre forward, past some of its bowing to establishments.

Read on at Paris Review.