Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present
by Mark Costello,
David Foster Wallace
|
|
| published
|
May 1997
by Ecco Pr
|
| binding
| Paperback |
| isbn
|
0880015357
(isbn13: 9780880015356)
|
| pages
| 140 |
| date added
|
01-31-07
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present.
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
other reviews
(showing 1-20 of 61)
bookshelves:
peridêmois
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in September, 2007
David "Infinite Jest" Foster Wallace and his buddy Mark "Apparently Now A Lawyer" Costello take a rambling, footnote-riffic trip through Rap Music Circa 1990. The writing is great (if you like DFW's general modus), and it's quite often pretty thought-provoking. It's also a great survey of early hip-hop, complete with a Discography of seminal discs.
On the downside, whie the authors confront their Nerdy White Boy status head-on, they never really resolve it. There ar...more
David "Infinite Jest" Foster Wallace and his buddy Mark "Apparently Now A Lawyer" Costello take a rambling, footnote-riffic trip through Rap Music Circa 1990. The writing is great (if you like DFW's general modus), and it's quite often pretty thought-provoking. It's also a great survey of early hip-hop, complete with a Discography of seminal discs.
On the downside, whie the authors confront their Nerdy White Boy status head-on, they never really resolve it. There are plenty of fish-out-of-water anecdotes and cross-cultural theorizing, but ultimately, DFW and Mr. Costello seem embarassed to write the book they want to, leaving Signifying Rappers an ill-focused, awkward affair. It's also (of course) outdated: there is an underacknowledged current of academic disdain for 'soft' rappers like LL Cool J (remember him?), and a preference for Public Enemy and other socially-conscious 'hard' rappers. This binary is today both more pervasive and, at the same time, more meaningless, since today's politically-minded rappers tend to ensconce themselves in the 'underground' scene, which practically constitutes its own genre, as divorced from Diddy/50/Lil' Wayne/&c as Pavement from Limp Bizkit. And considering the way the Beastie Boys are almost completely written off, it'd be fascinating to see the authors' reactions to Sage Francis/Sole/Aesop Rock/Sage Francis/Atmosphere/self-consciously brainy white boy X, not to mention Eminem, all of whom do a better job of navigating hip-hop's color barriers in 4 minutes or less than DFW & Mr. Costello do in 140 pages.
Ultimately, what I'd really like is for someone to pay these men some money to release a follow-up. They're both smart, literate, interesting people who are passionate about rap music (or were, at least.) But considering that rap was roughly 3 years old when Signifying Rappers came out, a look at the last 17 would be fascinating....less
This was put out by Ecco Press -- formerly of Hopewell, NJ -- before DFW's first book came out: early nineties. He and Mark Costello do a sort of Run and DMC, Abstract and Q-Tip, passing of the essayistically flowing mic, and you can bet who's mos def. I read this in 1997 and still remember the part where they dress as rappers more or less to try to infiltrate the hip hop scene of boston's rough neighborhoods, and everyone thinks they're narcs so no one talks to them until they return dressed ub...more
This was put out by Ecco Press -- formerly of Hopewell, NJ -- before DFW's first book came out: early nineties. He and Mark Costello do a sort of Run and DMC, Abstract and Q-Tip, passing of the essayistically flowing mic, and you can bet who's mos def. I read this in 1997 and still remember the part where they dress as rappers more or less to try to infiltrate the hip hop scene of boston's rough neighborhoods, and everyone thinks they're narcs so no one talks to them until they return dressed uber-nerdy, like scientists from Harvard more or less -- like they've got to exaggerate their roles. DFW makes a good point that all this rhyme writing, even if it doesn't pay off in terms of XXL gold, might eventually help land the rhymist a copywriting job or something like that one day . . . he comes down hard on the side of hip hop lyrics as legitimate poetry compared to preciousnesses read by twelve academics of paste. Absolutely worth a read. Find it online, mos def....less
bookshelves:
rock-lit
Read in July, 2001
David Foster Wallace wrote a book on hip hop. Believe it.
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating
(all editions):
3.00 (44 ratings)
number of reviews: 3
