Rap as Literature - Colleen May
This week’s discussion opened my eyes to a whole area of study I didn’t know existed. Although I didn’t use it in my questions for this week, I notice and was intrigued by the quote from Harmanci’s interview with David Cook, “you have an interesting phenomenon, where the ‘hip-hop experts,’ with university appointments attached to their name, have no credibility whatsoever in hip-hop circles.� I am glad this statement was addressed, as it made me wonder, “well then who do we think we are talking about this today?�
I thought Alexs Pate from the Department of African and African American Studies provided a great response to that question. His analogy of this study of rap to studies of different literatures made it very clear why it isn’t important to him what people in hip-hop circles think of him. He sees it as important that someone study and validate hip-hop, and particularly rap, as an art form, a form of expression, literature. He is a critic like any other.
Throughout the discussion, Pate’s passion for “rap poetry� was evident and thought-provoking. Particularly, his identification of rap as “the first literary export of African Americans� provided an enlightened view of rap as an art form.