It was edited by Bradley and Andrew DuBois, another English professor (he teaches at the University of Toronto Bradley is at the University of Colorado), who together have compiled thirty years of hip-hop lyrics, starting with transcribed recordings of parties thrown in the late nineteen-seventies-Year Zero, more or less. This campaign for respect enters a new phase with the release of “The Anthology of Rap” (Yale $35), a nine-hundred-page compendium that is scarcely lighter than an eighties boom box. Though some of his comparisons are strained (John Donne loved punning, and so does Juelz Santana!), his motivation is easy to appreciate: examining and dissecting lyrics is the only way to “give rap the respect it deserves as poetry.” Bradley is right to think that hip-hop fans have learned to appreciate all sorts of seemingly obscure poetic devices, even if they can’t name them. Picking through this thicket, Bradley paused to appreciate Monch’s use of apocopated rhyme, as when a one-syllable word is rhymed with the penultimate syllable of a multisyllabic word (last / blast / fastball). Smash any splitter or fastball-that’ll be it The last batter to hit, blast shattered your hip
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