Is Rap America's Poetry?
with John McWhorter
Very few Americans take the trouble to memorize favorite lines of verse anymore. But John McWhorter believes that the impulse to do so hasn’t gone away—it’s simply been transferred to hip-hop. In this clip from our most recent episode, John and I debate whether rap is America’s poetry.
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Doggerel is a technical literary term that describes an oral tradition of rhyming couplets by a peasant class. We could say this isn’t literature, or we could say we needed audio recording equipment suitable for everyday use to fully appreciate what the medium has to offer. Audio recording has become an everyday work item, like a plow, or a shovel. This is the grand drama of the human race in all of its splendor rising up as music to catch the ears of the lords above in a cultural gift of rhythm and words. The filth and violence of the genre are a mirror of all the ghosts it took to make this music.
I’d guess that nearly all of us could seamlessly sing along with hundreds of pop/rock songs—great, good, and mediocre songs. And rap music, which started as an art more insular and far rowdier, has become pop/rock. And I think it has suffered as an art form as it’s become more popular. Or perhaps that’s just me being an old school fan of pretty much every art form.