a leap to hip-hop

frankly i know very little about hip-hop. i'm old enough to remember hearing 'rapper's delight' by the sugar hill gang when it was brand new. and when kurtis blow rapped about 'the breaks' my friends and i were beside ourselves in wonder. what is this rap thing anyway?

but my listening ended after the '80s when i began to follow indie bands such as the pixies and the sugar cubes rather than the emerging gangsta rap of nwa. and commercial hip-hop now getting airplay is i think as self-serving and decadent [not in any good fashion at all] as the hair-metal bands of the '80s which i concluded was the nadir of all that is gawdawful in pop music.

well then, poet garrett caples is a true fan of hip-hop and being a fan of his poetry i just finished his collection of essays on the genre the philistine's guide to hip-hop [nin9volt; 2004] and immensely enjoyed it. i suppose it wasn't the subject matter that made it so readable for me but the fact that a talented writer composed pieces eloquently detailing his passions. that is the main criteria for my reading a particular writer: an intelligence passionate about the subjects at hand, whatever those subjects might be.

however, caples' canny ability to marry poetry and hip-hop by writing an essay about the poet philip lamantia and the rapper tragedy khadafi as well as quoting from the frost poem 'the road not taken' which is then quoted by rapper metaphysical in another essay and well caples had me at hello. this is a big reason why i love reading a poet's prose and as an aside why i am addicted to poet blogs.

and it is passion that fuels the fire i think for caples also devotes 4 essays to prince. of course having grown up with prince myself - i think his album purple rain and the movie of the same name are masterpieces - but losing track of the purple one in the early '90s i can groove to caples' love of the man and his music. in other words, caples has produced with this book a level of devotion to a genre that is usually neglected by poets. i could be quite wrong in that of course because of my own ignorance of the art but i've not read a whole lot either in blogs or published in paper form by poets about hip-hop. well, now i have and i am a whole lot better informed of an astonishing variety and richness of the art.