Do hip-hop lyrics have any merit as poetry?

Do hip-hop lyrics have any merit as poetry?

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Why not ask the same question about lyrics generally? The answer is yes. Which lyrics were you thinking of?

Some yes, most don't. Poetics doesn't lend itself to mass appeal so the street poets are unrecognized and remain a pretty small subset since most rappers do so out of trying to achieve financial success

Of course!

t. nigger or white hipster with no understanding of poetry whatsoever

I guess they could, but they don't. Very little at best. It calls for a certain kind of... temperament and sensitivity that are not prone to poetic greatness. Also, considering how genre unfolded and manifested itself from its infancy to the present day, to emerge out of adolescence and still take it seriously kinda makes it almost impossible for you to have the kind of organ for great poetry.

Nothing good has come of hip-hop or the culture it has engendered. It's given something for bored suburban adolescents to aspire to. Only the ideal is not anything good, but a likeness to the degeneration of urban decay and the ghetto.

>implying most poets do not covet financial success

Slaves to convention without any claim to poetic productivity much less connection

such strong language for so much emptiness

When people start comparing rap, a pseudo-improvisational attempt to keep up with a simple 4/4 beat and impress the audience by bragging about their lives, to poetry, like capital P Poetry, I have to question whether they've ever seriously read poetry

Like, could /mu/ read Yeats's "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" and pick up on how Yeats deliberately contrasts his first quatrain's dactylic beat with the second quatrain's anapestic metre to emphasise his narrator's bitter humility and better contradict his fantasies? Do the teenagers who listen to hip hop understand the sheer amount of effort, skill, and intelligence it takes to consciously manipulate the rhythm not of a sentence or a phrase, but of the very way each and every syllable itself is pronounced and arranged in order to represent a complex and emotional idea? To do this while maintaining a coherent grammatical and original rhyming structure AND while delivering a series of stunning images that range from religious ecstasy to bitter poverty and angst? To then subtly contradict this established structure in order to draw attention to yet another image?

This isn't a cheap spread of internal rhymes, puns, and trendy slang; this is a man loading no more than eight lines with as much content as the English language allows.

Illmatic is a entertaining album. Nas is a talented rapper. But to say that a 16 year-old kid from the projects operates at the level of a Nobel Prize-winning poet is total horseshit, and I think the people pushing this idea can smell it. No he fucking does not, he wrote his lyrics according to some DJ Premier beat and what his friends thought would sound cool over it. You want to judge his writing as poetry? You want to look at his words when they're neutered from the music and live audience they were written to accompany? Okay, let's look. There is no coherent metre, let alone any conscious metrical technique. His rhyme scheme is all over the fucking place, and a lot of phrases were awkwardly forced in just to hit those painfully simple end rhymes. The narrative is sloppy and its images are repetitive; he abandons ideas halfway through simply to survive until the next line. He brags about himself constantly and fills his story with non sequiturs that serve no purpose other than to highlight his knowledge of street slang and demonstrate how violent his life is.

As poetry, it's complete trash. It's not original, it's not insightful, and it's definitely not skillful. It should be performed over music and never ever EVER separated from it

lol no

rap could not be considered poetic productivity as it does not fit the definition of poetry, it is also completely reliant upon either entertainment or boasting neither of which constitute the function of poetry in the ancient world. The Iliad was the law and the history of a people, the Bhagavad gita is the history and the law of the people. Marriage of Heaven and Hell is the spirit of a man's existence and the heralding of a coming age. Songs like Jigga That Nigga are boasting and entertainment

>implying Veeky Forums has any merit discussing hip-hop OR poetry

>It's only poetry if I say so
lol ok

damn...
will /mu/tants EVER recover?

I never said it wasn't, or that it can't be. I said it has no merit, or very little.

"No."

Rap is contemporary conventional. You're a slave of the status quo posing as a rebel.

a slave of Capital, you can just say it

genius.com makes TPAB seem as deep as fucking wordsworth

>my opinion matters
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Same thing.

>genius.com.

What worries me is that retards used to know they were retards. Conscious rap listeners acknowledged the boundaries and historical illiteracy of their wokeness when stepping outside of their little group, but the media seems to have convinced them that they actually have something to say. So now you have 'woke' 19 year olds yelling their professors out of the room.

>my negro songs are poetry too!!!

sure matters enough to get a reaction out of you mate. You seem upset. I'm sorry that the fact that I think rap is absolute shite upsets you.

>these damn ignorant kids aren't listening to their elders!!
>implying this isn't the driving force of history

hip hop is establishment, sorry to burst your bubble

>read 1 poem
>I AM THE ABSOLUTE JUDGE OF WHAT IS AND WHAT ISN'T POETRY
lol

yeah mate, woke blue haired dreaded twitterattis posses the discipline and determination of tomorrow's revolutionary vanguard

Again, you seem to be upset with the fact that I think hip hop has no to very little literary value. Why is this upsetting you so much?

>he thinks plebs, not a very diminute group of aristocrats and powerplayers, drive foward history

>YOU KIDS WOULDN'T HAVE SURVIVED THE WAY I GREW UP
lol you sound like a Boomer

Dumb niggers like these are annoying. Reductionism gets us nowhere.

An opinion isn't inherently worthless or above criticism just for being an opinion, only retards think that. "Hurr durr u care 2 much about X" is what negroes say when they're out of legitimate claims.
But those "Woke" kids are ignorant. They're parroting what they were taught in high school and on tumblr and shouting it at college professors if they don't agree with it. Unfortunately, they do.

We aren't going to see any historical progress in this society until the Boomers die out, the retarded kids they had die, and the smart kids they somehow had (the ones who made it trendy to admit leftists are insane ideologues) are allowed to take over.

what the fuck are you talking about mate?

I can't wait for the thinly veiled /pol/ posters in this thread

>Reductionism gets us nowhere
>Follows with reductionist argument of the youth
L-O-L

>Thinking hip hop and its extended cultural manifestation are shit makes one /pol/.

Is Veeky Forums just a /leftypol/ rape-baby now?

>thinks criticism of leftist brainlet kids is somehow "reductionist argument of the youth", whatever that grammatical incorrectness might mean
Nigger nigger, niggery niggery noo. Niggy niggity nog, the dumb nigger here is you.

I'm sorry I broke your brain

this is the first post i've ever read on this board that has straight changed my opinion on something

Congrats on discovering your inner psued

Yes. Becoming a leftist means giving up your ability to think clearly and rationally, and replacing it with childish emotional reasoning because someone persuasive convinced you to do so. You give up your ability to tell what is and isn't right, trading it in for the ability to feel right no matter what.

If someone makes you feel mad, he deserves some stock complaint yelled in his face like "You care too much about X!". Maturely arguing against his points would be too good for a thoughtcriminal like him, so instead misrepresent him and what he says to kafkatrap and annoy him.

I'm centrist and I would have never said this five years ago, but I honestly prefer right-wingers joking about hitler while critiquing the oft-ignored negative qualities of black culture to the big-headed pseuds trying so desperately to bully anyone he doesn't like into leaving the safe space he wants Veeky Forums to become.

Show me ONE hip-hop lyric that has any worth as poetry

>tee hee i broke u
haha no lol i broke u L-O-L
quit being a faggot lol a good argument changed his view, you'd know that feel if you weren't a baby

youtube.com/watch?v=NjBmrHPONt4
Anything from this

"you have no clue like toy stores without board games" - danny brown

show me ONE poem line that has any worth as hip-hop

I doubt anything will convince you. Whenever someone asks this, they usually shoot down all the suggestions

Does crap like Poopi Rupi have any merit as poetry?

Any conservative is as emotionally reactive as any leftist, no matter how often they'll throw out the "logic" card

Sure

youtube.com/watch?v=z8FlMdsJEmg

>does not fit the definition
You mean *your* idiosyncratic definition
>he thinks rap is more status quo than the dusty balls of eurocentric poetics
A
Soy boy marx signalling
>anything i don't like is "the establishment"

haha, ye bruv, these fools are brainwashed by da eurocentric skoolz innit? hah, bout time someone puts some respek on real art. more power onto you brotha

gtfo you fucking nigger, Veeky Forums is for whites only

that's a white person

Yeh bruv I know, but dass how I speak to erryone. I don't cater my vocabs to colour innit

I'll be the judge of that, thanks

>Edgy racism in 2018

lyrics in general are not poetry, they are lyrics

what about lyrics in poetry?

>boasting
>not relevant in the ancient world
You don't know what you're talking about

No lyrics do, though hip hop is better than most.

say a spell by the birthday party is the only lyric i know that's really close to true poetry

When i was a teenager I liked the line 'blasting holes in the night till she bled sunshine'. I mean it's kind of lame but it sounds nice in the song and also sort of reminds me of getting extremely fucked up on various drugs back then

List of rap I consider poetry
-Spaceape
-SOME songs off death grips-niggas on the moon

>concedes an argument

fuckin pseuds, listening to other opinions

>Facing existential threats, my advice, kill ‘em dead
>No regrets, the devil’s rejects
>Writ large. Observe the precepts of a benevolent god
>Blue-eyed Prometheans in the heart of darkness.

that's not even a good example, its just a witticism.

it does if consumers fall for it

>Reductionism gets us nowhere.
Except to first principles. And simplification in mathematics. And elementary particles. And electricity, as well as programming, psychology, literary criticism -- or most forms of criticism, for that matter.

Reductionism, as a concept, has gotten humanity pretty far.
>Not to mention anthropology, linguistics, training, education below graduate level, much of the arts, most of what sells in non-fiction nowadays.... there's a lot.

Some of them practice meter without realizing it, which makes it compatible with western poetic tradition.

It's really too bad most of it is pure garbage.

Niggers are incapable of creating anything beautiful.

awesome post

>my style switches like a faggot
>but not bisexual
>i'm an intellectual

yes, nas is indeed and intellectual...

youtube.com/watch?v=XGb-X2f_Mbk
t. Englishfag

>Tears out the Miller's Tale

Has rap reached the same level as the best poetry? Obviously not.

But I think a more interesting question is whether it ever will.

Another thing worth thinking about is that rap is only a few decades old and has largely been an instrument of expression for the poorest of the poor, you obtuse, perspective-lacking peasants.

Can't wait for someone to create a fusion of epic poetry and trap music

You're fucking stupid I just read that and he rhymes cloths with cloths and light with light
Try again pseud

>yeats sooo dumb he can't even rhyme like kendrick

Unless you have a reductivist view of poetry, obviously rap is poetry. The only argument that could be levelled agaisnt it as an entire genre is that much of it doesn't reach some arbitrary "level" and most books laballed poetry wouldn't meet that test of the person making that argument either, so it's kind of a moot point. Poetry is language manipulated as art. What good comes of reducing it to some random rules you've decided on.

very few people said it isn't, it's just shit poetry that's all.

It shouldn't be compared to classic poetry, but to other more contemporary music.

This is a concatenation of clichés with no originality of thought. It's one step above Adele or U2 lyrics rhyming fire with desire, but still, almost every line in those four contains a cliché.

Eminem compares to some great poets but other than that I would say no.

I've taught myself to survive a four story fall
Wearing a space suit and a dead englishman's socks
It's a textbook procedure, kid
Right out of the pages of the hollowed out book
Where once I hid my paint speckled glasses
Don't lose your shoes over such a simple step as hitting ground
Just remember to roll
Just remember to roll

>>he thinks rap is more status quo than the dusty balls of eurocentric poetics
You could probably just looks to sales figures for that one.

I translated this, and keep in mind I didn't try to rhyme although they're around 20 rhymes in the discourse.

Why do you think it rains everyday, and every day is greyness
And there's nothing positive, every memory is dark, when you don't have
anyone besides you, you're not so hardcore
Because you don't trust anyone, rejected
by everyone do you live in hell
Voices in the head like an echo, you lose interest with every step
All the things done, left, obsolete, immoral and therefore
forgotten, you lose interest because of bad news, you only want
it to get dark, there's no love you say, only hatred rakes inside you
you want the time to stop, to be happy for once
right away, what can you do when there's no happiness
you only wait, and when it rains it pours and then you run away from yourself
so much fucked up that you don't even trust yourself
Do you not want to love and do you not want to be loved?
Does your soul hurt?
There's no justice, there're words that sting like needles under nails
And bad childhood is a motif, you were streeter since you were brat
But don't get me wrong no one has it easy
Those who deem they're perfect today deem it wrong.

ahaha congratulations this is literal pasta now
>posted on mu

time waits for no man and
death waits with cold hands
im the youngest old man that you know

something sinister to it, the pendulums swinging slow, a degenerate moving -
through the city with criminals, stealth, welcome to enemy turf

Like most of poetry then, right? Or are you singling out rap bc black people scare you

>time waits for no man and
>death waits with cold hands
>im the youngest old man that you know

>cliched, also the line ends weakly with 'and'
>cliched
>cliched paradox ('youngest old man' is Alanis Morrisette tier), also added redundant 'that' to make it scan.
Hip-hop works as music when you have the beat and the production, but written down it's garbage, like most song lyrics. Without the accompaniment it doesn't scan or flow, and normally people think it's good because when they see the lyrics written down they are hearing it in their heads.
It's not just hip-hop, most of Dylan or Tom Waits doesn't work when written. Eg:
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
My senses have been stripped
My hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it
Is doggerel at best unless you know the melody

I agree with this to an extent. I believe rap is a form of poetry but just not good poetry. It is like a subgenre. But just because rap isn't good poetry doesn't mean rap can't be good. In fact I do like it.

Why do you jump to race assumptions? Is there not a rapper of every race on the planet? To just assume that is very stupid. That's like saying if you hate poetry you are afraid of white people (despite, again, every race on the planet engaging in it to some extent).

why do we have this thread twice a week

Late for everything, my face to the cement
That's how I always seen it
I spent days faded and anemic
You could see it in my face, I ain't been eatin', I'm just wastin' away
Looks like the way that River Phoenix went gon' end up my fate
And when they drag me out the gutter, mail the ashes to my mother
Twist the spliff if I don't finish my plate
Slip a fist up for my niggas in chains, my mental was caged
See, I ain't been to prison but the feeling's the same
Shared sentiment, winnin' if the pen hit the page
As of late, I've been watchin' every bitch in my space
Shit's just lookin' different with age
Try to make some sense of all this shit in my brain
One foot stuck in a tar pit of my ways

just pointing out that rap and hip-hop are obviously black-begun genres and that's the only reason why people have trouble accepting it as poetry and art.

>that's the only reason why people have trouble accepting it as poetry and art

>bc black people scare you
says the person who totally lives in a black neighborhood or city or country, and not in a 90% white environment

Let's try out your logic on anything else.

>>I've seen lots of bad Westerns. No Westerns are art.