"Feels good when I walk through the hood
Best part is
I don't gotta flow, I just talk to the hood"
—Jadakiss, "I'm a Gangsta"
"I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
To the hip hip hop and you don't stop
The rock it to the bang bang boogie
Say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat
And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet"
—Wonder Mike, from "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang
"Lyrical, miracle, spiritual, individual criminal
Subliminal, in your swimming pool"
"A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop."
—Isaac Hayes
"You know what's a neat form of literature?
Rap!
I actually used to hate rap music... Maybe just because it was popular, or I would only hear the junk they play on the radio. But some of my friends got more into it, and it helped me keep an open mind.
Rap might even be more challenging than poetry, in some ways. Since you need to fit your lines to a rhythm, and there's much more emphasis on wordplay... When people can put all that together and still deliver a powerful message, it's really amazing.
I kind of wish I had a rapper in the Literature Club. Ahaha! Sorry if that sounds silly, but it would be really interesting to see what they came up with. It would really be a learning experience!"
