Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present

by Mark Costello, David Foster Wallace

The author of Infinite Jest and his co-writer discuss rap and popular culture, power, money, racial politics, and language in the first book to seriously consider rap and its position as a vital force in American culture. "Brilliantly written . . . (with) great wit, insight, and in-your-face energy."--Review of Contemporary Fiction.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays, Americana, Race, Hip Hop, Audiobook

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls]

Two Harvard-bound white dudes aware of their status as middle-class Harvard-bound white dudes write on a musical movement for working-class black people, and apologise for being middle-class white dudes writing about a black movement, etc. Their self-awareness does nothing to diminish the cooler-than-thou dude-we-are-so-street tone of this book which is now 23 years out of date culturally, and the usually endearing traits of DFW’s non-fiction here seem to irritate—using initials instead of forenames, endless dash-inflicted-phrases, that word up tone. No. Sorry. Even DFW and his lawyer/novelist friend (whose intro replicates the streetwise cool-dudeness! in 2013!) cannot save this little mistake.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It was made to fail, born to be co-opted and subsumed into the junky ferrywake of media's coaching.”
― David Foster Wallace, Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present



My relationship with RAP started out a little funky. I remember hearing Ice-T's "Girls, L.G.B.N.A.F." on a 9th-grade biology trip to Southern Utah. Sony Walkman shared in the back of the bird bus. A bunch of white, prep-school kids from suburban Utah with no tangible idea what the ghetto, urban or underprivileged was like experimenting with early RAP excess to pubescent abandon.

Fast-forward a year: I'm living in Izmir, Turkey, getting a letter mailed 1/2 around the world from a friend and girl referencing said trip with L.G.B.N.A.F. stamped all throughout. Letter is discovered and read by Father. Father demands to know what L.G.B.N.A.F. means. There is no way in HELL to explain to Father, while driving in Asia Minor, what that ICE-T song meant in Moab or what it means in the here and now. The result of this failed explanation is I can never hear Journey's Greatest Hits (the abumn I was listening to in the car as my father was interrogating me) without thinking of Ice-T (strange mental ebbs and flows). Now fast-forward two decades: watching my wife watch Ice-T on Law & Order: SVU. It is all just a little trippy -- weird convergences of RAP, Journey, Turkey, and crap television all fighting for meaning in my memory. The world IS indeed a DFW essay.

But, like my diet Dr Pepper left outside overnight or a green pear eaten too soon, this book hints at (DFW's) later genius without quite delivering the thing you want. It over-promises and under-delivers on the what, why, and wherefores of RAP. It is almost exactly what you would expect an overwritten book about rap put together by a young, tired genius who hasn't yet found his literary voice/mojo and his college roommate to be like.

Anyway, it was genius in parts, smug in parts, dated in many many sections, angry and alienated through-out, and still -- despite all its flaws -- it moved me and was worth the money. And, as Lil Wayne never gets tired of telling me "only money make me move".

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was put out by Ecco Press -- formerly of Hopewell, NJ -- before DFW's first book came out: early nineties. He and Mark Costello do a sort of Run and DMC, Q-Tip and Phife, passing of the essayistically flowing mic, and you can bet who's mos def. I read this in 1997 and still remember the part where they dress as rappers more or less to try to infiltrate the hip hop scene of Boston's rough neighborhoods, and everyone thinks they're narcs so no one talks to them until they return dressed uber-nerdy, like scientists from Harvard more or less -- like they've got to exaggerate their roles. DFW makes a good point that all this rhyme writing, even if it doesn't pay off in terms of XXL gold, might eventually help land the rhymist a copywriting job or something like that one day . . . he comes down hard on the side of hip hop lyrics as legitimate poetry compared to preciousnesses read by twelve academics of paste. Absolutely worth a read. Find it cheap online, mos def.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

...and so but Costello’s contributions weren’t sooo bad but only once you’ve gotten over that preface which was not the thing I wanted to read. The book itself is perhaps unnecessary given that its reputation, that which you’ve already heard about it via the usual paths of literary rumors and second-hand opinions, will serve you just fine for just about everything you need except for the technicality of reading everything published under the signature David Foster Wallace. It’s a nice piece of crusty vault literature, perhaps comparable to the terribly uninteresting Joe’s ______ series released by Mr Zappa’s estate. There will be more, no doubt....hopeful only that we won’t have anyone reconstructing his pornography project of the same time period as Rappers. Coincidence?

But so too (you know all this already), the book is dated. Not just in the ridiculous Summer of ’89 manner of a Bryan Adams song which’ll really make you ashamed to be Canadian, but not just in the manner of rap’s half-life being about 4.38 weeks, and who really cares about pop music-like products from 24 years prior? Is it relevant? Are pop-products ever relevant? Well, Dave wants to always argue that pop products are always relevant because, you know, we watch a lot of TV and this is the shape of our world. Back to datedness :: Dave’s thinking here is also dated. He ended up doing much better in later non-fic and his thought here sounds rather un-unpacked, not worked up and through into full articulateness; his sentences at times not worth parsing because a) who cares about rap from 1989 and b) there’s little new here that Dave hasn’t said better elsewhere and c) Dave’s pet project of being self-conscious of being self-conscious is at least as old as Hegel and I’ve already long ago moved onto Vollmann’s fiction and non- which has solved all of Dave’s serious fictional and non- problems by simply not assuming that they were problems in the first place. If you get tired of hearing about Dave and Mark scratching their heads about white kids looking in from outside into the hermetically sealed world of rap, just drop it and pick up one of Bill’s whore books, or perhaps his Poor People or but just get your head out of your ass.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"this review is dedicated to all the teachers that told me
I'd never amount to nothin', to all the people that lived above the
buildings that I was hustlin' in front of that called the police on
me when I was just tryin' to make some money to feed my daughters,
and all the goodreaders in the struggle"*


DFW is the new HST. Yeah, I said it!

Ok, so Wallace is the better writer, but Gonzo Journalism with a Nabokovian vocabulary it is nonetheless ** And who would disagree other than those zealous DFW fanatics, and isn't kind of weird to get so obsessive about an author like that (unless that author is Vladimir Nabokov (who many of you know I consider my personal lord and savior (why we don't have holidays celebrating his birth?)))

Some other dude co-wrote this book and he made a few errors in recapping rap's history but whatever, no one cares about the non-DFW parts anyways. So on to that, that half of the book is less about rap and more about why white folks like him love rap, which isn't really what I signed up for,but as you'd expect he also touches on some very interesting ideas of culture in general and there were some parts I probably didn't fully grasp because I've not read the necessary amount of Derrida needed to fully comprehend Chuck D, and neither, I imagine, has Chuck D.

Why did I read an outdated book about rap music written 20 years ago? Why does anyone do anything, really? OK, this book was so much fun to read. So much nostalgia, but not so much from the ubiquitous DFW pop culture reference as from these old rap groups themselves and how 'The Source' magazine is quoted with the authority it held at the time this book was written (I loved The Source back when the only records that got five mics* were Illmatic and the Chronic and it actually still meant something) but this book was also very creepy and weird in the way that that book you read in 4th grade about heroin addiction published in 1971 was creepy.

Even Considering all the awesomeness of DFW arguing that rappers are the ultra-yuppies worshiping "at the alter of electronic self" and scratching as the "ritualized mutilation of technology", and rap's seeming vapid materialism is actually a post-postmodern human urge towards complement of what's been lost viz. The Fall, and of course all that violence is simply a metaphor for I know not what, and all sorts of other deep shit I'm too tired to even try to summarize at 7am on a Sunday morning when I haven't been to sleep yet, and who knew rap was so heavy influenced by Plato, Milton and Marx etc., I'm still forced to automatically deduct a minimum of two star for having to read some over-educated white guy explain what the words "def" and "ill" mean. Certainly worth a read if you like rap music and DFW but I think you need to be fond of both to want to read this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99iG4...

*A month's worth of free votes for anyone who gets both of these references.
To claim your prize please send your answer to:
Kristen R
c/o: Ocean Records
134 Warren Street
Roxbury, MA 02154


**I believe at one point he might of actually said "pure Horatio Algers"

[Luca Masera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il rap spiegato ai bianchi è un saggio scritto nell'89 da due giovani studenti di Harvard, esempi tipici della middle class americana, che sul finire degli anni ’80 decidono di dedicare una bellissima lettera d'amore a un genere musicale che da lì a poco sarebbe esploso come fenomeno di massa, non solo da un punto di vista musicale ma anche e soprattutto culturale.



Davide Foster Wallace e Mark Costello si sforzano di spiegare “a un mondo di bianchi” i presupposti del rap intelaiando una serie di riflessioni che vanno da Martin Luter King a MTV, passando per i Public Enemy e i Beasty Boys. Lo fanno con una lucidità e una raffinatezza di pensiero che non può non lasciare interdetti anche chi il rap non lo ama.



Considerato un Wallace minore (per fortuna da un punto di vista musicale Costello ne sapeva molto di più), sicuramente non è una enciclopedia del rap ma piuttosto una lettura stimolante (a tratti anche complessa grazie ai voli pindarici di DFW) per chi vuole capire come - ad esempio - i Run DMC nel video Walk This Way insieme agli Aerosmith abbiano rotto ogni barriera razziale facendo di una musica “prodotta da neri per altri neri” un fenomeno trasversale adatto a ogni contesto.

[Jack Waters · Rating 4 out of 5]

M. Costello and D.F. Wallace wrote this sampler on rap before the genre exploded, and, as they wrote, "If you're reading this in print it's already dated.(71)"

They pass the written mic back and forth throughout the book with short essays propelling the narrative, with "M." for Mark and "D" for David. Sometimes they respond in a footnote to the other's essay. Those familiar with either author can glean the distinct voices offered.

Although both M.C. [i(pu)nitials intended?] & D.F.W. seem to have let this work whisper in the background of their more popular or accessible offerings, you really get the sense in reading the book that it was a highly interesting topic to them. They address the obvious questions of "intellectual yuppie love" w/r/t rap with self-reflective digressions, but I was pleased with many of the arrived conclusions.

"It's at the distinctively pop-cultural bregma where common-sense polarities like art vs. politics, medium vs. message, center vs. margin conjoined and must cohabit that even an enthusiastic white establishment-cog's try at some 'objective aesthetic appreciation' of rap runs aground."

Again, this was written in the 1989-1990 era. Keep in mind this was before Snoop and Dre, B.I.G. and 2Pac, or NaS and Wu-Tang were commonplace rappers. Dr. Dre was still in N.W.A. and Tupac was in Digital Underground. LL Cool J is still in his heyday, as are the Beastie Boys(who are pretty severely dismissed almost altogether, which I disagreed with for the most part). Public Enemy(a longtime favorite group of mine) is mentioned often, as does Schooly D, whose track "Signifying Rapper" is dissected and essentially glorified, not the least of which is the title of the treatise. Run DMC, Def Jam, Erik B. and Rakim also get mentioned.

"Ironies abound, of course, as ironies must when cash and art do lunch" ... "Walk This Way" is an unwanted reunion of 80s black street music with part of its rich heritage, as that heritage has been mined and mongrelized by Show Biz. If this is desegregation, then shopping malls hold treasure."

They also discuss DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, which is a highlight in the book for a few reasons. First, it mentions a sampling of the "I Dream of Jeanie" theme song, and juxtaposes an episode of that show which was syndicated on the night of the Tampa Riots, offering a po-mo imagining of the actual riot spilling out into the episode, exposing the stark truths and falsities of entertainment and Real Life. Secondly, it has a few throwaway sentences about the group having a TV show, which is funny because that actually happened, and Will Smith is more famous than "I Dream of Jeanie" nowadays.

"If the formal constraints outlined throughout this sampler are what help limit and define the rap genre's possibilities, it's usually 'content' issues — the musical mugging of classical precursors, or the wearying self-consciousness of the rap itself — that best alienate mainstreams, help keep this riparian genre so insulated, dammed, not-for-, fresh."

Parts of the book are really dated, but that is to be expected. Again, this was perhaps the first lengthy analysis of rap to get some sort of traction. Yes, it was written by Ivy League-educated white yuppies. But don't cast stones unless you read it. There are shortcomings to the book, but it is worth the read overall.

It isn't very easy to find a copy -- it has long been out of print. My local library has it, luckily. But since you read all the way to the bottom of this review, here is a link in which you can read the sampler in toto:
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL187083...

[Patricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pesar de ser muy fan de David Foster Wallace, creo que esta es su obra que menos me ha gustado hasta el momento. Por un lado, el que esté escrita a cuatro manos (junto con Mark Costello) se nota, pierde buena parte de su frescura e ironía y parece demasiado controlado, meditado. Por otra parte, está excesivamente centrado en el año 1989 y en unas circunstancias muy concretas, las de Boston, y esperaba que fuera un ensayo más general sobre el tema.
Aún así, para melómanos de este género musical resultará una lectura interesante.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's very interesting to see what two smart Harvard mother fuckers had to say about rap music in it's toddler stage 26 years after the fact. It was such a good history lesson, not only on the music, but the cultural phenomenon surrounding the music. Police brutality, Supply Side Reaganomics, the broken promises of the civil rights movement.

Foster Wallace and Costello break down the then-brand new art form of sampling and legal implications behind it. They broke down just why Serious critics refused to take the genre seriously (to their folly). I've always been fascinated and empowered by rap. I never really thought about my white friends' inability to grasp or enjoy it. I always assumed, they didn't "get" it. They can't like it because they don't even really understand most of what these guys are saying. It never occurred to me that this music just wasn't made for them or even with them in mind. It is an art form they were intentionally excluded from, in contrast to the white society that the rappers and their audience have been intentionally excluded from.

So much has changed for the music since the publication of this book. Wallace and Costello weren't trying to predict the future with this book, but it is very interesting how prescient it has come to be and how relevant it remains.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting observations embedded in extremely young-man pretentiousness. (I love me some extremely young-man pretentiousness!)

For people like myself. DFW completionists, I mean. That's the only highly problematic feature of mine you have to share to be interested in this particular book. Other problematic features—such as a proclivity for the aphorisms of Jordan Peterson, or the work of Lionel Shriver—welcome, but not necessary :P

[Diletta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalla sensibilità di chi ascolta a tutti che usano il termine postmoderno fino allo stomaco dell'America.

[Thekelburrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only a few glimpses of the future writer DFW would become but reading them is like saying hello to a long lost friend.

[Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off I had no idea David Foster Wallace was into hip-hop, second never would have guessed he'd write about it, and with his lawyer buddy either; lucky me, my buddy Dave owned the book and insisted I check it out.

It was dope...why?

DFW is a self-purported outsider in 1990 trying to understand something he is passionate about; and as he shows in writing the book while a grad student; has the academic chops to parse out a genre just coming into it's own. At the time of writing, there was not generally a lot of active investigation of the scene beyond it's transitive and shallow base reflections of lyrical content on Black America. So what you get here in "signifying Rapper" is a long essay written in tandem with another acolyte, also an outsider, trying to understand what rap is about, and how mainstream media is missing the point.

Like all music writing, 20years later, it is a bit dated, but for what it is at the time of it's writing it is g'damned insightful, many points still resonate, and were prescient in retrospect.

For two friends who started a project listening to rap and drinking beers, trying to discuss what was happening with this (at the time) only decade old form; they have come up with a pretty lasting record of what was what in the 1990's era rap scene.

Accordingly, I gave a 4 stars = "def"

[Devery]

I love David Foster Wallace with every cell and fiber of my being, and that being said, this was just really embarrassing and I couldn't finish it. It was more unpleasant than squeezing cornstarch. And they so valiantly try to address head-on the whole "white academic guys writing about rap" thing, too, but just -- I just couldn't deal with it. Sorry.

[La Central · Rating 3 out of 5]

Podría pensarse que, transcurridos casi diez años de su trágico deceso, el pozo fosterwallaciano estaría irremediablemente seco. Craso error: con la edición de este breve ensayo de juventud, Malpaso demuestra que de Foster Wallace se aprovechan hasta los andares, y que su prolífica obra ensayística aún puede de pararnos agradables sorpresas. Ilustres raperos presenta una faceta poco conocida del escritor: su pasión por la cultura hip hop y la agresiva música de N.W.A. o Public Enemy. Esta afición no debería sorprendernos; como afirma Mark Costello (coautor del libro y compañero de piso de Wallace en sus años universitarios), la posmodernidad natural del rap –sus canciones hechas de pedazos de otras canciones y la autorreferencialidad discursiva de los MCs– encaja como un guante en el universo del escritor.

De ahí que el principal interés del ensayo resida en su aproximación al fenómeno desde el terreno –lingüístico, semiótico– que ambos autores dominan. Las disertaciones acerca del papel que juegan la sinécdoque y la metonimia en el discurso del rap, o la reivindicación de sus rimas simples como restricción formal que permite interesantes hallazgos,
ofrecen un nuevo punto de vista hacia un territorio que, por otro lado, permanecía casi virgen en el entorno
académico a finales de los ochenta.

Con ello, Wallace y Costello esquivan el aspecto más delicado de su propuesta: el interés de un ensayo escrito para sus iguales por dos tipos blancos, universitarios de Harvard, sobre un movimiento desarrollado por y para una etnia y una clase ajena, y que voluntariamente se cierra en sí mismo ante una sociedad que les niega el acceso a un espacio compartido. Los autores evitan el apropiacionismo, partiendo de una conciencia plena de su condición de intrusos y esforzándose en rechazar la habitual mirada condescendiente, inexcusable en tanto que la vanguardia musical siempre ha sido negra.

[Rand]

First critical examination on rap/hip-hop culture ever, now back in print. Apparently the reprint is being carried by Urban Outfitters, lol.

Still waiting for this to be repackaged with a soundtrack, but that won't happen until the proliferation of neural plug-ins allowing for the open access to repositories of musical history at will. Not holding my breath on that one.

An excerpt is available online.

The legacy of this book has been picked up by at least two others, good and bad.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

**2020 reread**

Unique investigative style and far reaching metaphors abound, as you would expect from David Foster Wallace. Hip hop explained weirdly.


I love DFW, so even when he writes on a topic I have like zero interest in, it is enjoyable. This collection of essays about the early rap scene in America is an example of a brilliantly explored topic that doesn't really speak to me. But I did enjoy the section comparing the cultural "sampling" of Martin Luther King Jr and the musical sampling that provides a tonal backbone for much of rap.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. Less about rap than the dystopia that was Reagan's 1980s. Despite DFW's attempts to paint Rap as the greatest thing in poetry since the Metaphysicals I was not convinced. His discussion of the distinction between quotation and plagiarism just sounded like sophistry to me.

There were interesting snippets where he managed to bring the development of pop/black music into focus, but seemed to lose it almost immediately in welter of wordiness. The image of DFW and his sidekick frequented Rap Raves was just to precious not to giggle at.

[Jason 7734 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just gotta say it - this book is everything wrong about hyper-educated / white male bullshit. I really wanted to like it, but it is just alot of train-of-thought verbal spew (using fancy collegiate-scholar words, but like, a thousand of them at a time to make a point you could have clearly made in 10 words, per se. Shut up & LISTEN to the music. Or don't.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Está bien, es una obra menor de DFW que en algunos momentos se pierde más en dato que contenido pero me gustó el reflejo de época que trasciende a todo lo que van contando

http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...

[Garret Macko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Changed the way that I listen to hip hop.

[Owen Kurtz]

After reading this, I'm still shocked that it even exists. This was an enjoyable read and made me return to some great older rap albums, most notably the first De La Soul album and of course, Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back".
There are some obvious criticisms to be made of this, it makes no attempt to not sound like a couple of pretentious white dudes who can't relate to a single word in the music, but is this essentially bad? They aren't trying to make personal connections in order to understand, in fact they're continuously mentioning and checking their outsider-ness. They're trying to give an honest, insightful look into this exciting, confusing genre. The reason that the authors give for writing about the genre this way, is that no one else was. At the time, most music publications and 'intellectuals' weren't taking rap as a serious art form that needed analysis, so David and Mark filled the open space. I think that's a good enough reason as any to step outside your normal comfort zone and dig into something.
To add, the authors make some good points that I think only an outsider could make. Reflecting on how these artists choose to reflect the world they know, and how they attempt to speak to and for their audience. They make comments and some critiques on the complications of these messages, and the disconnect when it is really coming from artists with a multi-million dollar record deal. Another point near the end of the book focused on the irony of successful rappers' fixation and adoption of consumerism and wealth as their metrics of success. David then ties this into Reagan-era Supply Side economics that he attributes to economically ruining the neighborhoods that the artists came from (official woke status). These critiques are often met with equally convincing counterpoints, which gives an assuring sense that the authors aren't out to overly praise the rap scene or knock it down, but to try and understand it.

Additional Note: Within 30 mins of finishing this book on my way to work, I seen to have lost it

[Sydnee O'Donnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors claim to enjoy and appreciate rap, but I really don’t think that comes across in this book. It’s very academic in tone while substantiating its claims almost entirely with its writers’ own impressions after listening to “thousands of hours” of rap and “trying to summon a kind of objective, critical, purely ‘aesthetic’ passion.” Really? The writers have deluded themselves into thinking it’s possible to appraise a genre objectively? I also didn’t enjoy the book’s claims that rap is an “antimusic” with “antithemes” rather than simply a different type of music with different themes, the materialism of which has a “marvelously unmeant beauty,” with no explanation of why the writers think the beauty is unintentional instead of crafted by the rapper (also, the explanation for rap being an “antimusic” is that it doesn’t fit the OED’s definition of music because it doesn’t have a melody or harmony — as if the OED were the ultimate authority on music and as if rapping with inflection were no more melodic than speaking in a monotone). The book is also weirdly anti-sampling and derisive about rappers being unable to play musical instruments, claiming that raps “pillage shared culture” by repurposing snatches of others’ music.

[Flermilyxx · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a hip hop fan myself (as I'm sure many 2024 Goodreads users are), it's interesting comparing today's hip hop Scene to that DFW/MC were observing and trying to make sense of in 1989. As with many of the DFW writings I've had the pleasure of reading, as much as he unpacks concepts and topics with extensive detail and academic vigor, simultaneously, he can often leave me scratching my head, searching for the critical sophistication I may or may not have inside of me to "get" what he's written.

A standout, for me at least, was DFW/MC's writing on "sampling" in hip hop culture; suggesting that it is rooted in the struggle for access to recording studios - that many white artists (aka. the "rock & roll acts") were afforded - which meant those without access (namely, many underground black artists), quite cleverly, used what they did have access to (recorded music), and with that, made music by sampling the recorded music they had (rapping on top of it, and - in the case of many "serious raps" - deploying the sample for commentary-related purposes).

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhilirating read that takes in not just Golden Era rap/hip-hop, but also TV sitcoms, civil rights, politics, poetry, academia, etc. Great to see the foresight regarding sampling technology (to become today's neural net technology) which we'll use to insert ourselves into our TV show of choice. This book is certainly of its time, but its assessment of rap is still relevant in a culture that is ambivalent at best towards Black music and identity. Thoroughly enjoyed, looking forward to reading more David Foster Wallace.

[Jared Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Signifying Rappers is the attempt of two men to unravel the mysteries of rap from an outsider’s perspective. Neither of these men grew up in the same environment described by the lyrics of rap music, yet their investigation into rap is extremely useful for anyone else who is interested in trying to understand why rap is here and where it is going. On that note, let me be clear that this work is definitely outdated. To give you an idea of just how outdated I’m talking about, the artists whose songs they analyze include, Run DMC, Public Enemy, L.L. Cool J., Ice T., and Flavor Flav. If you have no idea who these people are, then, to give you a better idea of just how old-school rap I’m talking about, Flavor Flav is two months older than the Vice President of the United States (Mike Pence). Even Wallace acknowledges that rap changes so quickly that by the time his writings reach his intended audience, they will be out-of-date. But this does not invalidate their thoughts, nor does it make reading this a waste of time. Over the years, rap has certainly evolved, but understanding its origins is very valuable for anyone interested in what it has to say about American culture.
In the process of grappling with the mysteries of the rap genre, Costello and Wallace share their thoughts about other questions. For instance, why are white people so drawn to rap when often times the genre seems so anti-white? Is it truly anti-white? Is rap misogynistic? Why are the lyrics often times so violent? How did rap originate? What are some defining characteristics of rap? How can we compare rap to poetry? What does rap music offer that rock music cannot?
All of these they answer to some degree, but I did have some difficulty coming away from the book with an overall lesson about rap or rap as it was 30 years ago. It is possible that this is a consequence of finishing half of the book, taking a break, and coming back to it about a month later. Nevertheless, I felt as if the authors should have given more attention to the last question in particular: What does rap offer that rock music does not? In other words, what do you say to all of the critics of rap who dismiss the genre as nothing but a group of people proclaiming their entitlement to money, sex, and fame in the most vulgar way possible? What do you say to those who argue that rap is promoting gang violence, or that rap is just some profanity-riddled, self-obsessed form of poetry? Perhaps they did give this plenty of attention, and I simply didn’t have the capacity to comprehend their thoughts. If this is the case, I would argue that it is a result of the language in which they clothed their rebuttal. Both of the authors are brilliant men, but I felt as if their arguments were often dressed in such intricate language that it was easy to lose track of the overarching idea. Then again, handling this heavy wording and mental gymnastics may take little effort for a more advanced reader.
As to be expected from any book with David Foster Wallace’s name on it, the sentences that comprise it are simultaneously lengthy and grammatically correct. With references to artists, critics, and events involved in the music scene well before my birth, Wallace’s thoughts were at times hard to follow. I attribute some of this difficulty to my ability as reader, and the acrobatic phrases and sentences did not make things easier. However, when I was able to comprehend several paragraphs at a time, I found the result immensely rewarding. Wallace puts so much thought into almost every sentence, and it’s a shame that we don’t have more people like him in the world.

[Chase · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's funny, energetic, and cutesy, but it's somewhat of a non-starter, there are these excellent introductions and anxious rationalizations for two white Ivy Leaguers to be writing about rap which are terrifically rendered, but the meat never really arrives, it's kind of stuck on the same self-referential analytical mode which, again, is effective, but not on its own -- really needs some more conclusions.

[Edoardo Giungi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alla solita magia di periodi ed alla consueta raffica di domande e riflessioni, una più brillante dell’altra, tutte dipendenti e concatenate fra loro, a cui Wallace ci ha abituati si sostituisce in questo libro uno sferragliare paranoide e rancoroso che purtroppo è indice della depressione montante del geniale scrittore con bandana. Peggior libro di Wallace che abbia mai letto nonostante i presenti ma troppo flebili lampi di genio. Il baratro della malattia si aprirà a breve inghiottendo l’anima dannata e sensibile del barrilete cosmico della letteratura.

[Helena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine being at a party and the most pretentious white man you've ever heard decided to tell you about his love for rap-music even though you really did not ask. He then proceeds to hold a monologue on the Genre. He won't stop using big words, to sound smart you assume, but he just sounds like a douchebag.
That's what reading this book feels like.

[Abdullah Mirza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oftentimes incomprehensible, if lyrically so, top-down perspective on rap from the 20th century.