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From Damocles to Socrates: The Classics In/of Hip-Hop
- losvedir 11y agoHmm... very interesting. Either hip hop is much, much more sophisticated than I've been giving it credit for, or a Classics professor is inappropriately shoehorning his interpretations onto the lyrics. My initial impulse would be to day "mephistopheles" and "damocles" are used because they sound cool and rhyme. I don't know hip hop well enough to say which is the case, but it's certainly a thought-provoking article.
- vinceguidry 11y agoWell, you have to know the words before you can put them in a rhyme. In the poor black neighborhoods where hip-hop emerged, that's no mean trick. The only reason I ever heard the word "Mephistopheles" growing up was because of Magic: The Gathering. I don't think I knew who or what "Damocles" was until well into adulthood. And you have to know the stories before you can invoke their meanings. Kanye is almost certainly far better read than people give him credit for. A good intro to hip-hop history is Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791 http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0...
- gumby 11y agoBoy this resonates with me (though I'm 10-20 years older than the author). East coast hip hop in the 80s & 90s was more creative and wry than what you hear today. But then it got sucked into the music machine and excreted as either pap or a violent product. BTW if you speak the language, a surprising number of French rappers still reference classical and modern philosophers.