Pick anyone from a more “traditional canon” – Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen – whichever way you cut it, to write a book legitimising song lyrics as poetry is somewhat tinged with apology from the off. Throw in the fact that even the most banal lyrics can be raised to emotive heights when set to music and it’s a tangled premise indeed.
Hip-hop’s cultural snatches – traditionally samples from funk and soul – are no different to folk music’s lyrical cut’n’pastes; its beats make it perfect for hard-hitting lyrical flow, which is perhaps where rap’s delivery differs from an acoustic troubadour’s. Bradley does well with the interaction between voice and beat and, with a PhD in English literature, he’s just the man to explain hip-hop’s reliance on similie rather than metaphor, while neatly untangling the often mind-bogglingly convoluted end, internal and slant rhymes the best MCs unleash. An over-reliance on the likes of modern maestros Nas and OutKat’s André 3000, however, slightly hampers things – a larger array of names and examples would have fleshed the claims out a little. For anyone interested in these sounds of science, however, Book Of Rhymes is a great primer for both beginner-level poetry and lyrical bomb appreciation.
