This article on rap music by Daniel Levin Becker catches my attention… especially this assessment of Rap music…

Rap music serves, consistently, contagiously, sometimes in spite of its own claims to the contrary, as a delivery mechanism for the most exhilarating and crafty and inspiring use of language in contemporary American culture.

… i struggle to get very much into Rap, even as i am aware of its enormous significance… i keep trying though… this article may be a window in, as it analyzes lines from a number of songs (raps?) and so could point me to some raps to listen to…

This is just it: taking words at face value is what good rappers almost militantly don’t do. They find the blind angles, the shortcuts, the secret overlaps, and use them, sometimes, to build stunning models of invention and entente, spaces where small discords combine into larger resolutions and we see, hear, how boring it would be to live in a perfect world where like belongs only with like.

… hmmm… saving this article…

Wiki, Half God

… i am not generally a fan of rap music, it doesn’t connect much with any of my life experiences… it has to be pretty highly regarded for me to take note of it, thus, when a new release by a rap artist i have never heard (not because they are obscure, almost all rap artists are obscure to me) of gets an 8.5 rating i add it to my list of music to listen to and decide if i like it…

_ His latest album, Half God, is a record about what it’s like to come of age in New York: the way it shapes, hardens, prematurely ages you. Produced in its entirety by Navy Blue—the skateboarder/model turned prolific producer/MC born Sage Elsesser—the record captures the varied tempos of city life in colorful vignettes. A warbling guitar loop soundtracks a contemplative smoke session on “Roof”; the stuttering soul samples on “Can’t Do This Alone” stroll with Wiki and Navy Blue through city streets; hi-hats crunch and snares snap on “The Business,” as Wiki spews vitriol at the gentrifiers changing his home into something unrecognizable._¹