In the movie Dangerous Minds, the high school English teacher played by Michelle Pfeiffer tries to instill a love of poetry in her class of inner-city students by having them parse the drug references in Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Alan Bradley, the author of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, would likely approve. Bradley identifies classical poetic forms (internal rhyme, alliteration, etc.) in hip-hop lyrics such as Tupac Shakur’s “Out on bail, fresh outta jail, California dreamin’ / Soon as I stepped on the scene I’m hearin’ hoochies screamin’.” An article in The New Yorker points to Bradley’s compendium, The Anthology of Rap, co-edited by University of Toronto professor Andrew DuBois, as a collection of modern urban poetry from the last three decades.

The New Yorker article goes on to point out that Bradley and DuBois’ volume now exists alongside a book by one of the most famous practitioners of the hip-hop form: Jay-Z, whose new collection of lyrics, Decoded, includes notes on how the practice of poesy informs his songwriting:

Throughout Decoded, Jay-Z offers readers a large dose of hermeneutics and a small dose of biography, in keeping with his deserved reputation for brilliance and chilliness. His footnotes are full of pleasingly small-scale exultations (I like the internal rhymes here) and technical explanations (The shift in slang “ from talking about guns as tools to break things to talking about shooting as blazing “ matches the shift in tone); at one point, he pauses to quote a passage from Book of Rhymes in which Bradley praises his use of homonyms.

Kalefa Sanneh, the author of the New Yorker piece, goes on to suggest that such pining for literary legitimacy is emblematic of hip-hop’s ongoing struggle for respect:

Jay-Z insists that his lyrics should be heard  “ read “ as poetry, [and] Bradley and DuBois produce an anthology designed to win for rappers the status of poets. They are, all of them, trading cachet, and their eagerness to make this trade suggests that they are trading up “ that hip-hop, despite its success, still aches for respect and recognition. It stands to reason, then, that as the genre’s place in the cultural firmament grows more secure its advocates will grow less envious of poetry’s allegedly exalted status.

Sanneh goes on to question whether hip-hop lyrics are equally potent when divorced from the beats that drive them, and writes, “The genius of hip-hop is that it encourages listeners to hear spoken words as music.” This is a sentiment with which Emory University professor Kevin Young would likely agree. Addressing Bradley and DuBois’ Anthology of Rap in the journal Bookforum, Young has this to say:

Is rap poetry? The question has become a loaded one. It seems today the only people who don’t write poetry are poets. The work of anyone else we feel deserves praise, from Toni Morrison to Bob Dylan “ and now, Roxanne Shanté “ is called poetry. Far from democratizing the practice, this designation of “poetry” for those we like and whose work we respect risks reducing poetry to little more than a free-floating feeling. In one sense, this instinct is true enough: Poetry is ultimately where you find it, and many will find it here. But aren’t the lyrics profound enough as the words to great songs? Need they be poetry, too?