Ralph Ellison has often been cited by literary scholars as one of the 20th century’s most tragic examples of writer’s block: after the immense success of 1952’s Invisible Man, the author lived for more than 40 years without ever publishing a second novel. Yet, in Ralph Ellison In Progress: From
Come Friday night, most college students put down their books and put on their favorite jeans before heading out to parties where hip-hop music blares in crowded clubs and living rooms—Kanye or Lil Wayne’s rhymes making it necessary to shout in order to be heard. The next day, the more
Adam Bradley— Last fall saw the publication of The Anthology of Rap, a collection that I co-edited with Andrew DuBois. The book gathers nearly 300 lyrics by dozens of artists from across rap’s four decades. Our purpose was to highlight rap’s development as a literary art form by underscoring the
If you missed it on NPR’s All Things Considered last weekend, be sure to listen to Adam Bradley‘s brief interview on lyrics as poetry: NPR.org. NPR’s “The Record” blog also followed up with Sam Anderson after his rave review of The Anthology of Rap in New York magazine, and you
Is this awesome or what? The long-awaited trailer for The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois, is finally here. By bringing together more than three hundred lyrics written over thirty years, from the “old school” to the “golden age” to the present day, the book doubles