For years, the argument against hip-hop has emphasized content - the transgressive fantasies of thug life, glorified by rap stars from Ice-T and Notorious B.I.G. to 50 Cent. It's Bradley's self-imposed assignment to shift the emphasis to form, and he lays out a nuanced, academically rigorous argument that the best hip-hop deserves attention as genuine artistry.
Rap, he writes, is "poetic meter rendered audible." If traditional poetry is in fact ailing, Bradley suggests as the culprit the last century's disavowal of structure and rhyme. "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people," as he quotes the late poet Adrian Mitchell. As indicated in the book's title - a "book of rhymes" is an MC's lyrics notebook - hip-hop has reintroduced the simple pleasure of hearing a surprising rhyme scheme.
This observation leads to an authoritative discussion of poetic technique - the origins of internal rhymes, chain rhymes, "slant" rhymes. In noting rappers' crowd-pleasing technique of devising intricate "broken" rhymes (pairing a single multisyllabic word with several monosyllabic ones), the author compares examples by the pioneering rapper Big Daddy Kane (" 'Cause I never let 'em on top of me/ I play 'em out like a game of Monopoly") and Lord Byron: "But - Oh! Ye lords of ladies intellectual/ Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd you all?"
From the strictures of rhythm and rhyme, Bradley moves into the more loosely defined elements of style and storytelling. Here the book steps from the classroom into the arena, as the author lets his undeniable enthusiasm for his subject take over. In the eternal Biggie-vs.-Tupac debate - style vs. substance - the author is a Biggie man. For him, it's not the words so much as the sound of the words.
A rapper's "flow" - his rhyming choices, how he accentuates the beat, the qualities that make his voice unique - can be influenced in many ways. 50 Cent didn't emerge from the rap underground into superstardom until a gunshot wound in his cheek left him with a distinct clenched-teeth vocal delivery. Another unmistakable rapper, DMX, developed his gruff sound by emulating his aggressive guard dogs.
