Rap: The Lyrics
Item
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Title
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Rap: The Lyrics
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This edition
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"Rap: The Lyrics." Ed. Lawrence A. Stanley. Introduction by Jefferson Morley. Penguin Books, 1992. 432 pp.
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Publisher's description
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"This book contains the complete lyrics to 200 old school rap songs, with a history and overview of this musical form up until the early nineties. Once dismissed as a fashionable music form, rap is a vital force in American culture itself. From music awards to McDonalds adverts, sounds of rap have permeated the media. Controversies caused by groups such as Public Enemy, and sometimes coarse language and lyrics of the street have caused the public at large to scrutinize popular music in an attempt to control it. Like every other genre of music, the lyrics run from socially aware to hedonistic and everything in between."
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Reviews and notices of anthology
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● Gold, Jonathan. "Rap: The Lyrics." "Los Angeles Times" 30 May 1993.
"Can rappers’ rhymes work on the printed page? On the evidence of this comprehensive collection of transcribed rap lyrics, probably not--as they were probably never meant to. This is a good collection, completely uncensored, set out in reasonable-looking verse and remarkably free of the blatant mistakes that usually mark transcriptions of rap lyrics. Still, the selection can read more like the work of an obscenity law attorney (which it is) than the product of a real rap fan: Most of the major artists are here, but the song choices often seem arbitrary."
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Los Angeles Times
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Item Number
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A0617
Front cover