Join us and the Seminary Co-Op for a book event for What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language, a love letter to the verbal artistry of hip hop, by Daniel Levin Becker, a Point contributor and writer, critic and translator. “Hip-hop culture preaches the virtues of keeping it real over the virtues of interpretive scrutiny,” Daniel wrote in his essay on Jay Electronica for issue 4, “and makes no particular room for those of us who keep it real by scrutinizing.” And yet there is something thrilling in encountering “language manipulated in inspired, wonderfully insubordinate ways.” Daniel will be joined in conversation by Maureen Miller, a pathologist, epidemiologist and author of the essay collection A Taste of My Own Medicine. Monday, March 28th at 6 p.m. CT / 7 p.m. ET. Fill out this form to register and receive the Zoom link.
What’s Good is a work of passionate lyrical analysis, a set of freewheeling liner notes, and a love letter to the most vital American art form of the last half century. Over a series of short chapters, each centered on a different lyric, Daniel Levin Becker considers how rap’s use of language operates and evolves at levels ranging from the local (slang, rhyme) to the analytical (quotation, transcription) to the philosophical (morality, criticism, irony), celebrating the pleasures and perils of any attempt to decipher its meaning-making technologies.
Join us and the Seminary Co-Op for a book event for What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language, a love letter to the verbal artistry of hip hop, by Daniel Levin Becker, a Point contributor and writer, critic and translator. “Hip-hop culture preaches the virtues of keeping it real over the virtues of interpretive scrutiny,” Daniel wrote in his essay on Jay Electronica for issue 4, “and makes no particular room for those of us who keep it real by scrutinizing.” And yet there is something thrilling in encountering “language manipulated in inspired, wonderfully insubordinate ways.” Daniel will be joined in conversation by Maureen Miller, a pathologist, epidemiologist and author of the essay collection A Taste of My Own Medicine. Monday, March 28th at 6 p.m. CT / 7 p.m. ET. Fill out this form to register and receive the Zoom link.
What’s Good is a work of passionate lyrical analysis, a set of freewheeling liner notes, and a love letter to the most vital American art form of the last half century. Over a series of short chapters, each centered on a different lyric, Daniel Levin Becker considers how rap’s use of language operates and evolves at levels ranging from the local (slang, rhyme) to the analytical (quotation, transcription) to the philosophical (morality, criticism, irony), celebrating the pleasures and perils of any attempt to decipher its meaning-making technologies.