Is there a genre of music in the last decade more polarizing than mumble rap? Defined by its lack of lyrical quality, mumble rap has grown to dominate the hip-hop scene and has made its way from the Soundcloud sub-basement to the mainstream. Like most other popular media, mumble rap has attracted its share of haters. Unlike most other popular media, mumble rap may have more haters than fans. It is, by and large, the most shit-on genre of music since nu-metal.
The argument against mumble-rap is simple: you can’t understand what the artist is saying — and even when you can understand what they’re saying, it’s often base and uninspired. Does that make it bad hip-hop? To many, yes. To me, no. I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand what makes a hip-hop song good (note: I did not use the word “great” here). …
Background
I like writing poetry. It started with hip-hop in high school and has gradually grown to be a serious hobby of mine as an adult. Since I haven’t received any formal writing training, I developed a personal learning curriculum which has been crucial in my development. It’s nothing too serious — it mostly consists of taking free online courses like ModPo and Georgetown’s Dante Class, reading through Poetry Foundation’s Poem Guides, studying scansion and meter with For Better or Verse, and listening to recordings from the PennSound Archives.
All of this reading, listening to, and watching poetry-related material wouldn’t have been worth much without application. I didn’t just want to know about poetry, I wanted to write poetry. To work on my poetic chops, I made a numbered list of poetic forms and whenever I needed inspiration or a prompt to write, I rolled the dice and wrote a poem in whichever form was chosen. I’ve run into a lot of difficult forms using this method. From sestinas, to abecedarians, to villanelles, to palindromes, I trudged forward month after month struggling through formidable thorny poetic forms. …
On the drive home from Woodstock after watching Bong Joo-ho’s “Parasite” last night, my fiancé and I struggled to find common ground to agree on what the film meant. At the core of our disagreement was the metaphor of the rock given to the protag early on, and the fundamental question of what the title “Parasite” referred to. Ambiguity in film is like televised street magic. Watching from home, it’s hard to tell if you’re missing something because you weren’t paying close enough attention, or if what you’re missing was intentional and part of the magic. …
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