Who is copping the Anthology of Rap?

phongonephongone 1,652 Posts
edited November 2010 in Strut Central
920 pages of transcribed rap lyrics from 1979 to 2009. The perfect Christmas present for culture nerds like the one O-Dub.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300141904?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0300141904

This guy at Slate is very because the authors transcribed some rap songs incorrectly. http://www.slate.com/id/2272926/pagenum/2


???Here on "50 Shot Ya," 50 Cent says, "I'm familiar with problems, I know how to solve 'em, semiautomatically or trey-eight revolve 'em" not "Semiautomatic, Lugar trey revolve 'em," as the editors transcribe it. A trey-eight is a .38 handgun; 50 pronounces "trey-eight" like "trey-ay," but there is clearly no long u sound or g sound. He is not saying Luger, another brand of gun that is often mentioned by rappers. This mistake shortchanges 50's creativity, denying his clever use of the adverb "semiautomatically."


???Ghostface Killah, here in "Daytona 500," is referring to a prominent New York radio personality named Vaughan Harper when he says "voice be mellow like Vaughan Harper radio barber." He is not saying "voice be metal like Von Harper," as the editors have it. There is no such thing as a "Von Harper" with a metal voice. Vaughan Harper, with a mellow voice, was a host on New York's WBLS, 107.5 FM, at one time a popular hip-hop and R&B station.


???Here on "Act Too (Love of My Life)," Black Thought from the Roots is referring to a brand of eyewear called Cazal, popular in the 1980s. He is not saying "Gazelle, goggles," as the editors have it, but "Cazal goggles." Had the editors thought to include Redman in the anthology, they might have noticed his line on "Da Goodness": "as a juvenile bought Cazals off Canal" (i.e., Canal Street in New York).


???On "Triumph," RZA of Wu Tang Clan is clearly saying "March of the Wooden Soldiers," not "Watch for the Wooden Soldiers." When he says "a thousand men rushing in," he's comparing his group, the Wu Tang Clan, to the unstoppable army of automatons in the old Laurel and Hardy movie Babes in Toyland (1934), which was often broadcast in New York on television around Christmastime and became commonly known as March of the Wooden Soldiers.

  Comments


  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Latte Pas...

    b/w

    Well now you're forced to listen to the teacher and the lesson
    Class is in session so you can stop guessin
    If this is a tape or a written down memo
    See I am a professional, this is not a demo
    In fact call it a lecture, a visual picture
    Sort of a poetic and rhythm-like mixture
    Listen, I'm not dissin but there's somethin that you're missin
    Maybe you should touch reality, stop wishin
    For beats with plenty bass and lyrics said in haste
    If this meaning doesn't manifest put it to rest
    I am a poet, you try to show it, yet blow it
    It takes concentration for fresh communication
    Observation, that is to see without speaking
    Take off your coat, take notes, I am teachin
    a class, or rather school, cause you need schooling
    I am not a king or queen, I'm not ruling
    This is an introduction to poetry
    A small dedication to those that might know of me
    They might know of you and maybe your gang
    But one thing's for sure, neither one of y'all can hang
    Cause yo I'm like a arrow, and Scott is the crossbow
    Say something now ... thought so
    You seem to be the type that only understand
    The annihilation and destruction of the next man
    That's not poetry, that is insanity
    It's simply fantasy far from reality
    Poetry is the language of imagination
    Poetry is a form of positive creation
    Difficult, isn't it? The point? You're missin it
    Your face is in front of my hand so I'm dissin it


    b/w

    This is the type of crap that gets pushed onto students by teachers(College and regular) who wanna "use Hip Hop" as a learning guide and shit. Its an abomination. LEAVE HIP HOP ALONE??.

  • The Anthology of Rap is rife with transcription errors.

    Why is it so hard to get rap lyrics right?

    http://www.slate.com/id/2272926/

  • TheKindCromang said:


    Why is it so hard to get rap lyrics right?

    They don't care about black people

  • BigKBigK 97 Posts
    Word, I was going to get it, until I read the Slate article...
    Did you see in the comments over at Slate one of the editors goes on to say that there are a lot more errors in there, he and his co-editor have found more... not sure why he'd think admitting that was a good idea.
    He then suggests that readers should send in corrections so it can eventually be pretty accurate, maybe in like 50 print runs from now.

    Also the revelation that it has the same mistakes as www.ohhla.com means they just copied the lyrics from there and didn't correct it all thoroughly - not very scholarly.

    This was interesting, especially the update at the bottom -
    http://wernervonwallenrod.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-big-book-of-rap-lyrics.html

    It looks like actually the answer was yes, they did just lazily cut & paste OHHLA's transcriptions. There's a rather damning article posted about this book on Slate that not only spots some more errors (to be expected)... but the problem is that those errors are all duplicates of OHHLA errors. For example, both OHHLA and The Anthology write this line from Ghostface Killah's "Daytona 5000:" "voice be metal like Von Harper." The actual line is "voice be mellow like Vaughan Harper."

    Now, the problem isn't that The Anthology made a transcription mistake... or that the editors didn't research Vaughan Harper's name. The problem is that The Anthology reproduced the same, bizarre alternate word and spelling choices printed on OHHLA's website. And it's not just this Ghostface quote, their other errors also seem to be carry-overs from OHHLA.

    What does that mean? Apparently, instead of doing their own research or transcriptions, they just copied OHHLA's work and made some alterations. That's sorta like, yaknow... plagiarism.

    Every transcriber is credited on OHHLA for the work they submitted on the actual page of the transcription. But I don't see those credits carried over anywhere in the book. ...I'm glad I don't work in Yale's legal department right now.

    Now, on the positive side: they clearly did do some error-correcting. So like I said in my initial write-up, the book's transcripts are more accurate than OHHLA's. But, yeah. Disappointing revelation there.

  • dukeofdelridgedukeofdelridge urgent.monkey.mice 2,453 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    TheKindCromang said:


    Why is it so hard to get rap lyrics right?

    They don't care about black people

    and to be fair, one of the mistakes is fwom da Wza

    ahh

    seems barely one step removed from rap glossary. don't want.

  • FWIW I thought this was cool

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131063935

    kind of redeemed the awful NYMag piece it references.

  • BigKBigK 97 Posts
    He doesn't need to try so hard to pretend to like Lil Wayne

    A big part of being into HipHop is not liking Lil Wayne, though he may find that out too, in time

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    I think lyrics are the best way into rap for people who want to give it serious consideration and didn't listen a lot when they were young and impressionable.

    Reading > Listening.........

  • faux_rillzfaux_rillz 14,343 Posts
    Terrible

    Leave rap alone

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Jonny_Paycheck said:
    FWIW I thought this was cool

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131063935

    kind of redeemed the awful NYMag piece it references.

    Yeah, I liked it too. I get people's misgivings about treating rap lyrics in the same way they'd treat poetry, but by the end of this article this guy seems to have grasped the pointlessness of that approach, so that's a positive.

    And quite honestly, after reading two diabolically bad pieces in the Guardian earlier this week (mainly down to the comments they drew) concerning how you'd go about introducing rap to someone who'd never listened to it, it's a welcome relief to read something that at least approaches the topic from a more interesting angle.

  • DocMcCoy said:
    And quite honestly, after reading two diabolically bad pieces in the Guardian earlier this week (mainly down to the comments they drew) concerning how you'd go about introducing rap to someone who'd never listened to it, it's a welcome relief to read something that at least approaches the topic from a more interesting angle.

    Ha ha, I thought the same, although I gave up halfway through the second piece, I just got confused by the tracks they were offering up and having just looked at the final playlist, it's confused me even more. A playlist for people who've never heard hip hop, apparently put together by people who have never heard hip hop. I think they should stick to arguing about The Vaccines.

  • BigKBigK 97 Posts
    More mistakes found -

    http://nildoctrine.com/nil/14-more-mistakes-i-found-in-the-anthology-of-rap/

    Comments at the bottom are interesting - apparently one of the editors got his university students to transcribe a bunch of it, and they were told to use internet lyrics as a starting point

  • BigKBigK 97 Posts
    This errors and plagiarism shit popped off like crazy -

    http://www.slate.com/id/2275145/

    Grandmaster Caz finds mistakes in his own lyrics, even though the anthology says he vetted his lyrics,
    and the book's advisory board basically trash it
Sign In or Register to comment.