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C on t e n ts vii
Chapter 5 | Old-School DJs and MCs 57

Learning Objectives 57
The First Wave: DJs and the Early Party Scene 58
DJ Kool Herc 58
Herc’s Blueprints 59
Competition and the Ensuing DJ Battle Culture 60
Afrika Bambaataa 60
Grandmaster Flash 61
“Quick Mix Theory” and Other DJ Techniques 61
The Founding Fathers’ Contributions 62
The Role of the DJ 63
“Digging the Crates”: [Re]searching for the Perfect Beat 63
Techniques and Gear 63
Sources for Beats: Funk 64
The DJ Needs an MC 64
The MC Emerges 65
DJs Overshadowed by Their MCs 66
The Hip Hop Name 66
The Second Wave: “Rapper’s Delight” Changes Everything 67
Listening Guide: Listening to the Sugarhill Gang: “Rapper’s Delight” 68
The New Guard: Early Commercial Old-School Rap 73
Listening Guide: Listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five:
“The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” 74
Crossing Over: The New Wave Connection 77
New Technologies and New Experimentation 78
Chapter Summary 78
Study Questions 79
Key Terms 79
Chapter 6 | The Golden Era 80

From Old School to New School: Concept of Rappin’ 80
Second Generation of Rappers 80
New-School Innovations 82
A Survey of New-School Styles and Themes (1980s–1990s) 82
Rap-Rock Fusion: The Emergence of Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys 82
Listening Guide: Listening to Run-D.M.C.: “Rock Box” 84
Response Rap/Dis Rap: Putting Beef on Wax 88
Rap Ballads 90
00-Orejuela-FM.indd 7 25/06/14 10:07 AM

viii Con ten ts
Listening Guide: Listening to LL Cool J: “I Need Love” 91

Feminist Themes 94
Listening Guide: Listening to Queen Latifah: “Ladies First” 94
Novelty/Humorous Rap 98
Freestyle: a.k.a. Latino Hip Hop 99
Listening Guide: Listening to Nayobe: “Please Don’t Go” 100
Hardcore Rap 102
Dirty/Booty Rap 103
Rap: Just a Fad? 104
Chapter Summary 105
Study Questions 106
Key Terms 106
Chapter 7 | Hardcore: “Message Rap”

and “Gangsta Rap” 107
Hardcore Rap 107
Flashback: “The Message” That Almost Didn’t Happen 108
Lyrical Referencing: Sister Souljah 109
Visual References and Message Rap 109
Political Empowerment: Public Enemy 110
Listening Guide: Listening to Public Enemy: “Burn Hollywood Burn” 111
From Cultural Movement to Political Movement to
Popular Movement 116
Hardcore, Too: From Gangsta Style to Gangsta Rap 116
Earliest Gangsta Style 117
Think Like a Gangsta 117
The L.A. Gangsta Rap Scene 118
Listening Guide: Listening to Ice-T: “Rhyme Pays” 119
Listening Guide: Listening to N.W.A.: “Straight Outta Compton” 125
Rap Music as a Conduit for Political Culture 128
Afrocentric Rap 129
Five Percent Rappers 130
Consideration of Black Nationalism and Rap Music: Wasn’t
Old School also “Message Rap”? 131
Gangstas and Stock Characters from Folklore: Two Types of Hustlers 131
Popular Culture Media Images in Gangsta and X-rated Rap:
Blaxploitation and Gangster Films 133
Chapter Summary 133
Study Questions 134
Key Terms 134

C on t e n ts ix
Chapter 8 | Hardcore II: Gangsta in the ’90s

and Responses from Within the
Rap Community 135
Keeping It Real? Issues Underscoring the Representation
and Exploitation of Rap 135
Harsh Messages of Gangsta and X-rated Rappers 136
X-rated Rap/Miami Bass 138
Controversy with Gangsta and X-rated Rap 139
Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) 140
Charges of Obscenity and Censoring Hip Hop 140
1994 Senate Hearings Against Gangsta Rap 141
The Emergence of G-Funk 142
Followers of G-Funk 143
Pop Rap Goes Hardcore 144
East Coast–West Coast Rivalry: Not Just Biggie and 2Pac 145
Responding to Gangsta Rap’s Domination 150
Spiritual Themes 150
Lauryn Hill 151
Rastafarian Themes 152
Black Feminist Spirituality and Values 152
Listening Guide: Listening to Lauryn Hill: “Doo Wop (That Thing)” 154
Christian Rap 157
Rap and Judaism 158
Jazz-Rap Fusion 158
Origins 158
Jazz-Rap Fusion Movement in the 1990s 159
Listening Guide: Listening to Us3: “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” 159
Listening Guide: Listening to A Tribe Called Quest: “Excursions” 164
Women in Hip Hop and Rap 167
Women as Objects from a Male Rapper Perspective 168
Women as Subject: Towards a Womanist Approach to Hip Hop 168
White Rappers in the 1990s 169
Chapter Summary 171
Study Questions 171
Key Terms 172
Chapter 9 | Hip Hop Culture and Rap Music

in the Second Millennium 173
Hip Hop: Into the New Millennium (1995–Today) 173

x Con ten ts
What Is Underground Hip Hop? 174

The South 174
Southern Hip Hop Styles 176
Southern Message Rap 176
Southern Gangsta 177
Bounce Music (New Orleans) 177
Listening Guide: Listening to David Banner, Featuring Lil’ Flip: “Like a Pimp” 178
Lil Wayne Phenomenon 180
Chopped and Screwed (Houston) 181
Listening Guide: Listening to Three 6 Mafia, Featuring UGK
and Project Pat: “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” 182
Crunk (Memphis and Atlanta)/Crunk & B 185
Snap Music (Atlanta) 186
Cocaine Rap 186
South as Pop 186
Underground Rap as Independent or Alternative Rap Music 187
Rhymesayers Entertainment 187
The Underground Scene in Los Angeles: The Good Life Café
and Project Blowed 188
The Millennials (or the Millennial Generation) 189
Pharrell Williams and Kanye West 190
Young Innovators 192
Drake and Nicki Minaj 194
Listening Guide: Listening to Kanye West, Featuring Rick Ross,
Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, and Bon Iver: “Monster” 196
Hip Hop Futurism 203
Chapter Summary 204
Study Questions 205
Key Terms 205
Chapter 10 | Conclusion 206

What Is Hip Hop? Round Two 206
Chapter Summary 213
Key Terms 213
Glossary 214
References 229
Index 239

Preface
“T
he changing same”: a quick, user-friendly definition for the concept of
tradition penned by Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones) in 1968. It is a
key expression that will guide the reader in the following pages just as
it has guided the author. As a fan and student of hip hop culture, I
have experienced and traced the changes since the days that I heard
my first rap song play on the radio in 1979. Many sonic innovations and subcultural
transmutations followed. Some of those changes I have felt in the actions of the art-
ists from my generation, such as Snoop Dogg reinventing himself as Snoop Lion, or
Jay-Z removing the hyphen from his name, or the maturation of the youngest gen-
eration, teenaged artists like Earl Sweatshirt dropping his sociopathic, absurdist
rhymes for stories dealing with serious issues such as depression on his debut solo
album, Doris (2013). Other changes, such as the ways artists have transformed the
recording industry and modes of self-production, are more jarring. From a gener-
ational standpoint, it is hard not to miss and yearn for holding the vinyl in my hands,
placing the needle on the record, studying the art on the 12x12 album cover, reading
the liner notes, and letting the songs play until it was time to flip the record over to
side 2. Fast-forward to the summer of 2013, and hip hop product is digital and sites
for purchasing it are virtual. As a sign of this revolutionary change, Samsung made a
$5 million deal with rapper Jay Z (as Jay-Z) to release his 2013 album Magna Carta
Holy Grail for owners of Samsung Galaxy smartphones to download before the re-
lease date. As a result, the album went platinum even before it was formally made
available to the public.
Those changes mostly reflect access to the musical product. The sameness is
ever present, persisting in the structure and performance of the music, whether we
are talking about Magna Carta Holy Grail by veteran Jay Z or the 2013 Electric High-
way mixtape by Chicago newcomer Rockie Fresh. Through the flow of their lyrical
narratives, the percussive musicality central to the soundscape, and the proud boast-
fulness of their rap personae, they maintain the cultural spirit of rap music since its
inception. It is this dynamic aspect of hip hop culture and its most dominant ele-
ment, rap music, that fascinates me and the students that I have taught. It is, in part,
for those students and prospective students that I put together this book.
I began teaching hip hop studies in 1998 as an associate instructor for the rap
music course created by my mentor Portia K. Maultsby and then became the profes-
sor of record for a large lecture in 2003. The course fully crossed over alongside the
music, which has become the pop music of this generation at least since the late 1990s.
While the genre’s popularity grew, I was observing students distancing themselves
from cultural components that created the hip hop forms and the music’s core aes-
thetics. My students’ love for “gangsta rap” and discussion of current trends and issues
suffered from a general lack of historical and cultural awareness. The more we treated
hip hop with color-blind lenses and the more homogenized the sound became, the
more difficult it was to discuss what hip hop was, is, and is yet to be.
xi

xii Prefac e
That became the inspiration for this survey study so that the students could have
a foundation on which to build their discussions on the current state of hip hop.
Basic knowledge of poetics and folk narrative opens the door to H. Samy Alim’s
treatment of linguistics and black vernacular. A general comprehension of abstract
ideas like community, youth commingling, and gang life allows students to under-
stand the ideas of subculture or underground hip hop communities discussed in the
works of Anthony Kwame Harrison or Marcyliena Morgan.
Hip hop studies has grown and continues to grow in the academy, and courses
being taught on college campuses are no longer isolated to programs in African
American studies, minority studies, folklore, ethnomusicology, or culture studies.
There are courses being taught nationwide in traditional departments of English,
art, history, and music—even in music schools like the one here at Indiana Univer-
sity, where I was once told by a colleague that I could teach rap as poetry, but “don’t
call it music.” Now that hip hop studies is a cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary
academic enterprise, let us, as students, discuss the current canon being created in
print, on digital video, and on the Internet.
One problem that students of hip hop culture face is in defining the term “hip
hop” itself. Fans, journalists, artists, scholars, and the like all use the term “hip hop”
reductively in everyday conversations. We continue to focus on two hip hop brands
of music that became dominant in the 1990s and continue to the present: hardcore
rap and R&B–rap fusion. As an umbrella term to refer to music alone, it fails to de-
scribe the scope of the culture, its original four elements (DJing, MCing, breaking
[b-boying], and graffiti), ideology, historical figures, and current population that
remain relevant to hip hop’s mission. Fans, hip hop heads, casual listeners of rap,
industry moguls, music scholars, and average Janes and Joes all believe to be able to
identify the “real” hip hop, yet the definitions are not in perfect sync with each other.
There are no gatekeepers and that is not the purpose of this book. The purpose is
rather to provide a few tools to discuss and debate definitions, histories, characteris-
tics of the art forms, and movements that have taken place since this subculture
arose. In the first chapter, we address some of these foundational questions and lay
out the scope for the text that follows.
I also understand that contemporary students view books as an archaic relic of
the past, the same way they question the rationale behind purchasing an entire
album as opposed to just a couple of singles that are standouts or hits. While it might
be cost-effective to download “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” for $1.29, the consumer
misses the holistic intention of the artist, the comprehensive story of a particular
time and place, the encapsulated cinematic vision of South-Central Los Angeles life
that Dr. Dre created on the album The Chronic, which was the source for this song.
It’s as if we crop the singular image of the creation of Adam to represent the whole
narrative of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco panels: iconic representation, per-
haps, but not enough.
Rather than studying the history of hip hop as an entirety, it is more convenient
to look for single items of interest on any Internet search vehicle, as we encounter
them in our daily lives, haphazardly, on a whim, or while we are reading a volume
such as this one. In fact, many of the songs and videos mentioned through these

P r e fac e xiii
pages are readily available on a number of audio and video websites, and it would be
beneficial to listen to them as you read. However, not all Internet resources are peer
reviewed or edited for content. There are strong resources, such as Davey D’s Hip
Hop Corner (www.daveyd.com), which has been operating since the latter part of
the 1990s. Davey D was an MC in the 1970s and has been actively engaged with
historical figures in hip hop culture since even before the age of the World Wide
Web. He maintains a rich archive of interviews that are excellent resources for any
fan or student of hip hop culture.
When reading interviews and other unedited materials on websites, it’s impor-
tant to examine critically the accounts of hip hop’s emergence and other information
you may find. For example, at the 1989 New Music Seminar, Davey D interviews DJ
Kool Herc and asks, “What year did the [hip hop culture] happen?” Herc replied at
that time, “1970”—a date that is significantly different from all other accounts.
Faulty memory? A generalization—as in, “the 1970s”? Or is Herc, in fact, referring
to the seedling parties that led to the first party he and his sister threw at 1520 Sedg-
wick Avenue—a result of putting together his father’s PA system? We as readers are
left to critique and compare Herc’s response with other interviews and historical
accounts.
Similarly, Wikipedia, the collaboratively edited Internet encyclopedia, is typi-
cally the first place masses of Internet users around the world search for immediate
information. While much of the information can be accurate, subtle inaccuracies
can change the significance of artistic endeavors and the history of this culture. As a
dynamic resource, Wikipedia can be updated and corrected over time, but that also
means that inaccuracies or misinformation can be introduced that may go unchal-
lenged. Informed students will always compare several sources and check any asser-
tion in order to come up with their own interpretation of the claims and counterclaims
made by various hip hop artists.
This book is broad in scope yet meant to be very concise. One of the purposes is
to provide a survey of the music styles chronologically with some representative
listening guides for the reader to follow. The second, and the one I am most commit-
ted to, is engaging the reader with hip hop culture and exploring the roles of music
and art in human life: the social, cultural, subcultural, and historical. A text like this
one is not meant to fossilize the music or the culture into just one thing; quite
the contrary. As a gateway, this book opens up discussion about hip hop culture
specifically but also American culture generally as those intersections and discover-
ies of new intricacies about human interaction, communication, and art come into
question.
My students have been an important reason why I put this book together, but it
is my goal to welcome any “student’ of hip hop culture to analyze the relationship
between music and culture. The other reason that I have invested my life studying
hip hop scenes and youth subcultures has been personal. First, I am a fan. Of
the four elements most commonly accepted—graffiti, breakdancing, DJing, and
MCing—I fell in love with graffiti and dance first and listened to rap music recre-
ationally until I heard my first Public Enemy song in the ’80s. Rap music became
something else. It was that introduction to lyrical activism that connected me to the

xiv Prefac e
“fifth” element of hip hop culture that has been most fervently articulated and advo-
cated by Afrika Bambaataa, a godfather of hip hop, and KRS-One, a second-generation,
conscious MC: knowledge.
“Knowledge” as a potential fifth element of hip hop speaks to the idea of self-
awareness and self-sufficiency. While it is an ideal—maybe even idealistic—the ear-
liest culture tends to be romanticized by members of the community, fans, and
scholars alike. To a degree, I am probably guilty of that, too. I fear that I might be
describing a utopia within the virtual walls of American ghettos. However, this
youth music subculture did not create a utopia. Not everyone involved in the origi-
nal hip hop community bought into the mission. To be clear, almost all the DJs had
a security team of ex–gang members present to protect themselves and help control
the crowd. Some of the DJs carried guns to protect their gear; some MCs used the
parties to sell marijuana. These dichotomies perhaps reflected best the environ-
ment’s balance of violence and peace, escapism and reality.
While the calls of “No violence!” might not have been universally accepted or
practiced, they were heard. These calls were not about pacifism, but activism: a call
to react to the social injustices and institutionalized racism through this party scene.
Forty years since the historic hip hop parties began, fifty-plus years since antidis-
crimination laws and affirmative action were implemented, black and Latino unem-
ployment, poverty, and homelessness are about twice that of whites. In 2011, more
than half of all prisoners still comprise blacks and Latinos despite the fact that these
two only make up approximately one-quarter of the US population. Among inmates
between the ages of 18 and 20, black males were imprisoned at more than nine times
the rate of white males. African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at ten
times the rate of whites. Youth-on-youth violence and homicide remain too high in
American inner cities and are often based on grounds of territorialism or some code
of masculinity. The fact that in 2013, Florida legislation supported the right of an
armed neighbor to track, intimidate, and eventually kill 17-year-old Trayvon Martin
because of his color, age, and the hoodie that he was wearing is emblematic of
the continuing racism in America and reminiscent of the atrocious 1955 slaying of
African American teenager Emmett Till. The ghettos of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and
1990s mentioned in this book maintain today the same demographic, largely black
and Latino. The current hip hop generation has a means to combat these perennial
American problems through lyrical expression, music production, art, dance, and
education, but the bigger problems need to be addressed by the rest of us.
Music and art can express a culture’s concerns, needs, and ideas about beauty,
but they can also edify and inspire their audience. Studying hip hop culture, whether
in a classroom or independently, and reading an introductory book like this one or
a scholarly culture critique, might breed a few more hip hop scholars, but, hopefully,
more “students” interested in policy making, social action, city and state governance,
journalism, and advocacy can come up with solutions to the inequality that contin-
ues to plague American society and bring to fruition what my generation has yet to
do. Studying hip hop is just one way to begin.
Of course, every scholar studying culture wants to get it right, and it is my hope
that I have offered a fair assessment for every kind of reader, whether you are an

A c k n ow l e dgm e nts xv
insider or outsider of this culture. Changes and challenges are to be expected, and I
encourage the debate. Even in the time that I wrote this book, new challenges are
appearing on the blogosphere with original, South Bronx party scenesters claiming
that the “first parties” happened a couple of years before Kool Herc and Cindy’s
Back-to-School Jam. Other “originals” are stating the music of that earliest period
was called “zugga zugga and cutting.” Time will tell; I plan to follow through, and I
welcome younger scholars to do the same.
Acknowledgments
A
lthough only one name appears on the cover of this book, it could not
have been born without the assistance and guidance of many individu-
als. To the students of my hip hop courses, past and present, it is your
active engagement that inspired me to create a book for people from
diverse backgrounds and across disciplines. For the faculty and staff
members in my home department of folklore and ethnomusicology, as well as my
adjunct homes in African American and African diaspora studies and Latino studies,
your backing and encouragement made all the difference in my teaching and
scholarly practice. I am grateful to the reviewers who participated in this project,
Anthony Ratcliff, William E. Smith, and Glenn Pillsbury, for their constructive sug-
gestions on early drafts of this book. I am also indebted to the anonymous readers
whose comments and suggestions were extremely helpful, especially as I tried to
speak across disciplinary lines. There is a select group of graduate students and
former undergraduate students that helped me overcome discursive obstacles when
concepts were not always clear. They include Alex Goulet, Ben Jackson, Eric
Morales, Marsha Horsely, Mark Miyake, Caralee Jones, Malaika Baxa, Josephine
McRobbie, Eric Bindler, Julían Carrillo, Walter Tucker, Dorothy Berry, Maria
Trogolo, Floyd Hobson, and June Evans. More thanks than I can express in this
short paragraph must go to Langston Collin Wilkins for our regular discussion on
hip hop culture and your own ethnographic project on the Houston hip hop scene,
and to Matt Alley for your musicianship and assistance putting together the Listen-
ing Guides in this text. Portia K. Maultby’s immeasurable love, support, and men-
torship for this project and all the projects that led me here cannot be repaid, but I
hope you see your influence in the pages that follow. Jerry Stasny, for your love and
support, especially with the number of iTune gift cards you sent my way when re-
search funds came short, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am lucky to
have worked with the team at Oxford University Press, Emily Schmid, Theresa
Stockton, and Teresa Nemeth, whose commitment to precision in writing and book
design helped make Rap and Hip Hop Culture sharper and clearer. Lastly, Richard
Carlin for introducing me to a new way of writing, one that was very different from
the ethnographic training I had. I hope that your patience, support, tutelage, and
friendship are reflected on every page of this book. You are a most exceptional
editor and guide.

xvi Ac kn ow ledgm ents
The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources to

reprint material:
“Accordian.” Words & Music by Otis Jr. Jackson & Daniel Dumile Thompson.
© Copyright 2004 Lord Dihoo Music. Nettwerk One Music Limited. This Arrange-
ment © Copyright 2014 Nettwerk One Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. Inter-
national Copyright Secured. Used by Permission of Music Sales Limited.
“Before Redemption.” Lyrics recorded by Gospel Gangstaz. By Charles Washington,
Ed Valenciano © 1994 Broken Songs, Italy Tevra Music (admin Broken Songs,
division of Meis Music Group).
“Bird In The Hand.” Words and Music by O’Shea Jackson, Mark Jordan, George
Clinton, William Collins, Ronald Dunbar, Garry Shider and Donnie Sterling.
© 1991 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP., GANGSTA BOOGIE MUSIC, STREET
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTIONS, INC., BRIDGEPORT MUSIC, INC., EMI
BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. and BRITTOLESE MUSIC. All Rights for
GANGSTA BOOGIE MUSIC Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL
MUSIC CORP. All Rights for BRITTOLESE MUSIC Administered by EMI
APRIL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission - contains ele-
ments of “Big Bang Theory” Words and Music by George Clinton, Ronald
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“Earl.” Written by: Thebe Kgositsile & Tyler Okonma. © 2010 Sony/ATV Music
Publishing LLC, Randomblackdude Publishing, Golf Wang Steak Sauce. All rights
on behalf Sony/ATV Music Publishing, LLC, Randomblackdude Publishing &
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Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
“Excursions.” Words and Music by Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, Ali Shaheed Jones-
Muhammad and Malik Izaak Taylor. © 1991 by Universal Music–Z Tunes LLC and
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“Forever.” Words and Music by Aubrey Graham, Kanye West, Matthew Samuels,
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A c k n ow l e dgm e nts xvii
“I Need Love.” Words and Music by James Todd Smith, Dwayne Simon, Bobby
Ervin, Darryl Pierce and Steven Ettinger. © 1987, 1995 Sony/ATV Music Publishing
LLC, LL Cool J Music and Universal Music Corp. All Rights on behalf of Sony/
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“It’s Good To Be The Queen.” Words and Music by Sylvia Robinson and William
P. Wingfield Copyright © 1982 GAMBI MUSIC, INC., TWENTY NINE BLACK
MUSIC and MAJOR SEVEN LTD. All Rights for GAMBI MUSIC, INC. and
TWENTY NINE BLACK MUSIC Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL,
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“Jesse.” Words and Music by Melvin Glover and Sylvia Robinson. © 1984 GAMBI
MUSIC, INC. All Rights Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All
Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard
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“Just Don’t Give A Fuck.” Written by Marshall B. Mathers; Mark Randy Bass;
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Music Services America Inc.
“Monster.” Words and Music by Kanye West, Mike Dean, William Roberts, Shawn
Carter, Onika Maraj, Justin Vernon, Malik Jones, Patrick Reynolds and Ross Rick.
© 2010 EMI Blackwood Music Inc., Please Gimme My Publishing Inc., Papa
George Music, Sony/ATV Songs LLC, 4 Blunts Lit At Once, Carter Boys Music,
Chrysalis Music, Money Mack Music, Harajuku Barbie Music, Plain Pat What Up
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Harajuku Barbie Music Administered by Songs Of Universal, Inc. All Rights on
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Music Corp. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by
Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“One Love.” Words and Music by Jalil Hutchins and Lawrence Smith. © 1986
Universal Music–Z Tunes LLC, Funk Groove Music Publishing Co. and Imagem
London Ltd. All Rights for Funk Groove Music Publishing Co. Controlled and
Administered by Universal Music–Z Tunes LLC. All Rights for Imagem London
Ltd. in the U.S. and Canada Administered by Universal Music–Z Tunes LLC

xviii Ac kn ow ledgm ents
“Rappers Delight.” Written by Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers © 1979 Sony/ATV
Music Publishing LLC, Bernard’s Other Music. All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV
Music Publishing LLC administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music
Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
“Scapegoat.” Written by Slug (S. Daley for Upsidedown Heart Music–ASCAP).
Used courtesy of Rhymesayers Entertainment, LLC.
“Self Destruction.” Words and Music by James Smith, Lawrence Parker, Derrick
Jones, Joseph Williams, Dwight Myers, Carlton Ridenhour, Arnold Hamilton,
Glenn Bolton, Douglas Davis, Mohandas Dewese, William Drayton and
Marvin Wright. Copyright ©1991 by Universal Music–Z Songs and Universal
Music–Z Tunes LLC. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“Shine.” From the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library
of Congress, Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.
“Sippin’ On Some Syrup.” Written by Paul Beauregard, Jordan Houston, Bun B
and Pimp C © 2000 TEFNOISE PUBLISHING LLC (BMI)/Administered by
BUG MUSIC, UNIVERSAL MUSIC–Z TUNES LLC and PIMP MY PEN
INTERNATIONAL. All Rights for PIMP MY PEN INTERNATIONAL.
Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC–Z TUNES LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“Takeover.” Words and Music by Rodney Lemay, Lawrence Parker, Shawn Carter,
Kanye West, Eric Burdon, Alan Lomax, Bryan Chandler, Jim Morrison, Raymond
Manzarek, Robert Krieger and John Densmore. © 2001 LONDON MUSIC U.K.,
UNIVERSAL MUSIC–Z TUNES LLC, BDP MUSIC, EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC
INC., LIL LULU PUBLISHING, UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC., SLAMINA MUSIC,
LUDLOW MUSIC, INC., CARBERT MUSIC INC. and DOORS MUSIC CO. All
Rights for LONDON MUSIC U.K. Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL–
POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. All Rights for BDP MUSIC
Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC–Z TUNES LLC All Rights
for LIL LULU PUBLISHING. Controlled and Administered by EMI BLACKWOOD
MUSIC INC. All Rights for SLAMINA MUSIC Controlled and Administered by
UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission - contains
elements of “Sound Da Police” Words and Music by Rodney Lemay, Lawrence
Parker, Eric Burdon, Alan Lomax and Bryan Chandler and “Five To One” Words
and Music by Jim Morrison, Raymond Manzarek, Robert Krieger and John
Densmore. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“The Breaks.” Words and Music by James B. Moore, Lawrence Smith, Kurt Walker,
Robert Ford, and Russell Simons. Used courtesy of Music Management, Neutral
Gray Music and Funk Groove Music.
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Written by Gil Scott-Heron. Used by
permission of Bienstock Publishing Company.
“Through The Wire” by Cynthia Weil. © 2003 Dyad Music Ltd. (BMI) admin. by
Wixen Music Publishing, Inc. All Right Reserved. Used by Permission.

CHAPTER
What Is Hip Hop?
What Is Rap? 1
Learning Objectives
When you have successfully completed this chapter, you will be able to:
• Understand the different definitions of hip hop and how they developed.
• Identify the key players in hip hop.
• Describe the development of hip hop from its roots to mainstream success.
• Define hip hop’s four key art forms: art, dance, music, language.
• Trace the African and Latino influences in hip hop culture.
T
he term “hip hop” has been incorporated into the everyday speech of main-
stream America for several decades. It has been used in a variety of ways: to
describe a musical genre in which the lyrics are delivered in a rapping style;
to name sample-driven pop or R&B tunes that have no rapping at all; or to
connect to an urban subculture that emerged in the 1970s.
At other times “hip hop” is used to designate dramas or musicals that are framed
in urban African American or Latino ghetto experiences, like the 2008 Tony Award–
winning musical In the Heights. Sometimes “hip hop” is used to describe a category
of fiction about gang life and street realities, like 50 Cent’s G Unit book series or
James Earl Hardy’s B-Boy Blues series. Similarly, the term “hip hop poetry” has been
used to describe the spoken-word performances of Ursula Rucker or the poets on
Def Poetry Jam (which aired on HBO between 2002 and 2008) designed to appeal to
a younger, modern audience. The name “hip hop fashion” has been used to market
the designs of Marc Ecko, Sean John, and Rocawear. Arguably, it is possible to drink
hip hop with beverages like 50 Cent’s Smartwater, Nelly’s Pimp Juice, or Lil Jon’s
Crunk Juice. For all practical purposes, hip hop has become so pervasive that it has
been linked to anything that has the slightest connection to urban, African American
pop culture within the last 35 years.
01-Orejuela-Chap01.indd 1 02/06/14 12:42 PM

2 CHAP TER 1 What Is Hip Hop? What Is Rap?
In a recent visit to a chain megabookstore,

I came across an instructional dance DVD, Hip Hop
Shop (2001), that promotes “Britney [Spears]” and
“Justin [Timberlake]” as dance heroes of hip hop
culture, while one of the featured instructors on the
video, Rock Steady Crew b-boy icon Richie “Crazy
Legs” Colón, is barely mentioned on the video’s
box. I was fascinated by the way products like this
disconnect hip hop from its roots. It reminded
me of an observation that anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss made: “The more a civilization be-
comes homogenized, the more internal lines of sep-
aration become apparent; and what is gained on one
level is immediately lost on another” (1978: 20). In
this case, the more industry moguls try to homoge-
nize hip hop culture, the more “original school” in-
novators and particular frames of cultural reference
become disconnected from it, further marginaliz-
ing hip hop from contemporary enthusiasts and
consumers. These examples demonstrate a lack of
knowledge or concern for the vibrant culture that
created hip hop.
Definitions tend to blur over time and in differ-
ent cultures; being dynamic in practice, they are not
Cover of the “Hip Hop Shop” video. meant to remain static. In the classroom, students
have a hard time defining “hip hop,” or distinguish-
ing it from rap. To help clarify this issue, we will begin by examining some state-
ments made by practitioners of both art forms, exploring how hip hop culture, like
the various musical styles of rap music, has changed. While reading these many
different definitions, you should consider your own experiences with hip hop cul-
ture and how varied definitions of rap, rap music, rapping, and hip hop are. It is at
this point that we can begin to frame what hip hop was, is, and can be.
A Few Definitions to Guide Our Study

Here are three definitions I have developed with my students that have helped guide
our approach to the study of hip hop culture:
1. Hip hop is the product of inner-city African American, Caribbean, and
Latino communities that were plagued by poverty, community decay, and the
proliferation of drugs and gang violence in the 1960s and early 1970s.
2. Hip hop includes four related art forms—DJing, MCing, breaking (b-boying),
and graffiti—that are the product of a unifying ideology.
3. Rap is the musical product born of the urban—particularly South Bronx—
subculture’s DJing and MCing performances, but especially the commercial

T he Ke y P l ay ers 3
product that gave priority to the rapper. Rap music has, at times, been called
hip hop by the industry and fans alike, who make little distinction between
the culture and the recordable product.
The Key Players

Just as hip hop culture and rap music have developed and changed considerably over
the past decades, the key players in the creation of the music and culture have had
evolving roles. It is important to differentiate the roles of each performer in a typical
crew as this musical art form first developed.
The DJ
Initially, the DJ was the party organizer and one-man show accompanied by a couple
of friends. He (usually the DJ was a man; women had limited opportunities in the early
days of rap, a topic we will return to later) created the musical soundtrack. Besides
selecting and playing the music, the DJ originally also stirred up the crowd by shouting
phrases designed to inspire people to gather around and enjoy the music.
There were many influences on the development of the DJ. Most often cited as
one predecessor were the Jamaican DJs of the 1960s. These DJs built impressive
mobile, sound trucks that they could drive to an event. Thanks to their loudspeakers
and sophisticated equipment, they could draw considerable crowds for their dance
parties. One of the influential early DJs in the Bronx—DJ Kool Herc (see Chapter 5)—
was born in Jamaica, and his development of a large sound system for hosting out-
door parties was inspired by the culture he had experienced growing up there and
his father’s recollections.
Another key ancestor for rap were radio DJs, or “disc jockeys.” Prior to World
War II, radio stations mostly featured live musical performers. But, after the war,
stations began to play recordings to save the cost of hiring musicians. In order to
differentiate themselves, they hired “radio personalities” to spin the records and pro-
vide information and patter between the selections. In the early days of R&B and
rock and roll (late 1940s–mid-1950s), DJs began to develop distinct personalities in
order to attract listeners. These DJs copied the teenage slang of the “hip” crowd—that,
in turn, copied the slang of jazz and R&B performers—to appeal to their youthful
listeners.
Besides mainstream popular radio, there were local stations aimed at particular
communities, including African Americans and Latinos. Here, DJs mirrored the
community’s taste in music and used local slang. DJs such as Jocko Henderson and
Jockey Jack Gibson kept listeners’ attention with innovative rhymes rapped over
music. Drawing on a rich tradition of African American verbal arts (see Chapter 4),
these DJs were in turn copied by white announcers like Alan Freed of Cleveland,
Ohio, who also began to play R&B records for their suburban audiences and later
coined the term “rock and roll.”
The DJs played vinyl records using a phonograph, which had three key parts:
a tone arm, needle, and turntable. The records had grooves that ran from the outer
edge of the disc up to the central label; as the record turned on the turntable, the

needle tracked these grooves, sending the signal up the tone arm to an amplifier
where the sound was processed and sent to external speakers. Although some com-
posers had experimented with using turntables as musical instruments—notably
John Cage in the mid-’40s—few had realized that by manipulating the turntable
(spinning it in reverse, stopping it with the hand, or dropping the needle on the
breakbeat of a disc) new musical sounds could be created. This “discovery” formed
the basis of the DJ culture in hip hop. Grandmaster Flash is generally credited with
popularizing many early DJing techniques, including backspinning and scratching
(see Chapter 5).
The MC
As the hip hop DJs’ job became increasingly complex, it became more difficult for
them to handle the duties of announcing and stirring up the crowd and creating
the music for dancing. Around 1975, several DJs, including Kool Herc and Grand-
master Flash, began adding MCs to their crews to take over the job of speaking to
the crowd, so the DJs could focus on music making. These MCs themselves became
competitive and began to develop their verbal skills, which eventually evolved into
complex raps. The separation of the DJ and MC functions allowed rap to grow where
it otherwise might have been left unexplored. (See Chapters 3 and 4 for a discussion
of the growth of the MC culture.)
Breaking (B-Boys/B-Girls)
Early on, DJs discovered that certain parts of a song were more attractive to the dancing
crowds than others. The instrumental breaks that emphasized the rhythm section over
the more melodic verses were most popular with the dancers. By stringing together
or repeating these popular breaks, the DJs could inspire the crowd to dance. Eventu-
ally, DJs built their crews to include dancers who could perform in these breaks; they
became known as b- (or “break”) boys and b-girls. Breaking changed into a separate,
commercial art form, called breakdancing, with highly developed routines.
Hip Hop Chronology

In this book, we will study the development of hip hop culture since it first emerged in
the late 1970s. Following other histories of this style, we will divide this history into
three basic periods:
• Proto–hip hop and old school (1950s–1970s)
• Commercial rap music (1979–mid-1990s)
• Hardcore and the mainstream (mid-1990s–2000s)
Of course, these periods are somewhat flexible and represent only the most broad
outline of how hip hop developed.
During the first, proto–hip hop/old school period, hip hop developed from a
variety of roots and enjoyed its first commercial success. We will trace the roots of

H ip H op’ s R oo ts 5
hip hop in African and African American culture and show how it developed in a
specific time and place—the 1970s-era South Bronx—to include several related art
forms. These art forms broadly speaking are:
• Art (graffiti writing)
• Dance (b-boying/breaking/breakdancing)
• Music (DJing)
• Language (MCing/rapping)
We will trace how gang culture shaped the original social clubs and organizations
that became the seedbeds for hip hop and rap music through the work of several
key organizers and leaders, including Afrika Bambaataa (see Chapter 2), Kool DJ
Herc, and Grandmaster Flash (see Chapter 5). We will take a close look at the
related arts of graffiti and breakdancing (see Chapters 3 and 4) as they developed
alongside early rap. We will then show how rap became commercialized through
the success of early recording groups, notably the Sugarhill Gang, and how this
commercialization of the music transformed the culture for participants and the
audience (see Chapter 5).
Following this chronology, our attention turns to the second phase of the com-
mercialization of rap music as it crosses over into the mainstream in the mid-1980s.
We see the explosion of different styles and hybrid forms, and the domination of
hardcore styles, especially as the messages shift from street-reality tales to gangsta
rap (see Chapters 6 and 7). The last chapters of the book focus on the most recent
periods of hip hop culture, including hardcore and mainstream styles. These chap-
ters address several issues that arose from the dominance of gangsta rap, globaliza-
tion, and hip hop in the new millennium (see Chapters 8 and 10). What was once an
underground musical movement based on beats and rhymes has turned into a
“hip hop” that is the most image-driven part of popular music and popular culture.
Hip Hop’s Roots

Hip hop culture has its roots in the spread of African and Latino peoples from their
original homes to the Americas. Ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, folklorists,
and other social scientists define this movement as a diaspora. The term diaspora
originally referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews after their captivity in
biblical times. Diaspora is now defined more broadly as the breaking up and scat-
tering of a people, as in the African diaspora, in which people settled far from their
ancestral homelands—by force in the case of the Americas as a result of the slave
trade. However, in addition to recognizing the global-intercultural aspects of a dias-
pora (e.g., Africans living in the Americas and Caribbean by way of the slave trade),
the term is also applied to migrations within a country; for example, the black diaspora
from the rural South to northern cities in the United States after World War II,
and the social, linguistic, economic, cultural, and political causes and consequences
associated with this migration.
The diaspora to the Americas began with the capture of millions of Africans.
Once the Africans arrived in the Americas, they were transformed from African

Atlantic Slave
Trade to the
Americas 1500
to 1800 Europe
North Asia
America
40% of
Africa
trade
Equator
South
America
40% of
trade
Slave traders imported

an estimated
9.2 million slaves
into the Caribbean and
Central and South
America
THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
The tracks on this map show the African diaspora during the past 2,000 years, as
African people and ideas spread to regions and countries around the world, which
scholar Paul Gilroy refers to as the Black Atlantic.
captives into American slaves. Over three to four years, veteran slaves or white
overseers trained the new arrivals, even those most resistant to this domestication
process. The specific system varied from colony to colony. In the northern colonies,
slavery existed on a smaller scale, and many of the slaves lived and worked in close
proximity to their European slaveholders. However, in the farms and plantations of
the South, only house servants, specialty-skilled slaves, and those living on small

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study to resemble your office, or for your dining-room to resemble
the Automat, or for every bedroom in your house to bear on its door
printed directions to ring twice for your wife to bring you hot water
and three times for a clean collar.
The crowning virtue of the successful private library is
inefficiency. As an example closely approaching the ideal, as a
model to householders who have been allowed a closet or vault in
which to keep books, I respectfully present my own library. And in
order that the radiance of its inefficiency may be as penetrating as
possible, I wish my library to be considered in comparison with its
efficient rivals.
Let us therefore assume that the spectacled young gentleman
already several times celebrated in this treatise has, without
acquiring more sense, got married, and perhaps thereby acquired a
sufficient competency to warrant his establishing a library. Let us
begin our survey of his books with the shelves of poetry. Where is
there a good basis for comparison? Ah, here we have it—here is
Milton in the efficient library, and here the long-winded old gentleman
is found again in my own! Is any comparison between these volumes
possible? Would any real bibliophile hesitate a moment in making his
choice between the two? The efficient Milton is a tall, sombre-looking
volume with a long biographical preface by a man who used to be a
poet before he became a college professor, a preface which proves
that Milton never went blind, lived in Wales rather than in England,
had only one daughter and knew no Latin. At the foot of every page
there is a thick sprinkling of notes conveying unnecessary
information. There is an appendix of variant readings and an
exhaustive, monumental bibliography.
Could anything be more depressing? The only illustration in the
book is John himself, in a black cloak, with what seems to be a
baby’s bib under his chin, and this picture can scarcely be called a
decoration. My “Milton’s Poetical Works,” which was published in
New York in 1857 and purchased by me from a stall on Twenty-third
Street for a quarter, is more entertaining in every respect. In the first
place, it has no notes—which alone makes it worth the price of
admission. In the second place, the only biographical introduction is
“The Life of Milton, by His Nephew, Edward Philips,” a most
estimable piece of writing, which begins, “Of all the several parts of
history, that which sets forth the lives, and commemorates the most
remarkable actions, sayings or writings of famous and illustrious
persons, whether in war or peace—whether many together, or any
one in particular—as it is not the least useful in itself, so it is in the
highest vogue and esteem among the studious and reading part of
mankind.” Doesn’t a biography of this sort promise more flavours
and exciting things than one written by a college professor, and
beginning, “John Milton was born in London, England, December
9th, 1608”?
Furthermore, my Milton is bound in black cloth, with stars and
wreaths and baskets of flowers stamped in gold all over it.
Furthermore, my Milton has all sorts of highly entertaining steel
engravings, most delightfully 1857—Lycidas being shipwrecked on
St. Michael’s Mount, and the Warring Angels mustering for battle,
and skeletons and devils and angels and “wood nymphs, deck’d with
daisies trim,” keeping “their merry wakes and pastimes,” and
Melancholy, who looks like Queen Victoria in her old age, and the
“Goddess fair and free, in heaven yclep’d Euphrosyne,” wearing a
very becoming white frock. Furthermore, my Milton was “Presented
to Mifs Ellen R. Baxter, by Her Resp’t’l friend, J. Stuart, Oswego,
May 4, 1859”—so the violet ink inscription on the flyleaf tells me. And
some one has drawn in pencil a very attractive cat on the blank page
opposite the opening of “Samson Agonistes.” The efficient library’s
copy of Milton lacks all these amiable associations.
My efficient friend possesses a Byron, it is true. But not to be
mentioned in the same breath with the volume which stands in my
study between Witter Bynner and Bliss Carman. My Byron contains
eight contemporary memoirs of the poet, by distinguished fellow-
craftsmen, and sixteen pictures—himself, his birthplace, his
Newfoundland dog, his daughter, and a dozen landscapes which the
publisher happened to have on hand. Also, in the preface of my
Byron I find this sentence: “Thus died Lord Byron at the early age of
thirty-seven, leaving behind him a name second only to that of the
renowned Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a memory which the
sublime effusions of his muse will endear to all posterity.” My friend’s
Byron has nothing to compare with this.
The trouble with my friend’s library is that it has no surprises.
Any one who has seen his waistcoat—the V of which is edged with
heavy white cord—and his cuff links—which are oval and bear,
engraven on their golden surfaces, his initials—could describe his
library to a volume. It is obvious; its obviousness is a part of its
efficiency.
I suppose Benvenuto Cellini is on a shelf of the efficient library.
He must be, since he is in the public library. Probably my efficient
friend has also Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography” and the
“Complete Works of Mrs. Humphry Ward.” He has a limp-leather
tissue-paper encyclopedia, and an obese dictionary, and a
magnificent atlas. And in a corner of his study he has a map of the
world in the form of a great globe on a pivot.
I envy him this last possession, for one may amuse himself by
spinning a geographical globe, as one entertains himself by spinning
a piano stool. But aside from this, there is nothing in my friend’s
library that I desire. And my own triumphantly inefficient library—
what treasures it contains!
You mention French literature. Do I overwhelm you with a
sumptuous Voltaire, or sicken you with a sentimentally illustrated
“Paul et Virginie”? I do not. I exhibit to you yellow-back volumes of
the later verse of Francis Jammes—which are supposed to be going
to be bound one of these days—or I show you a play or two of
Rostand’s. If you desire to have further dealings with the literature of
France, the French department of the university is, for a
consideration, at your service. You mention Fraser’s “Golden
Bough”? I show you something equally informing and more
entertaining, comfortable volumes in which the mythology of Ireland
is narrated to us by Jeremiah Curtin and by Seumas MacManus, and
I show you a stray volume of Louis Ginzberg’s “The Legends of the
Jews.”
I should not try to make the possessors of efficient libraries
unhappy. But I do it for their own good, in the hope that I may
eventually reform them. And when I look upon my two volumes of
“The Evergreen,” a quarterly published in Edinburgh some twenty
years ago, numbering among its contributors Fiona MacLeod, Nora
Hopper, Douglas Hyde, Standish O’Grady and Rosa Mulholland, and
“The Squire’s Recipes,” by Kendall Banning, and “Scottish Heraldry
Made Easy,” and Shaemas O’Sheel’s “The Dear Old Lady of Eighty-
sixth Street,” and a bound volume of The Gentleman’s Magazine for
1761 and “L. Annsei Senecae et Aliorum Tragoediae (Amsterodami,
Apud Guiljel: Ians: Caesium)” and a battered edition of Scott’s
“Marmion,” enriched by the comments of a Louise Cogswell who
owned it in 1810 and wrote approvingly, “and very well told too”
under the sub-title “A Tale of Flodden Field,” and Joseph Forster’s
“Studies in Black and Red” (very ghastly), and both of Ernest
Dowson’s novels and his translations from the French, as well as his
poems, and “The American Annual of Photography” for 1916, and
“Miss Thackeray’s Works,” complete in one volume, and Layton
Crippen’s “Clay and Fire,” and Bithell’s “Contemporary Belgian
Poetry,” and Sir Francis Burnand’s “More Happy Thoughts,” and a
volume containing “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J.
Montgomery Lamb, and Kirke White,” and an inscribed copy of
Palmer Cox’s “The Brownies, Their Book”—when I contemplate,
among the more commonplace inhabitants of my shelves, these
books, then I cannot keep from feeling a sense of superiority to all
those who have laboriously “built up” their libraries in accordance
with the mandates of strict utility.
My library is inefficient and impractical, entertaining and
unexacting. Its members have come to me by chance and by
momentary inclination. For if a man’s books are to be, as the old
phrase has it, his friends, they must be allowed to him because of
some fitness on his part subtly felt by them. A man does not
deliberately select his friends; there must be a selection by them as
well as by him. Unless he is applying the principles of efficiency to
friendship. And in that case he has no friends at all.
THE POETRY OF HILAIRE BELLOC
FAR FROM the poets being astray in prose-writing (said Francis
Thompson), it might plausibly be contended that English prose, as
an art, is but a secondary stream of the Pierian fount, and owes its
very origin to the poets. The first writer one remembers with whom
prose became an art was Sir Philip Sidney. And Sidney was a poet.
This quotation is relevant to a consideration of Hilaire Belloc,
because Belloc is a poet who happens to be known chiefly for his
prose. His Danton and Robespierre have been read by every
intelligent student of French history, his Path to Rome, that most
high-spirited and engaging of travel books, has passed through
many editions, his political writings are known to all lovers—and
many foes—of democracy, his whimsically imaginative novels have
their large and appreciative audience, and his exquisite brief essays
are contemporary classics. And since the unforgetable month of
August of the unforgetable year 1914, Hilaire Belloc has added to
the number of his friends many thousands who care little for belles
lettres and less for the French Revolution—he has become certainly
the most popular, and by general opinion the shrewdest and best
informed, of all chroniclers and critics of the Great War.
There is nothing, it may be said, about these achievements to
indicate the poet. How can this most public of publicists woo the shy
and exacting Muse? His superabundant energy may now and again
overflow in little lyrical rivulets, but how can he find time to turn it into
the deep channels of song?
Well, what is the difference between a poet who writes prose and
a prose-writer who writes verse? The difference is easy to see but
hard to describe. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a prose writer. He has
forsaken the novel, of which he was so distinguished a master, to
make cynical little sonnet portraits and to pour the acid wine of his
philosophy—a sort of perverted Presbyterianism—into the graceful
amphora of poetic drama. But he is not a poet. Thackeray was a
prose-writer, in spite of his delicious light verse. Every novelist writes
or has written verse, but not all of them are poets.
Of course, Sir Walter Scott was first of all a poet—the greatest
poet who ever wrote a novel. And no one who has read Love in the
Valley can hesitate to give Meredith his proper title. Was Macaulay a
poet? I think so—but perhaps I am in a hopeless minority in my
belief that the author of The Battle of Naseby and The Lays of
Ancient Rome was the last of the great English ballad makers.
But this general truth cannot, I think, honestly be denied; there
have been many great poets who have devoted most of their lives to
writing prose. Some of them have died without discovering their
neglected talent. I think that Walter Pater was one of these; much
that is annoyingly subtle or annoyingly elaborate in his essays needs
only rhyme and rhythm—the lovely accidents of poetry—to become
graceful and appropriate. His famous description of the Mona Lisa is
worthless if considered as a piece of serious æsthetic criticism. But it
would make an admirable sonnet. And it is significant that Walter
Pater’s two greatest pupils—Lionel Johnson and Father Gerard
Hopkins, S.J.,—found expression for their genius not in prose, the
chosen medium of their “unforgetably most gracious friend,” but in
verse.
From Walter Pater, that exquisite of letters, to the robust Hilaire
Belloc may seem a long journey. But there is, I insist, this similarity
between these contrasting writers, both are poets, and both are
known to fame by their prose.
For proof that Walter Pater was a poet, it is necessary only to
read his Renaissance Studies or his interpretations—unsound but
fascinating—of the soul of ancient Greece. Often his essays, too
delicately accurate in phrasing or too heavily laden with golden
rhetoric, seem almost to cry aloud for the relief of rhyme and rhythm.
Now, Hilaire Belloc suggests in many of his prose sketches that
he is not using his true medium. I remember a brief essay on sleep
which appeared in The New Witness—or, as it was then called, The
Eye Witness—several years ago, which was not so much a complete
work in itself as it was a draft for a poem. It had the economy of
phrase, the concentration of idea, which is proper to poetry.
But it is not necessary in the case of Hilaire Belloc, as it is in that
of Walter Pater, to search pages of prose for proof that their author is
a poet. Now and then—all too seldom—the idea in this man’s brain
has insisted on its right, has scorned the proffered dress of prose,
however fine of warp and woof, however stiff with rich verbal
embroidery, and has demanded its rhymed and rhythmed wedding
garments. Therefore, for proof that Hilaire Belloc is a poet it is
necessary only to read his poetry.
II
Hilaire Belloc is a poet. Also he is a Frenchman, an Englishman,
an Oxford man, a Roman Catholic, a country gentleman, a soldier, a
democrat, and a practical journalist. He is always all these things.
One sign that he is naturally a poet is that he is never
deliberately a poet. No one can imagine him writing a poem to order
—even to his own order. The poems knock at the door of his brain
and demand to be let out. And he lets them out, carelessly enough,
setting them comfortably down on paper simply because that is the
treatment they desire. And this happens to be the way all real poetry
is made.
Not that all verse makers work that way. There are men who
come upon a waterfall or mountain or an emotion and say: “Aha!
here is something out of which I can extract a poem!” And they sit
down in front of that waterfall or mountain or an emotion and think up
clever things to say about it. These things they put into metrical form,
and the result they fondly call a poem.
There’s no harm in that. It’s good exercise for the mind, and of it
comes much interesting verse. But it is not the way in which the sum
of the world’s literature is increased.
Could anything, for example, be less studied, be more clearly
marked with the stigmata of that noble spontaneity we call
inspiration, than the passionate, rushing, irresistible lines “To the
Balliol Men Still in Africa”? Like Gilbert K. Chesterton and many
another English democrat, Hilaire Belloc deeply resented his
country’s war upon the Boers. Yet his heart went out to the friends of
his university days who were fighting in Africa. They were fighting, he
thought, in an unjust cause; but they were his friends and they were,
at any rate, fighting. And so he made something that seems (like all
great writing) an utterance rather than a composition; he put his love
of war in general and his hatred of this war in particular, his devotion
to Balliol and to the friends of his youth into one of the very few
pieces of genuine poetry which the Boer War produced. Nor has any
of Oxford’s much-sung colleges known praise more fit than this
“House that armours a man

With the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger,
And a laughing way in the teeth of the world,
And a holy hunger and thirst for danger.”
But perhaps a more typical example of Hilaire Belloc’s wanton

genius is to be found not among those poems which are, throughout,
the beautiful expressions of beautiful impressions, but among those
which are careless, whimsical, colloquial. There is that delightful, but
somewhat exasperating Dedicatory Ode. Hilaire Belloc is talking—
charmingly, as is his custom—to some of his friends, who had
belonged, in their university days, to a youthful revolutionary
organisation called the Republican Club. He happens to be talking in
verse, for no particular reason except that it amuses him to talk in
verse. He makes a number of excellent jokes, and enjoys them very
much; his Pegasus is cantering down the road at a jolly gait, when
suddenly, to the amazement of the spectators, it spreads out great
golden wings and flashes like a meteor across the vault of heaven!
We have been laughing at the droll tragedy of the opium-smoking
Uncle Paul; we have been enjoying the humorous spectacle of the
contemplative freshman—and suddenly we come upon a bit of
astonishingly fine poetry. Who would expect, in all this whimsical and
jovial writing, to find this really great stanza?
“From quiet homes and first beginning

Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends.”
Who having read these four lines, can forget them? And who but
a poet could write them? But Hilaire Belloc has not forced himself
into this high mood, nor does he bother to maintain it. He gaily
passes on to another verse of drollery, and then, not because he
wishes to bring the poem to an effective climax, but merely because
it happens to be his mood, he ends the escapade he calls an Ode
with eight or ten stanzas of nobly beautiful poetry.
There is something almost uncanny about the flashes of
inspiration which dart out at the astonished reader of Hilaire Belloc’s
most frivolous verses. Let me alter a famous epigram and call his
light verse a circus illuminated by lightning. There is that
monumental burlesque, the Newdigate Poem—A Prize Poem
Submitted by Mr. Lambkin of Burford to the Examiners of the
University of Oxford on the Prescribed Poetic Theme Set by Them in
1893, “The Benefits of the Electric Light.” It is a tremendous joke;
with every line the reader echoes the author’s laughter. But without
the slightest warning Hilaire Belloc passes from rollicking burlesque
to shrewd satire; he has been merrily jesting with a bladder on a
stick, he suddenly draws a gleaming rapier and thrusts it into the
heart of error. He makes Mr. Lambkin say:
“Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough

Only because we do not know enough:
When Science has discovered something more
We shall be happier than we were before.”
Here we find the directness and restraint which belong to really great
satire. This is the materialistic theory, the religion of Science, not
burlesqued, not parodied, but merely stated nakedly, without the
verbal frills and furbelows with which our forward-looking leaders of
popular thought are accustomed to cover its obscene absurdity.
Almost these very words have been uttered in a dozen “rationalistic”
pulpits I could mention, pulpits occupied by robustuous practical
gentlemen with very large eyes, great favourites with the women’s
clubs. Their pet doctrine, their only and most offensive dogma, is not
attacked, is not ridiculed; it is merely stated for them, in all kindness
and simplicity. They cannot answer it, they cannot deny that it is a
mercilessly fair statement of the “philosophy” that is their stock in
trade. I hope that many of them will read it.
III
Hilaire Belloc was born July 27, 1870. He was educated at the
Oratory School, Edgbaston, and at Balliol College, Oxford. After
leaving school he served as a driver in the Eighth Regiment of
French Artillery at Toul Meurthe-et-Moselle, being at that time a
French citizen. Later he was naturalised as a British subject, and
entered the House of Commons in 1906 as Liberal Member for
South Salford. British politicians will not soon forget the motion which
Hilaire Belloc introduced one day in the early Spring of 1908, the
motion that the Party funds, hitherto secretly administered, be
publicly audited. His vigorous and persistent campaign against the
party system has placed him, with Cecil Chesterton, in the very front
ranks of those to whom the democrats of Great Britain must look for
leadership and inspiration. He was always a keen student of military
affairs; he prophesied, long before the event, the present
international conflict, describing with astonishing accuracy the details
of the German invasion of Belgium and the resistance of Liège. Now
he occupies a unique position among the journalists who comment
upon the War, having tremendously increased the circulation of Land
and Water, the periodical for which he writes regularly, and lecturing
to a huge audience once a week on the events of the War in one of
the largest of London’s concert halls—Queen’s Hall, where the same
vast crowds that listen to the War lectures used to gather to hear the
works of the foremost German composers.
IV
Hilaire Belloc, as I have said, is a Frenchman, an Englishman,
an Oxford man, a country gentleman, a soldier, a democrat, and a
practical journalist. In all these characters he utters his poetry. As a
Frenchman, he is vivacious and gallant and quick. He has the noble
English frankness, and that broad irresistible English mirthfulness
which is so much more inclusive than that narrow possession, a
sense of humour. Democrat though he is, there is about him
something of the atmosphere of the country squire of some
generations ago; it is in his heartiness, his jovial dignity, his deep
love of the land. The author of The South Country and Courtesy has
made Sussex his inalienable possession; he owns Sussex, as
Dickens owns London, and Blackmore owns Devonshire. And he is
thoroughly a soldier, a happy warrior, as brave and dexterous, no
one can doubt, with a sword of steel as with a sword of words.
He has taken the most severe risk which a poet can take: he has
written poems about childhood. What happened when the late
Algernon Charles Swinburne bent his energies to the task of
celebrating this theme? As the result of his solemn meditation on the
mystery of childhood, he arrived at two conclusions, which he
melodiously announced to the world. They were, first, that the face of
a baby wearing a plush cap looks like a moss-rose bud in its soft
sheath, and, second, that “astrolabe” rhymes with “babe.” Very
charming, of course, but certainly unworthy of a great poet. And
upon this the obvious comment is that Swinburne was not a great
poet. He took a theme terribly great and terribly simple, and about it
he wrote ... something rather pretty.
Now, when a really great poet—Francis Thompson, for example
—has before him such a theme as childhood, he does not spend his
time making far-fetched comparisons with moss-rose buds, or
hunting for words that rhyme with “babe.” Childhood suggests Him
Who made childhood sacred, so the poet writes Ex Ore Infantium, or
such a poem as that which ends with the line:
“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”
A poet may write pleasingly about mountains, and cyclones and

battles, and the love of woman, but if he is at all timid about the
verdict of posterity he should avoid the theme of childhood as he
would avoid the plague. For only great poets can write about
childhood poems worthy to be printed.
Hilaire Belloc has written poems about children, and they are
worthy to be printed. He is never ironic when he thinks about
childhood; he is gay, whimsical, with a slight suggestion of elfin
cynicism, but he is direct, as a child is direct. He has written two
dedicatory poems for books to be given to children; they are slight
things, but they are a revelation of their author’s power to do what
only a very few poets can do, that is, to enter into the heart and mind
of the child, following that advice which has its literary as well as
moral significance, to “become as a little child.”
And in many of Hilaire Belloc’s poems by no means intended for
childish audiences there is an appealing simplicity that is genuinely
and beautifully childish, something quite different from the adult and
highly artificial simplicity of Professor A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire
Lad. Take that quatrain The Early Morning. It is as clear and cool as
the time it celebrates; it is absolutely destitute of rhetorical
indulgence, poetical inversions or “literary” phrasing. It is, in fact,
conversation—inspired conversation, which is poetry. It might have
been written by a Wordsworth not painfully self-conscious, or by a
Blake whose brain was not as yet muddled with impressionistic
metaphysics.
And his Christmas carols—they are fit to be sung by a chorus of
children. Can any songs of the sort receive higher praise than that?
Children, too, appreciate The Birds and Our Lord and Our Lady. Nor
is that wonderful prayer rather flatly called In a Boat beyond the
reach of their intelligence.
Naturally enough, Hilaire Belloc is strongly drawn to the almost
violent simplicity of the ballad. Bishop Percy would not have enjoyed
the theological and political atmosphere of The Little Serving Maid,
but he would have acknowledged its irresistible charm. There is that
wholly delightful poem The Death and Last Confession of Wandering
Peter—a most Bellocian vagabond. “He wandered everywhere he
would: and all that he approved was sung, and most of what he saw
was good.” Says Peter:
“If all that I have loved and seen

Be with me on the Judgment Day,
I shall be saved the crowd between
From Satan and his foul array.”
Hilaire Belloc has seen much and loved much. He has sung
lustily the things he approved—with what hearty hatred has he sung
the things he disapproved!
V
Hilaire Belloc is not the man to spend much time in analysing his
own emotions; he is not, thank God, a poetical psychologist. Love
songs, drinking songs, battle songs—it is with these primitive and
democratic things that he is chiefly concerned.
But there is something more democratic than wine or love or
war. That thing is Faith. And Hilaire Belloc’s part in increasing the
sum of the world’s beauty would not be the considerable thing that it
is were it not for his Faith. It is not that (like Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
he is attracted by the Church’s pageantry and wealth of legend. To
Hilaire Belloc the pageantry is only incidental, the essential thing is
his Catholic Faith. He writes convincingly about Our Lady and Saint
Joseph and the Child Jesus because he himself is convinced. He
does not delve into mediæval tradition in quest of picturesque
incidents, he merely writes what he knows to be true. His Faith
furnishes him with the theme for those of his poems which are most
likely to endure; his Faith gives him the “rapture of an inspiration.”
His Faith enables him, as it has enabled many another poet, to see
“in the lamp that is beauty, the light that is God.”
And therein is Hilaire Belloc most thoroughly and consistently a
democrat. For in this twentieth century it happens that there is on
earth only one genuine democratic institution. And that institution is
the Catholic Church.
THE CATHOLIC POETS OF
BELGIUM
AT A recent meeting of the English Poetry Society, Mlle. Coppin,
a distinguished Belgian poetess, who now, like so many of her
compatriots, is a refugee in London, said: “I believe we have been
too prosperous, too fond of pleasure. We are being purged, and in
our adversity we have found our nationality. If ever England, France,
and Russia make a new Belgium, we shall be more simple and hard-
working.”
Those of us who believe that the character of a nation is, to a
great extent, revealed in its literature cannot doubt that Mlle.
Coppin’s words are true. Surely the sick fancies of Maurice
Maeterlinck (to mention the most conspicuous of Belgian men of
letters) could come into being only in a land suffering from over-
much civilisation, in a land whose citizens are too sophisticated for
common and wholesome delights. Even more than the elaborate
obscenities of Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud, Maeterlinck’s morbid
studies of mental, spiritual, and physical degradation belong to that
sort of literature which is called “decadent.” And decadent literature
usually is produced for and by people who need to be, in Mlle.
Coppin’s words, “more simple and hard-working.”
That the great tragedy which has overtaken Belgium will have a
beneficial effect upon its literature is not to be doubted. Of course,
the first result is an almost total cessation of creative activity; one
cannot handle a rifle and a pen at the same time. But with the return
of peace must come the development of a new Belgian literature, a
literature which is not an echo of the salon-philosophies of Paris and
Berlin, but a beautiful expression of the soul of a strong and brave
race.
It is possible that when the poets of a re-created Belgium are
singing their clear songs, the world, comparing them with Gilkin,
Giraud, Maeterlinck, and the Verhaeren of Les Débâcles and Les
Flambeaux Noirs, will say: “Now, for the first time, Belgian poetry
deserves the attention of those who are interested in other than the
pathological aspects of literature! Not until the land had been purified
by blood and flame did the Spirit of Beauty come to dwell in
Flanders!”
But this criticism will be unjust. Great literary movements do not
spontaneously come into being; they develop slowly and surely
through the centuries. If all the poetry of Belgium were the work of
charlatans and vicious men, then, not even this tremendous war
could stimulate it into healthy life. The fame of Maeterlinck’s dismal
dramas, and of the least worthy poems of Emile Verhaeren, should
not make us oblivious of the fact that Belgium has, and has always
had, its small, but brilliant, company of sincere and gifted writers,
men who have not debased their art, but have held in honour the
sacred traditions of their high calling. He who, neglecting the
productions of the symbolists, decadents, and similar phantasists,
turns his attention to the authentic literature of the Belgian people,
finds a strain of poetry white and beautiful, and as fervently Catholic
as the immortal songs of Crashaw and Francis Thompson. It is not
the disciples of Baudelaire and Mallarmé who have planted the
seeds of poetry that soon shall burst into splendid bloom, but men
like Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaekers, men who, serving
faithfully their Muse, have never wavered in their allegiance to the
Mistress of all the Arts, the Catholic Church.
It must not be thought that these poets write only religious
poems. They have, indeed, produced such masterpieces of
devotional verse as Braun’s Livre des Bénédictions and Ramaekers’
Le Chant des Trois Regnes. But when their poetry is not religious it
is not, at any rate, irreligious; they “utter nothing base.” And surely
even the lightest of secular poems may do its author’s Catholicism
no discredit. As Francis Thompson said of poetry in the eloquent
appeal to the “fathers of the Church, pastors of the Church, pious
laics of the Church” with which his most famous essay begins, “Eye
her not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives
glory to God though it sings only of its own innocent loves.... Suffer
her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the
Cross!”
Indeed, what is true of much modern English verse is true also of
that of Belgium, there are Catholic poets who seldom in their work
refer directly to their faith, and there are infidel poets who have laid
impious hands on the Church’s treasures and decorate their rhymes
with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names of the Saints.
So we find, for example, Emile Verhaeren using the first chapters of
Genesis as the theme of a poem that is anything but edifying, while
that pious Catholic, Thomas Braun, writes a volume of verses about
postage stamps.
There are certain optimistic persons who believe that the general
use in literature of sacred names and traditions augurs well for the
spread of faith. A member of an Anglican religious order, who two
years ago delivered a series of lectures in New York City, prophesied
a mighty recrudescence of religion among the poets of England, and
based his prophecy, apparently, on the fact that Mr. Lascelles
Abercrombie and other brilliant young writers have made ballads out
of some of the most picturesque of the legends about the Saints. He
did not see that Mr. Abercrombie selected his themes solely because
of their literary value. There are many poets who eagerly avail
themselves of the stores which are the Church’s heritage, who
introduce the name of the Blessed Virgin into their verses exactly as
they would introduce that of Diana, or Venus or any creature of fable.
Personally, I have never been able to enjoy the recital, however
skillful, of a sacred story by a poet who did not believe in it, and
therefore I cannot grow enthusiastic over the knowledge that many
Belgian poets, whose philosophies are hostile to the Church, like to
write about monstrances and chalices and altars, and to tell
ostentatiously “human” stories about sacred people in general and
St. Mary Magdalen in particular. I find Thomas Braun’s poems about
postage stamps more edifying.
The modern Catholic poets of Belgium may be roughly divided
into two groups, the mystics and the primitives. These terms are
here used merely for the purposes of this classification, and cannot
perhaps be justified by scientific criticism. Among the mystics I would
include such writers as Georges Ramaekers, the brilliant editor of Le
Catholique, and perhaps Max Elskamp, who use elaborate and
complicated symbols, and, in general, may be said to do in verse
what the late Joris Karl Huysmans, after his conversion to
Catholicism, did in prose. Among the primitives I would place such
poets as Victor Kinon and Thomas Braun, who look for their
inspirations to the ancient religious life of Flanders, in all its
picturesque simplicity, and are more concerned with celebrating the
piety of simple Flemish peasants than with endeavouring to
penetrate high mysteries.
It is to that valued friend of Belgian letters, Mr. Jethro Bithell, of
Birbeck College, London, whose translation of Stefan Zweig’s book
on Verhaeren has recently earned him the gratitude of the English-
speaking public, that we owe this excellent version of Thomas
Braun’s The Benediction of the Nuptial Ring, taken from this poet’s
The Book of the Benedictions. The directness and sincerity of this
poem suggest the work of George Herbert.
THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL KING

“That she who shall wear it, keep faith unchanged with her husband and ever live
in mutual love.”
Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold

Which bride and bridegroom shall together hold!
They whom fresh water gave to You are now
United in You by the marriage vow.
The ring is of a heavy, beaten ore,
And yet it shall not make the finger sore,
But easefully be carried day and night,
Because its secret spirit makes it light.
Its perfect circle sings into the skin,
Nor hurts it, and the phalanx growing thin
Under its pressure molds itself ere long,
Yet keeps its agile grace and still is strong.
So love, which in this symbol lies, with no
Beginning more nor ending here below,
Shall, if You bless it, Lord, like gold resist,
And never show decay, nor flaw, nor twist,
And be so light, though solid, that the soul,
A composite yet indivisible whole,
Shall keep its tender impress to the last,
And never know the bonds that bind it fast.
In many of Thomas Braun’s poems is to be found a quality

suggestive of the folk song. Like the Verhaeren of Les Flamandes,
Braun writes of those huge, boisterous farmers and merchants who
live for us on the canvases of Brauwer and Jan Steen. But he writes
of them, it need scarcely be said, in a very different spirit. Verhaeren
saw only their gluttony, drunkenness, and coarseness; Braun sees
their courage, industry, good-nature, piety. In fact, Verhaeren saw
their bodies, Braun sees their souls.
In an essay on Verhaeren recently printed, I called attention to
the fact that while Verhaeren wrote of the Flemings with enthusiasm,
and with repulsively careful attention to detail, he did not write of
them with sympathy. He does not join in the revels about which he
writes; he is interested in his loud purple-faced peasants, but with his
interest is mingled a certain scorn. Thomas Braun, on the other
hand, is thoroughly in sympathy with the life of which he writes; the
reader feels that such a poem as The Benediction of Wine, for
example, was written by a man who is artist enough to share actually
in the strong simple piety of the keeper of the vineyard. The
quaintness of Thomas Braun’s poems, which is emphasized by the
woodcuts made to accompany them by his brother who is a
Benedictine monk, is not an affectation, it is a quality proper to the
work of a man who, like Wordsworth, sees beauty chiefly in
simplicity. Like Coventry Patmore, he has “divine frivolity,” he is
acquainted with the mirth of the Saints. In his own beautiful words,
he knows how to play in the straw with the Child of Bethlehem.
Georges Ramaekers is a poet whose verse is for the most part
too obscure to lend itself readily to translation. He will write a poem,
for example, on mushrooms, and the reader will think after several
minutes that he is being told merely about the common fungi. Then it
comes to him that it is the Tree of Life that these maleficent growths
are attacking; then they cover the columns of the Church and
actually reach the Host Itself. The poem is, it seems, a denunciation
of certain heresies, or of sloth, indifference, and other spiritual evils,
but its meaning cannot adequately be given in an English translation.
Here is a similar poem, which, in Mr. Bithell’s translation, shows
Georges Ramaeker’s symbolic method at its best and clearest.
THE THISTLE
Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect

And prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb,
Hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect,
The Gothic thistle, while the insects’ hum
Sounds far off, rears above the rock it scorns
Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
The towering boulders guard it. And the bee
Makes honey from the blossoms on its thorns.
Victor Kinon, like that very different poet, Albert Giraud, the chief
Belgian disciple of Baudelaire, is of Walloon descent. Mr. Bithell calls
this poet a “fervent Roman Catholic,” but the poems which he has
selected for translation are entirely secular in theme and treatment.
They show, however, that their author is free from the vices of
extreme realism and hysteria, which afflict many of his
contemporaries. Sometimes it is fair to judge a poet’s whole attitude
toward life from his love poems. When decadence and feverish
eroticism are in fashion, it is refreshing to come upon a poet sane
enough to write so honest and delicate a poem as this of Victor
Kinon.
HIDING FROM THE WORLD
Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet,

And open in the dewy, dustless air

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Chapter 5 | Old-School DJs and MCs 57

Chapter 6 | The Golden Era 80

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Listening Guide: Listening to LL Cool J: “I Need Love” 91

Chapter 7 | Hardcore: “Message Rap”

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Chapter 8 | Hardcore II: Gangsta in the ’90s

Chapter 9 | Hip Hop Culture and Rap Music

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What Is Underground Hip Hop? 174

Chapter 10 | Conclusion 206

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The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources to

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In a recent visit to a chain megabookstore,

A Few Definitions to Guide Our Study

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The Key Players

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Hip Hop Chronology

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Hip Hop’s Roots

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Slave traders imported

THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

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“House that armours a man

But perhaps a more typical example of Hilaire Belloc’s wanton

“From quiet homes and first beginning

“Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough

“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”

A poet may write pleasingly about mountains, and cyclones and

“If all that I have loved and seen

THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL KING

Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold

In many of Thomas Braun’s poems is to be found a quality

Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect

HIDING FROM THE WORLD

Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet,

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