POSEUR ALERT

“For the bourgeois salarywoman as for someone working at Burger King and spitting on your onion rings, life brings many experiences whose only antidote is putting on the headphones and listening to Canibus rhyming “Die Slow” or “Watch Who You Beef With.”
“The Man’s claws are digging in my back,” Big Pun sings, “I’m trying to hit him back.” An e-mail doing the rounds last autumn called DMX’s “Party Up” – with its chorus, “Y’all gon’ make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here” – the national African-American workplace anthem. The journalist David Hackley called it the chant of progressive African-Americans after the Florida election. But if hip-hop is especially skillful at articulating anger, its real greatness is in the scope of its preoccupations. Rap has a range of reference and ease with tradition, from Schopenhauer to Langston Hughes, rarely found in American popular culture – even if Ja Rule’s Latin is misspelled and Machiavelli is more referred to than read.” – Mina Kumar, New York Times, August 22.