In response to Signifying Rappers being re-released in the US and the UK Alexander Nazaryan's makes a case for reading it in an article for The Atlantic Wire, White Boy Beats: Why You Should Read David Foster Wallace's Book on Rap:
A book about rap written a quarter century ago by two very white guys has tremendous potential to be embarrassing. I am happy to report that Signifying Rappers did not make me cringe a single time, though I did have to look up both cultural references (Schooly D) and words from DFW’s famously capacious lexicon (epiclesis; seriously, Dave?). It is also probably the only book about popular music to seriously discuss the origins of synecdochal imagery.At heart, this book has heart. Its message is simple and humane. “Rap is poetry,” Costello writes in the introduction — a poetry of protest, that is, speaking to what Wallace calls later in the book (the two write in alternating chapters) “the carcinomoid Other…inside Us” that frightens “Concerned Citizens” who do not want to hear about the macabre imagery of what Wallace and Costello call “Hard Rap.”
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