My latest crusade for composition studies is that it needs to look outside of the composition classroom more, so I appreciated the creativity of Jeff Rice's piece. What fascinates me about writing, and what I think makes it so worthwhile to study is that it's everywhere (unlike, say, Chaucer). Everybody writes (including Biggie).
I was wondering why Rice didn't mention Kanye West's The College Dropout. West, whose mother is an English professor, dropped out of Columbia College in Chicago, and much of the album is his argument for the uselessness of that education, and how it hasn't correlated to his success. See, for example, the lyrics to the School Spirit Skits 1 and 2. Kanye West is probably best known for his enormous ego ("the rhetorical gesture of showing off"), which prompts him to do things like say that “George Bush doesn't care about black people” and appear on the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus. I imagine that Rice would see this as part of his “vision” of his success. Kanye West is also an especially relevant example because he rose to fame as a producer -- it was his "assemblages" that made him famous.
Still, I'll be honest – the juxtaposition of rap lyrics and academic discourse sometimes had a comic effect. “Academic Locates Pedagogical Structure of Literacy Myth in Old Dirty Bastard Lyrics” sounds like an Onion headline. And if Biggie's argument is a rejection of traditional schooling, how would he feel about his lyrics being co-opted for an article in an academic journal?
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I like your last question. I think what's also important to consider in a discussion of hip-hop's aversion to traditional education would be the marginalized positions occupied by most artists. Growing up black and poor must surely have something to do with their rejection of such a dominant cultural institution.
Faith's reference to Kanye West made me think, also, of "The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill"; both do what Rice highlights in Notorious BIG--showing hiphop as a kind of alternative education, that Rice would say helps us to turn from knowledge to ka-knowledge. I'm sure we could find more examples that aren't included in the article, too. It's fascinating--I didn't realize how much hiphop's rhetoric co-opts that of traditional education, for exactly the reasons that Mark mentions.
One thing that I like about Kanye though is that in many ways he also subverts the (conscious) construction of masculinity that appears in so many latter-day rap/hip-hop tracks. Other artists--I'm thinking of Ice Cube and Tupac, especially--would talk in interviews about how they're actually playing the role of a gangster (they each used that specific description), of how a lot of what they say is not real. In a counter-intuitive way, however, it was like these comments were made "off the record"--even though they were recorded in interviews and disseminated to the public--because their actual lyrics are what was considered "on the record," literally and figuratively. The male posturing was ever-present when they were on the mic.
What I like about Kanye is that he--like Chuck D and KRS-One before him--offers a more complex personae. Take, for example, the lyrics to Kanye's "All Falls Down," off of The College Drop-Out. Kanye starts by singing about how a young woman in school is self-conscious about her future, has no direction, and feels competing social pressure to stay in school and to make money so that she can have material possessions:
"Man I promise, she's so self conscious/
She has no idea what she's doing in college/
That major that she majored in don't make no money/
But she won't drop out, her parents will look at her funny/
Now, tell me that ain't insecure/
The concept of school seems so secure/
Sophomore three years ain't picked a career/
She like, "Fuck it. I'll just stay down here and do hair."/
'Cause that's enough money to buy her a few pairs of new Airs/
'Cause her baby daddy don't really care/
She's so precious with the peer pressure/
Couldn't afford a car so she named her daughter Alexus ["a Lexus"]/
She had hair so long that it looked like weave/
Then she cut it all off now she look like Eve/
And she be dealing with some issues that you can't believe/
Single black female addicted to retail and well"
Kanye then turns the lens on himself, explaining that while he "flosses," the impulse to do so stems from insecurity, that it comes from a dark place ("the prettiest people do the ugliest things"):
Man I promise, I'm so self-conscious/
That's why you always see me with at least one of my watches/
Rollies and Pasha's done drove me crazy/
I can't even pronounce nothing/
"Pass that Versace!"/
Then I spent 400 bucks on this/
Just to be like, "Nigga, you ain't up on this!"/
And I can't even go to the grocery store/
Without some ones thats clean and a shirt with a team/
It seems we living the American Dream/
But the people highest up got the lowest self-esteem/
The prettiest people do the ugliest things/
For the road to riches and diamond rings/
We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us/
We trying to buy back our 40 acres/
And for that paper, look how low we a'stoop/
Even if you in a Benz, you still a Nigga in a coupe ["coop"]"
Kanye finishes by writing his own insecurities and their resulting practices large to the culture he sees around him:
I say "Fuck the police!" Thats how I treat 'em/
We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom/
We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need 'em/
Things we buy to cover up what's inside/
'Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth/
That's why shortie's hollering "Where the ballas at?"/
Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/
And a white man get paid off of all of that/
But I ain't even gon act holier than thou/
'Cause fuck it, I went to Jacob with 25 thou/
Before I had a house and I'd do it again/
'Cause I wanna be on 106 and Park pushing a Benz/
I wanna act ballerific like it's all terrific/
I got a couple past due bills, I won't get specific/
I got a problem with spending before I get it/
We all self conscious--I'm just the first to admit it"
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