Reconsidering the Rap Canon.
1. What is the canon?
Just about everything has at least, an unspoken canon, a generally accepted list of “the best”. Literature has an oft-debated and ever-changing canon. Last year, in ‘Film Comment’ screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote about establishing one for film. Religious texts are often marked by canonical texts and in the world of comics and sci-fi, fans often debate what aspects of that fictional universe are canon and which are not: “Is ‘Star Trek: The Animated Series’ canon?” For the record, it should be…

2. The Rap Canon Is Very Restrictive.
Rap has a canon but it’s never addressed, it’s just sort of a given. I am someone with a healthy knowledge of rap but more of an interest in whatever music I happen to like, so I have, many times over invoked the name of a rapper, or an album or an opinion that turns out to be a capitol rap offense. The canon is not so much a canon as it is an anti-canon because the invocation of any number of rappers will bring out the veins in a rap fan’s head and he/she will tell you why what you like is a) bullshit b)not real hip-hop c) ruining real hip-hop or d) all of the above. The worst part is the assumption is if you like say, Three Six Mafia you don’t know about “better” rap or something. I won’t even get into the totally played-out mixed metaphor of the white imperialist entering Africa…but this kind of thinking is unproductive, and only increased since the persistent claims about hip hop’s death and the unfortunate bubbling of another region war.

3. Rap Is Post-Positive.
Rap is inarguably an African American “artform” and as a result, at least according to a lot of smart, fancy-pants African American literature professor types, this means that rap, like all other African-American arts is post-positive. What does that mean? Post in the sense of after or beyond, positive in the sense of absolutism, so beyond-absolutism. In the 19th century, a lot of shit came out like Charles Darwin and evolution and modern science and Nietzsche declaring God dead and blah blah blah…the result was, a whole lot of shit that had been taken for granted for hundreds and hundreds of years looked a little suspect. Super-easy example: Dinosaur bones are discovered but there are no dinosaurs mentioned in the bible. What do we do? It fucks some shit up, fucks some shit up so much we’re still feeling the fallout, for better and worse.

African-American arts are post-positive because by simply existing they oppose established literary traditions and continue to do so. You see…back then, a bunch of scholars and monocle-wearing types would have been discussing not the validity of black art but whether it even existed. Slowly, some black art was accepted and then overtime, a lot more is accepted and now we have rap music. But the loop of idiocy and close-mindedness continues because in the little world of rap, the modern day equivalent of the monocle-wearers are the ones telling rap fans what is acceptable and unacceptable. The rap fans that exclusively celebrate the true schools are oddly enough, the most conservative (with a lower-case c!) of rap fans. They are the closed-minded ones, they are the oppressors telling listeners and writers who and what to support. They are making the canon and the canon they have created, is incredibly myopic.

4. What’s Your Point?
Mainly my point is that any discussion of rap, no matter how apparently retarded, no matter who it is by, is ultimately good. Those discussions are not only necessary but crucial, even the most outrageous of claims (Lil Wayne as the best rapper alive) is not killing hip-hop but keeping it alive. Of course, one has the right to vocally oppose such ideas but when the disagreement is couched in race and accusations of racism rather than music it is disingenuous. This scares and threatens potential writers from writing about the music they care about…why would you do that? Why would you want to stop anybody, no matter how misguided you think they are, from expressing their love for rap?

5. Some Examples of Rap Canon Reconsideration

a. Straight Bangin’s Top 25 Hip-Hop Albums List.

Within hours of posting the request for ‘Top Hip-Hop Albums’ lists it was changed, if one so desired, to simply listing your favorites. It’s funny that what took one blogger a few hours to realize still has not been figured-out by debating scholars, multiculturalists, and conservatives…all we got is our opinions! If there’s some kind of truly objective way to determine the best rap albums, why would we make lists? Give the criteria to some scientists and give them every rap album ever made and let them calculate it.

How does one become objective on the topic or really, any topic? I see why Public Enemy are important but their records just don’t hit me anymore. When I was in 10th grade, I listened to ‘It Takes A Nation’ constantly, I got into a minor scuffle with a black kid who made fun of me for listening to “old stuff”. At the time, I made fun of him for listening to DMX and smugly put my headphones back on. These days I’m probably more apt to listen to DMX than P.E. Who was wrong? Both of us? Neither of us? It doesn’t really matter.

b. Byron Crawford & Tupac: ‘Why Do Hip-Hop Bloggers Hate 2pac?

The fact that Tupac sort of sucks is that dirty little secret that has always been unspoken but with time, can be said without facing a beatdown. Tupac is inconsistent, boring, insincere, and disingenuous. He was quantifiably rebellious, the kind of rebellion that woons too dumb to enjoy Wu Tang went for. Once Tupac died, these guys gravitated towards Eminem who kept the ball rolling on sub-par emcees with light production that through contrived controversy, enrapture dumb rap fans as well as ‘New York Times’ writers. Byron Crawford’s entry put into words what so many other rap fans have taken for granted: Tupac isn’t that good.

But is Tupac “important”? Yes. His celebrity, his murder, his level of fame while alive and his continued sales after death preserve him in the rap canon forever. I don’t mean this condescendingly but I know it will come out that way so fuck it: Tupac is a good place to start with rap. At least around me, I primarily see young people, black and white, but all middle-school age, wearing Tupac shirts. So, he remains a part of the canon no matter what and can therefore, afford to take a few shots from bloggers (no pun intended, I promise!). Tupac’s visibility isn’t going anywhere so only healthy discussion can come out of critical derision.

c. Tom Breihan & Nas: ‘Pitbull Is Better Than Nas’

Besides the obviously pejorative nature of this title the real point was a slight re-evaluation of Nas’s work. I smiled when I saw the title and thought about it and at least then (and now) I’d agree that I’d rather listen to Pitbull than Nas. Breihan, as a pop critic which because rap music is pop music (and always has been) gives him a different but equally relevant point of view on the music, is allowed to tell his readers Pitbull is better than Nas. Plus, it’s true in the pop music appeal sense because Nas has become really boring. Like Tupac, Nas is something of an institution, so his placement in rap history is solidified and as a result, it would only do Nas’ “legacy” some good to be reevaluated.

Particularly fun were the responses to this post which quickly dismissed Pitbull as only booty-shaking music. This dismissive argument reflects the same kind of thing that outsiders to rap might say about Nas because all they hear is a scary beat and the word “nigga”, their ears closed to the subtleties of rap. Try telling Cuban-Americans that Pitbull is only booty-shaking music. Calling your album ‘El Mariel’ is a political act. Pitbull also did the wonderful thing of calling-out rappers for wearing the image of Che Guevara, who if you’re Pitbull, Che is a murderer. The dismissal of Pitbull as booty-shaking music goes much deeper than musical opinions, it moves into the realm of politics and the pro-American politics just don’t jibe with most Nas fans. Pitbull and Nas while dissimilar in their politics are similar in the propagandistic aspects of their lyrics. Neither offer particularly insightful opinions on politics, rather they both preach to their audience the kind of politics the audience wants to hear. This is what a little statement like ‘Pitbull is Better than Nas’ begins to unpack when it isn’t dismissed outright.

d. Noz and Others' Continued Focus on Rap Obscurities.

This constant reminding of listeners of that which they have forgotten or never knew existed is canon reconsideration defined. The popular and even intellectual authors of one period often become the nobodies of the next and the nobodies of the period can later become the greats. Trends, expectations, ideas, styles change and what looked weird or stupid in 1991 can suddenly become more relevant decades later.

6. Conclusion.
You know, there was a point where barely any rap was taken seriously and then there was a point where it became an interesting phenomenon, and then it became socially relevant, and then it became the biggest music on the planet. It is everybody’s music and it needs to be allowed to be discussed as such. The best way to do this is by allowing challenges to the rap canon, not dismissing them outright, but taking them into account. They should not be threatening to read. They should be exciting. The music that is canonical will stay canonical, it will not begin to wither away due to the eroding winds of writings about trap-rap or crunk or Pit Bull.

Any sense of absolute truth, any sense of the definite, ended over one hundred years ago, high and low and all between is pretty much one now. If it weren’t, us rap nerds obsessively analyzing and intellectualizing the music wouldn’t be allowed to do it, we’d still be like “Man the concerto last night was pretty good”. But we don’t have to do that! Instead I can write about Devin the Dude, or I can write about Devin and classical music, I could even write about how I think Devin’s music is sort of like classical music! What a wonderful world we now live in!