“Yeah my drop sick…and my knot thick,” boasts Li’l Wayne in “A Milli.” Sounds great, but what the hell does it mean? Rap Exegesis, a hip-hop translation service, has the answer to this and other lyrical conundrums.
Hip-Hop Close Captioning for the Lyrically Impaired
Frank Ocean’s Fiction
A while back, Frank Ocean alluded to the possibility of one day writing a novel. Asked by Guardian interviewer Rebecca Nicholson about his immediate plans following the success of his last album, Channel Orange, the musician replied, “I might just write a novel next.” The response seemed unserious. But now, in Jeff Himmelman’s long profile of Ocean for The New York Times Magazine, it appears the idea may have a bit more traction. “It’s fiction,” says Ocean. “And it’s about brothers.”
Spitting Straight Fire
“You don’t feel that most of the people in these incidents do not like black people, but simply are a product of their white supremacy and are exercising it on you without caution, care, or thought.” Solange Knowles wrote an essay and you need to read it. See also: our review of Wild Hundreds.
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
PEN Pinter Prize
Margaret Atwood has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for her environmental and humanitarian rights work. Pair with a review of The Heart Goes Last.
●
●
Best Foreign Fiction from Jessa Crispin
Jessa Crispin offers “Picks for Best Foreign Fiction,” at NPR, including selections from Russia, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Israel.
●
●
Curiosities
An excerpt of the lost and recently found Alexandre Dumas novel The Last CavalierAn assessment of poetic cliches in VQR. The surprise: some actually improve your chance of getting published.Jennifer Gilmore interviews the criminally underrated Max Apple.That novelists’ strike not working out so well.Despite some withering condescension, Robert Gottlieb has interesting things to say about John Steinbeck.Penguin UK offers up some alternative storytelling techniques with its We Tell Stories site. The first is a tale by Charles Cumming told by messages inserted into Google Maps. (Thx, Mrs. Millions)Books cops like. (Thx, Laurie)The trend of the massive hyper-expensive book continues.Daniel Radosh points out that the New York Times has, yet again, published a trend piece on bloggers getting book deals.And finally… The Catalog of Unfit Toys: Finding Delight in the Defective
●
●
Letter to Harlem
Over at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins writes on calling Harlem home. As she puts it, “Blackness is not one specific characteristic. It is many things, things that I have yet to discover. It means that different variations of blackness can find home in one another.”
Wassup dogg,
One of the RapEx editors here giving you love back
I’m a big fan of your writing, let us know if there’s any songs you’d like to see put up