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Poetics of Rap: A Crossroad in the Culture War

The background of the so-called "culture war" of academia is the collision between the traditional literary studies and anti-traditional cultural studies. On the one hand, the old school offers impassioned defenses of the notion of humanism as a foundation of (western) literature; on the other hand, a new generation of scholars contends that the current crisis of humanities can be seen as a result of the failure of the humanism. This argument leads into related critical issues concerning the future of education in English Literature. In this article I attempt a tentative essay that claims rap as poetry and drama and therefore as an integral part of contemporary literary education. Starting as an emotional outlet for urban underclass black youth to express their frustrations, rap music is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon that evokes passionate responses. Given the genre's cross-over popularity and success in the global market, its impact on youth culture is growing. Prompted by the lack of discussion over rap's aesthetic potentials among educators/scholars of English studies, this essay intends to initiate such discussion by adumbrating a poetics of rap in comparison with and contrast to traditional poetry and drama. As a conclusion, I suggest rap to be a 21st century's compound genre of literature that could end "culture war" with its various forms of "remix" and effectively enhance students' multiple literacies which is critical in this multicultural and multimedia world.