So I got an email from WetPaint today. It’s a typical website newsletter, but it starts with an appeal to my ego:
I got to the end of the second paragraph and had to do a double take:
Yeah, lemme get right on that. Before one of those other Damian Bariexcas ganks it on me.
This post was brought to you by FireDoodle, the Firefox add-on that turns your browser into a whiteboard.
Even if you don’t like rap and hip-hop, give this post a chance. I know Jose has quoted Jay-Z and met Rakim, Dan‘s spotlighted a homemade Jay-Z poster, and Taylor loves Eminem and Ice Cube; I’m counting on you (& similar-minded folks) to help me out here and in the next post. The rest of you might learn something new.
I was introduced to rap the same way as many other white suburban kids my age – when Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborated on a cover of “Walk This Way.” I was 9 and in fourth grade, and I ate it right up – that was my gateway into hip-hop.
By the time I hit high school I was discovering the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Clapton, Hendrix, and focusing on rock music, but in that five-year span from 1986 to 1991 I’d absorbed a lot of rap (mostly via Yo! MTV Raps)*, including Eric B & Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions, EPMD, Digital Underground (featuring a pre-solo success Tupac), Ice-T, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, N.W.A., and my personal favorite, Public Enemy.
My inability to musically multi-task as a teenager shut me off to a lot of great stuff of all genres, I’m sure, and I regret that. Even with my blinders on, though, I managed to pick up on Cube, Snoop, Dre, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, the evolution of the Beastie Boys, and later, Biggie, Busta Rhymes, and Wu-Tang Clan.
These days, in addition to the classics, I’m listening to Madvillain and Little Brother, both of whom I discovered through eMusic.
There’s a reason I’m posting this, to be revealed in Part II. For now, I’m just trying to stir the pot a bit. If you’re with me, drop me a comment – who are your picks for top rap artists? Who’s out there right now that’s good that isn’t getting radio play?
*I’m showing my age – I’m so old I remember when MTV showed music videos. 
Longer post on this topic to follow. For now, just click to listen:
20-divide-kreate-illiterate-city.mp3
Edit: Source: “Illiterate City”, by Divide & Kreate. Best of Bootie 2007 .
My fellow NJ educator Ann (aka NJTechTeacher) tagged me with a “Seven Random Things” meme. Unaccustomed as I am to sharing the minutiae of my personal life, I’ll respond with a re-post of my participation in a similar meme from this past summer.
When I first posted this, I had only been blogging for four days, and it was my fourth post. Since Statcounter and Feedburner tell me I’ve got more readers now than I did in August, consider this “New to You” content for most of you.
***
My 8 Random Things:
1. Though I’ve spent most of my life in New Jersey (and I still work there), I went to first grade in Switzerland at the International School of Basel. Goodnight, Ms. Cozens, wherever you are.
2. I have been an ardent fan of Newcastle United FC for the better part of a decade (at least no one can accuse me of being a front-runner!).
3. I first met my wife in a teacher work room at our high school (and you thought prep periods were for grading!).
4. Yeah, so we took our honeymoon in Disney World, so what? It’s not just for kids anymore manchildren like it too.
5. Geek cred – I’ve only been blogging for a week, but I’ve been online since 1992 – how many of you remember connecting at 1200 baud (and when the 14.4 line at your BBS felt lightning-fast!)?
6. My Twitter name is actually a mild malapropism for an album by The Stone Roses called “Garage Flower”. I picked it because I like the contrasting imagery (and garages).
7. My first instrument? Alto sax in fifth grade; only lasted a year. Picked up bass guitar in eighth grade because it looked cool (and only had 4 strings, therefore easier to learn than guitar, right?). Learned guitar and started singing at 16, and have played out here and there ever since, both alone and with bands.
8. I’ve acted, too. Up until family life and grad school sank their claws into me started occupying more of my time, I acted with Shakespeare ‘70 Repertory Company, based in Mercer County, NJ. Favorite role? Sir Walter Blunt in Henry IV, Part I. Not too many lines to memorize, and I got to go out in a blaze of glory after a broadsword battle with a man so bad he precedes his name with a definite article, The Douglas.
***
I wish I could blame a writer’s strike, but what can you do? I feel a big post coming on soon on my shifting professional role and what that means for my contribution to education (wasn’t that part of the original plan?), but I really need to sort out some structure first – it may be my first two-parter.
I watched waaaay too much TV as a kid. As such, I’ve not only soaked up mental gigabytes of useless pop culture trivia, but also the every-5-minutes advertising that is pervasive in American television broadcasting.
My first recollection of a TV commercial that really impacted me was for Murphy’s Oil Soap, from 1979 or 1980 (age 2-3). It wasn’t so much the commercial as it was the jingle and the copy shot, “The work is finished and the finish is fine.” Since then, I’ve filed away massive amounts of similar lines. Anyone else remember:
The Consumerist brought these all flooding back to my conscious mind Monday when they linked to an article by Nick Padmore at A List Apart in which he analyzes the 115 best advertising slogans and catchphrases of the last century (courtesy of The Advertising Hall of Fame).
Anyone interested in the use of language should read Padmore’s article in full, but Consumerist gives us the Cliff’s Notes version with a few interesting take-away notes:
Some of his findings:
- only 50% of the top copy shots mention a brand
- 17% of copy shots are “lexically deviant”—as Padmore puts it, “it’s a weird spelling almost 2wice in every ten whirds”
- 84% of the copy shots contain some sort of rhetorical device, although Padmore thinks this is more than likely simply a reflection of how we naturally speak and write
He also comes up with a theory of how to produce a great copy shot, writing that “nobody else (as far as I know), has attempted to come up with a linguistically determined Greatest Copy Shot, so this is at least a start.”
Nick’s theory is as follows:
All great copy shots should:
1. Be five words in length.
2. Not mention the brand name.
3. Be declarative.
4. Be grammatically complete.
5. Be otherwise standard.
6. Contain alliteration, metaphor, or rhyme.
Read his complete article to see how he narrows the field from 115 to 19 with the first criterion, and then proceeds through the list to arrive at the greatest copy shot ever written.
Lots of potential classroom applications here – perhaps a multidisciplinary lesson in math and English that examines the success rate of slogans with certain grammatic properties or rhetorical devices? What percentage of the top 50 use onomatopoeia? Create a pie chart showing prevalence of alliteration, metaphor, simile, etc.? More advanced classes might just be given the top 10 (20, 25, 50, etc.) and be asked to conduct their own analysis and come to their own conclusions about the impact of linguistic choices on success.
From a media literacy standpoint, a discussion of why I still vividly remember a 28-year-old commercial jingle could lead into a larger discussion on the pervasiveness of advertising and its effects.
Maybe watching all that TV was good for something after all (“Five more minutes, mom! It’s professional development, I swear!”).