Hip Hop and Writing

There is little doubt in my mind that my years of listening to hip hop, or rap if you will, has made me a substantially better writer. Whether anyone finds that hard to believe, I do not know. Most of the people I've mentioned it to, inside the ad biz and out, seem to make sense out of it. I still find myself intrigued by the notion.

Perhaps it is the remnants of growing up amongst so much criticism of the genre as "not music," or "garbage," but part of me sees it as not an entirely intuitive connection. It could also be that the hip hop I grew up listening to was not always rich with artistically lyrical pontifications. At least not in the same way it is today with lyricists like Yasiin Bey, Black Thought of the Roots, Pharaohe Monch, Blu, Murs, Homeboy Sandman, Talib Kweli, and the like. Thinking back to the gangster rhymes of one Andre Young or Calvin Broadus (a.k.a. Dr. Dre or Snoop Dogg), I sometimes wonder how the genre enriched my vocabulary.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying, or just looking at it wrong. For it seems what hip hop really did for me was to broaden my understanding of the English language and the flexibility it allows. Throughout the history of hip hop, play-on-word analogies and double entendres have been at the forefront of superb lyricism. And I believe this is where hip hop has aided me the most, especially when it comes to describing things (professionally, products or services), in a unique, often-times humorous, way.

Of late, the line constantly at the forefront of my mind is from a Pharoahe Monch song:

I make headlines like corduroy pillows.