STORYTELLING DISTINGUISHES RAP from other forms of popular
music. That isn't to suggest that lyricists in other musical
genres don't tell captivating stories: anyone who's ever heard
the Eagles' "Hotel California" or Don McLean's "American
Pie" or the Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down
to Georgia" knows better than that. Rap isn't even the first
musical genre to tell a story to music in rapid phrases that are
as close to speech as to song; that distinction belongs to oper-
atic recitatives, which date from the seventeenth century.
Rap's difference from other genres is one of degree, not of
kind. Rap just tells so many stories. Indeed, it's difficult to
identify a rap song that doesn't tell some kind of story in
rhyme.
Storytelling highlights both the good and the had in



What is the central idea