Is Rap Poetry?

So asks the Poetry Foundation.

From the piece...

There’s no denying that rap is an art form, but Smith was onto something important when she made her rapper character resist identifying it as poetry. The reservation does not come from any doubt about the skill of the writing; when it comes to verse technique, rap is considerably more artful than most American poetry written in the same period covered by the anthology, 1978–2010. Technique has declined in importance in poetry over these years, while a premium has been placed on conceptual innovation—on the idea behind a work rather than its execution. Whether it is a result or a cause of this focus, or both, people who become poets today are less interested in verse, and less naturally gifted at it, than poets in previous eras.

In rap, on the other hand, verse technique—rhyme, rhythm, assonance, and witty simile, all of which constitute a rapper’s “flow”—is valued above everything. The result is that people who are poetically gifted are drawn to the form, and their competitive efforts raise its level of sophistication higher and higher. The earliest pieces in the Anthology, dating to the origins of hip-hop in the South Bronx, have a halting rhythm, use emphatic end rhymes, and often resort to stock phrases (resembling in these respects the first attempts at iambic pentameter in sixteenth-century English poetry):

We’re the Furious Five plus Grandmaster Flash
Giving you a blast and sho’ nuf’ class
So to prove to you all we’re second to none
We’re gonna make five mcs sound like one
You gotta dip-dip-dive, so-so-socialize
clean out your ears and then open your eyes
And then pay at the door as a donation
To hear the best sounds in creation.

These lines from “Superrappin’,” released in 1979, also show the influence of the group’s origins in live performance at parties and concerts: the goal was to get the crowd moving, not to tell a story or impress with verbal pyrotechnics.

And, one of my favorite rap songs from back in the day, here: