What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language

A love letter to the verbal artistry of hip-hop, What's Good is a work of passionate lyrical analysis. "What's Good is, among a great many other things, a byproduct of joyful obsession and immersion into both language and sound, an intersection that offers a rich and expansive land upon which to play." — Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance " . . . an often hilarious, surprisingly moving and always joyful paean to rap’s relationship to words."— Jayson Greene, The New York Times "Rap, he is not afraid to say, is as close to a universal tongue as we have."— Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker What's Good is a work of passionate lyrical analysis, a set of freewheeling liner notes, and a love letter to the most vital American art form of the last half century. Over a series of short chapters, each centered on a different lyric, Daniel Levin Becker considers how rap's use of language operates and evolves at levels ranging from the local (slan