Activity | hiphopliteracy

Blackalicious- Alphabet Aerobics
[Verse 1: Gift of Gab]
Artificial amateurs, aren't at all amazing
Analytically, I assault, animate things
Broken barriers bounded by the bomb beat
Buildings are broken, basically I'm bombarding
Casually create catastrophes, casualties
Canceling cats got their canopies collapsing
Detonate a dime of dank daily doin' dough
Demonstrations, Don Dada on the down low
Eating other editors with each and every energetic epileptic episode
Elevated etiquette
Furious, fat, fabulous, fantastic
Flurries of funk fell, feeding the fanatics
Gift got great, global goods gone glorious
Gettin godly in this game with the goriest
Hit em high, hella height, historical
Hey holocaust hints, hear 'em holler at your homeboy
Imitators idolize, I intimidate
In an instant, I'll rise in an irate state
Juiced on my jams like Jheri curls jocking joints
Justly, it's just me, writing my journals
Kindly I'm kindling all kinds of King Kong
Karate kick uptight Brits in my kingdom
Let me live a long life, lyrically lessons is
Learned lame louses just lose to my livery
My mind makes marvelous moves, masses
Marvel and move, many mock what I've mastered
Niggas nap knowing I'm nice, naturally
Knack, never lack, make noise nationally
Operation, opposition, off, not optional
Out of sight, out of mind, wide beaming opticals
Perfected poem, powerful punchlines
Pummeling petty powder puffs in my prime
Quite quaint quotes keep quiet it's Quannum
Quarrelers ain't got a quarter of what we got, uh
Really raw raps, risin up rapidly
Riding the rushing radioactivity
Super scientifical sound search sought
Silencing super fire saps that are soft
Tales ten times talented, too tough
Take that, challengers, get a tune up
Universal, unique, untouched
Unadulterated, the raw uncut
Verb vice lord victorious valid
Violate vibes that are vain make em vanish
Why in my world would a wise wordsmith just
Weaving up words, weed it up with a work shift?
Xerox my X-radiation holes extra large
X-height letters and xylophone tones
Yellow-back, yak mouth, young ones' yaws
Yesterday's gone, years sell our lawns (?)
Zig-Zag zombies, zooming to the zenith
Zero in, zen thoughts, overzealous rhyme ZEA-LOTS!....

Blackberry Eating- Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black
blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among
them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest
berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

VS.

Take a look at the lyrics and poem and find similarities in their literary craft.

Loves Gonna Get’cha- KRS One

Im in junior high with a b plus grade,

At the end of the day i don't hit the arcade,

I walk from school to my moms apartment,

I got to tell the sucaks everyday "don't start it",

Cause where I'm at if your soft your lost,

To say on course means to roll with force,

A boy named Rob is chillin in a Benz,

In front of my building with the rest of his friends,

I give him a pound, oh i mean i shake his hand,

He's the neighborhood drug dealer, my man,

I go upstair and hug my mother,

Kiss my sister, and punch my brother,

I sit down on my bed to watch some tv,

(machine gun fire) do my ears decieve me,

Nope, that's the fourth time this week,

Another fast brother shot dead in the street,

The very next day while im off to class,

My moms goes to work cold busting her ass,

My sisters cute but she got no gear,

I got three pairs of pants and with my brother i share,

See there in school see i'm made a fool,

With one and a half pair of pant you aint cool,

But there's no dollars for nothing else,

I got beans, rice, and bread on my shelf,

Every day i see my mother struggling,

Now it's time i've got to do something,

I look for work i get dissed like a jerk,

I do odd jobs and come home like a slob,

So here comes Rob he's cold and shivery,

He gives me two hundred for a quick delivery,

I do it once, i do it twice,

Now there's steak with the beans and rice,

My mother's nervous but she knows the deal,

My sister's gear now has sex appeal,

My brothers my partner and we're getting paper,

Three months later we run our own caper,

My family's happy everything is new,

Now tell me what the fuck am i supposed to do,

Nighttime Fires- Regina Barreca (587)

When I was five in Louisville

we drove to see nighttime fires. Piled seven of us,

all pajamas and running noses, into the Olds,

drove fast toward smoke. It was after my father

lost his job, so not getting up in the morning

gave him time: awake past midnight, he read old newspapers

with no news, tried crosswords until he split the pencil

between his teeth, mad. When he heard

the wolf whine of the siren, he woke my mother,

and she pushed and shoved

us all into waking. Once roused we longed for burnt wood

and a smell of flames high into the pines. My old man liked

driving to rich neighborhoods best, swearing in a good mood

as he followed the fire engines that snaked like dragons

and split the silent streets. It was festival, carnival.

If there were a Cadillac or any car

in a curved driveway, my father smiled a smile

from a secret, brittle heart.

His face lit up in the heat given off by destruction

like something was being made, or was being set right.

I bent my head back to see where sparks

ate up the sky. My father who never held us

would take my hand and point to falling cinders that

covered the ground like snow, or, excited, show us

the swollen collapse of a staircase. My mother

watched my father, not the house. She was happy

only when we were ready to go, when it was finally over

and nothing else could burn.

Driving home, she would sleep in the front seat

as we huddled behind. I could see his quiet face in the

rearview mirror, eyes like hallways filled with smoke.

VS.

Now were going to write our own lyrics to get a feel of how hip-hop can be a fun form of creative literacy. Write 6 lines about a term or concept that we have learned this year so far. Ex: sponsors, identity, formal/informal, metalanguage, feel free to look at key words doc for ideas. You have 15 minutes to write and record on the iPads around campus or in the library. Then we will come back together as a group to share our mini projects.