Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for
a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and
gangsterdom. Signifying Rappers issued a fan's challenge to the giants of rock writing, Greil Marcus, Robert Palmer, and Lester Bangs: could the new street beats of 1989 set us free, as rock
had always promised? Signifying Rappers is a rare record of a city and a summer by two great thinkers, writers, and friends.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
“Two educated white guys do the right thing by scoping out ‘The Meaning of Rap’ without pretending to know everything about it...Signifying Rappers is both a cogent explication of rap and a cutting, revealing parody of overinflated pseudointellectual rap criticism.” —Seattle Weekly
“We get a vivid picture of rap’s real-life context in an area of poverty, drugs, and various types of radical activity, an environment closed to upscale whites by the barriers of fear and oppression.” —Publishers Weekly
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) was the New YorkTimes bestselling author of Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System, and Girl with Curious Hair. His
essays and stories have appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, Playboy, Paris Review, Conjunctions, Premiere, Tennis, the Missouri Review, and
the Review of Contemporary Fiction. He received numerous awards, including the Whiting Award, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the QPB Joe Savago New Voices Award, and the O. Henry Award.
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