„My mental’s based on instrumental records” An attempt to define rap

Krisztián Bíró

IN: Partitúra Irodalomtudományi folyóirat, Volume: VIII. , Issue 2, 2013 p. 75-90, ISSN 1336-7307

DOI: 10.17846/PA.2013.8.2.75-90

Abstract

In Hungarian literary criticism rap has been approached mainly from two directions so far: it has been regarded either as a distinctive oral structure or as a genre that operates with a distinctive register. This study is an argument against the latter approach and for the former one, and tries to unfold it in details. The argument is based on an attempt to define rap from the perspective of prosody, and it is followed by the opportunity to point out the difference between rap, music and singing. in the end, it is discussing some curiosity of the medial aspects of rap resulting from some characteristic features of literacy that emerge in the natural orality of it.

Keywords: rap, beat, flow, rhyme, music, orality, literacy, Akkezdet Phiai, Eminem, Method Man, Pharoahe Monch

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Partitúra is a Hungarian literary journal published in Slovakia twice a year. The first edition was issued in 2006. From 2007 to 2014 its publishers were the Faculty of Central European Studies at The Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra in cooperation with Sambucus Literary Society. Since 2014 the Faculty of Central European Studies at the CPU in Nitra became the sole publisher.

The journal releases peer-reviewed scientific articles, literary studies and art reviews of both Hungarian as well as world literature. It is also a forum for essays on several other arts and intercultural relations. Furthermore, special attention is devoted to the Central European literature and literary studies; the magazine not only publishes the reviews of such studies, but also provides the arena for reflections about them. The journal aims to give an account of the contemporary Hungarian literature of the Hungarian minorities as well as to serve as a cluster for discourses.

As for the structure of the paper, it is usually divided into three main sections. The first part generally deals with the translation of an important foreign abstract literary study. It is followed by the heading of Scientific Studies and the Columns of Critical Analysis. Partitúra regularly publishes thematic abstracts by authors, genres, as well as a literary and artistic phenomenon in focus.