Signifying Rappers

By David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello

Book Overview

David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture.

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?

Back in print at last, Signifying Rappers is a rare record of a city and a summer by two great thinkers, writers, and friends. With a new foreword by Mark Costello on his experience writing with David Foster Wallace, this rerelease cannot be missed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316225835
• ISBN13: 9780316225830
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Oldie but a Goldie

Yes this book is outdated, and yes this book is wordy, but thats what makes it so great. This is an exploration of two nerdy white guys resting on the cusp of what we now know was an cultural explosion, and one which they seem to have known, though at the time it had nothing to do with them that it soon would have eveything to do with them and us too. Furthermore some of the forecasting that they do is so right on its scary.. These guys are taliking agbout NWA like its current because it was current! Take this book as an opportunity to view one of those rare historical accounts that happens before the storm and seems to have something good to say about why it started raining in the first place..

an interesting look at what shapes our culture

costello and wallace examine rap culture and rappers as they influence our society. although at times it seems like they are being narrow minded, this book examines what shapes society and how society can react to these things. the book goes well beyond merely rap music and examines how society is influenced and how it influences. anyone who reads this and sees it as simply a look at rap music is missing the entire point of the book.