Author Biography

Daniel Levin Becker is a critic, editor, and translator from Chicago. An early contributing editor to the groundbreaking lyrics annotation site Rap Genius, he has written about music for The Believer, NPR, SF Weekly, and Dusted Magazine, among others. His first book, Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature (Harvard UP, 2012), recounts his induction into the French literary collective Oulipo, of which he became the youngest member in 2009. His published translations include Georges Perec's La Boutique Obscure (Melville House, 2013), Eduardo Berti's An Ideal Presence (Fern Books, 2021), and Serge Haroche's The Science of Light (Odile Jacob, 2021). He is also co-translator and co-editor of All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963–2018 (McSweeney's, 2018) and the editor of Dear McSweeney's: Two Decades of Letters to the Editor from Writers, Readers, and the Occasional Bewildered Consumer (McSweeney's, 2021). Levin Becker is a founding editor of Fern Books, English editor for the French nonfiction publisher Odile Jacob, senior editor at McSweeney's Publishing, and a longtime contributing editor to The Believer. He lives in Paris. 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents What''s Good: Notes on Rap and Language By Daniel Levin Becker Preface Rhetorical questions I''m into having sex, I ain''t into making love Rewinding To be the man on the mic, to be the man on your mind On cool What''s normal to us is an illusion to them On me I heard the beat and I ain''t know what to write Serious rap What you hear is not a test Word machines I make butter fly Slang evolution Speakin'' my language if you talkin'' ''bout tilapia Slang and slipperiness You''ll never find a rhyme like this in any dictionary On rhyme Try me, try me On register Bitch I''m morose and lugubrious Haunted roots Hangin'' on for dear life Code and contraband I got twenty-five lighters on the dresser Intelligences They don''t call me Big for nuttin'' Power play I''m on point like a elbow Word as bond Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape Anti-simile I''m the motherfucking king like Oedipus =, ≠ Flip the script just like Marlon Brando # I got bars sentencing Economy and time Four Seasons, three words: do not disturb Signifying chains I take seven MCs, put ''em in a line Recycling Flow retarded, I''m on some Special Ed shit Elective chronology Once upon a time in the projects Ancestor worship We''re holdin'' on to what''s golden Writing/biting I got ninety-nine problems and a bitch ain''t one Aggravated quotation Beat biter, dope style taker Hyperlinks Wikipedia that, if you didn''t know On cliché Kickin'' the fly clichés Who wore it better? Now I''m butt naked in a Lamborghini Deniable plausibility Might look light but we heavy though On first person I live it, I see it, and I write it because I know it Truth and consequence Calling her a crab is just a figure of speech Criminal slang I''m the biggest Dope Dealer and I serve all over town Selling work The dope I''m selling you don''t smoke you feel On values I''m out here making sense ''cause I''m out here making dollars On the b-word Who you callin'' a bitch? On the n-word She could be my broad and I could be her -- On white people Please listen to my album On second person If that''s your chick then why she textin'' me? Is rap poetry? I take this more serious than just a poem Writing/not writing I wasn''t born last night What you hear is not a text I can''t help the poor if I''m one of them On possession Hi haters, I''m back off hiatus On possession with intent to sell Cash rules everything around me Signifying ornaments I spell it how the fucks I want Outsider art And all the people always know me for my comedy On irony This is fucking awesome Dumb love Microphone check 1-2 what is this Criticism and categories Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good A larger English Lampin'' in the Hamptons like "What the fuck is a hammock?" Witness Party and bullshit

Review

Praise for What's Good:". . . this ode to rap is sure to surprise and delight. . . . Open to any bite-sized chapter and you're sure to find some tantalizing tidbit worth your time."—Grace Utomo, Rain Taxi Review of Books "Written in short, savorably dense chapters, What's Good manages to be many kinds of books at the same time. It's exhaustive — in its command of rap lyrics, in its ear for modulations in meaning and tone, in its ability to straddle the complexities of race and identity as they converge in rap . . . "—Aaron Peck, Los Angeles Review of Books"A book filled with such love and thoughtfulness and fun has to come from a fan; who but a genuine devotee would use his introductory chapter to provide a deep reading of 50 Cent's 'In Da Club?'"—Adam Ellsworth, The Arts Fuse"Music aficionados and hip-hop lovers will savor every bit."—Publishers Weekly
"His book performs a unique and exciting rhetorical move, presenting itself as a sort of freestyle in its own right: short, punchy chapters that each focus on a single lyric."—ALTA"There is so much I admire about Daniel Levin Becker's What's Good: how knowledgeable it is, how synoptic, how precise, persuasive, and risky; I love its savvy politics, its passion, its aching, tragic heart."—David Shields, author of Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season"All in all, What's Good is an enlightening, self-aware, and deeply satisfying look at the wondrous ways rap music uses language. It is absolutely essential reading on hip-hop—and one of the smartest books about music I've read."—Ian Port, author of The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll"What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is a celebration of the artistry and craft of rap lyrics written in a way that only Daniel Levin Becker could, with his sharp eye for linguistic experimentation and his appreciation for the ways rappers have been able to turn English inside out. His fascination is contagious as he revels in the incredible vitality of this ever-morphing lexicon, from its rhymes to its slang to its creation of new modes of meaning. It's the book us lovers of music and language had no idea we needed."—Emma Ramadan, Riffraff Books, Providence, RI"Characterized with a clear love for hip-hop, Daniel Levin Becker's What's Good is a joyful and deep dive into the many wonders of hip-hop as an art form."—Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington DC"Exceptionally well written, impressively informed and informative, and an absorbing read from cover to cover, What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language will have particular interest for poets, literary critics, authors and lyricists. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is an extraordinary and highly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Criticism collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists."—Micah Andrew, Midwest Library Review"What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is a studied, well-researched, critical, and loving exploration of the wit, humor, nuance, intelligence, meaning-making, truth telling, occasional hyperbolic absurdity, and craft of the MC and, in turn, Hip Hop culture. Becker approaches the topic with the care, competence, and appreciation of a lifelong Hip Hop aficionado and, as a result, What's Good is a remarkable achievement that deserves a place in any Hip Hop studies collection."—Craig Arthur, Virginia Tech, College & Research Libraries

Promotional

Galleys are available upon request.We'll pursue the ABA's IndieNext campaign for February 2022The national media campaign will focus on music and literature journals, blogs, podcasts, radio shows, and more. We'll pursue reviews, interviews, profiles, and excerpts.We will plan an international media campaign given the worldwide popularity of hip hop and rap, as well as author's home base of Paris.Author is from Chicago and a graduate of Yale University. We'll pursue regional media in Illinois, and alumni publications associated with the school.We'll promote the book via its Soundcloud playlist, currently posted on the site.The social media campaign includes promotion of the book on the author's own accounts, as well as City Lights.Will pursue the production of short "music videos" for Instagram featuring commentary by the author.Academic marketing: The book is of interest to academics, as well as lay readers, and we will pursue a variety of disciplines including English, Rhetoric, African American Studies, Music, and more.

Long Description

Much has been asserted about hip-hop's lyrical inventiveness, but there have been very few, if any, dives as deep into the way rap lyrics function. The book is as up to the moment as possible and embraces a wide range of styles and periods of rap, rather than limiting itself to one type of hip hop. This book is a love letter to rap and hip hop, similar to the sentiments of music writers like Hanif Abdurraqib in his Notes to a Tribe Called Quest as well as Nick Hornby's music column in The Believer. Levin Becker is equally likely to discuss the origins as the most contemporary chart-toppers. Artists discussed include: Sugarhill Gang, UGK, Young M.A, Rakim, Rick Ross, Rae Sremmurd, Jay-Z, Drake, and Snoop Dog, among others. The author wrestles with the very possibility of adequately representing and/or explaining a given set of hip hop lyrics. What's Good will appeal to readers of Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Rakim's Sweat the Technique(2019), Vikki Tobak's Contact High (2018), and Matthew Zapruder's Why Poetry (2018) *Daniel Levin Becker was an early contributor to the groundbreaking lyrics site Rap Genius (now known as Genius). The author has an excellent repuation amongst his literary peers having long served in editorial roles at McSweeney's and The Believer Magazine. Levin Becker is also a member of OULIPO, one of the most language-focused avant-garde movements of the last century. *More info on Rap Genius: In case you're unfamiliar, it is a pretty significant website for lyrics. It started as "Rap Genius," by a bunch guys from Yale who were into hip-hop and fascinated with the often difficult to parse lyrics. Now it's simply known as Genius, as it covers all genres. Genius is basically the lyrics site of the internet for all genres, though it started with hip-hop.

Review Quote

Praise for What's Good: "Written in short, savorably dense chapters, What's Good manages to be many kinds of books at the same time. It's exhaustive -- in its command of rap lyrics, in its ear for modulations in meaning and tone, in its ability to straddle the complexities of race and identity as they converge in rap . . . "--Aaron Peck, Los Angeles Review of Books "A book filled with such love and thoughtfulness and fun has to come from a fan; who but a genuine devotee would use his introductory chapter to provide a deep reading of 50 Cent's 'In Da Club?'"--Adam Ellsworth, The Arts Fuse "Music aficionados and hip-hop lovers will savor every bit."--Publishers Weekly "His book performs a unique and exciting rhetorical move, presenting itself as a sort of freestyle in its own right: short, punchy chapters that each focus on a single lyric."--ALTA "There is so much I admire about Daniel Levin Becker's What's Good: how knowledgeable it is, how synoptic, how precise, persuasive, and risky; I love its savvy politics, its passion, its aching, tragic heart."--David Shields, author of Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season "All in all, What's Good is an enlightening, self-aware, and deeply satisfying look at the wondrous ways rap music uses language. It is absolutely essential reading on hip-hop--and one of the smartest books about music I've read."--Ian Port, author of The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll "What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is a celebration of the artistry and craft of rap lyrics written in a way that only Daniel Levin Becker could, with his sharp eye for linguistic experimentation and his appreciation for the ways rappers have been able to turn English inside out. His fascination is contagious as he revels in the incredible vitality of this ever-morphing lexicon, from its rhymes to its slang to its creation of new modes of meaning. It's the book us lovers of music and language had no idea we needed."--Emma Ramadan, Riffraff Books, Providence, RI "Characterized with a clear love for hip-hop, Daniel Levin Becker's What's Good is a joyful and deep dive into the many wonders of hip-hop as an art form."--Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington DC "Exceptionally well written, impressively informed and informative, and an absorbing read from cover to cover, What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language will have particular interest for poets, literary critics, authors and lyricists. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is an extraordinary and highly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Criticism collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists."--Micah Andrew, Midwest Library Review

Excerpt from Book

PREFACE If you''re reading this, no Drake, it''s too late. Rap has moved on. This book cannot be held responsible for or looked to for comment on who is newly canonized or canceled or dearly departed, who''s just been handed a jail sentence or an honorary Ivy League degree, how we''re currently feeling about Kanye West. This book wishes those people the best in whatever awaits them, but it has no insight into the future, which is to say your present. At most it has modest hopes and expectations--that words like opp and twelve will sound as canonically worn-out to your ear as sucker and five-o do to mine, that you have come to lionize Dreezy and Kash Doll and think Desiigner is a typo and need someone to explain the Drake thing (read on)--but it doesn''t know anything beyond its now, the end of 2020. We can''t move through time that way, this book and I, and I bring it up because one of the magical and confounding things about rap music is that somehow it can. This book is, was destined all along to be, the product of a moment: an interval of joyous immersion and contemplation and study that lasted the better part of a decade but whose subject spills past its temporal limits in both directions. My intent was less to write anything definitive or exhaustive than to propose a sort of interpretive mesh whose specific examples--novel vegetal euphemisms for marijuana, best practices for credit card scams--could be replaced intuitively, productively, by fresher material. "Write like something you don''t mean to be erased but one day know will," as Kevin Young writes in The Grey Album: "then let them try." I wanted to highlight, in between the specifics I did manage to inventory, some things that seem to me to be timeless in rap, transcendent or unchanging or in permanent flux. I wanted to think out loud about why I can''t get them out of my head, about how they work and what they mean about language, that amber in which timelessness is visible when you squint. I finished fussing over the mesh some time in 2018. The world continued to spin. I had written about the weird life some rap lyrics come to lead when commodified beyond context, and about Jay-Z''s wanton borrowings from other people''s raps, and then Jay sued an Australian company called The Little Homie over a book called A B to Jay-Z, which contained the line If you''re having alphabet problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but my ABCs ain''t one. (The Little Homie pointed out, craftily, that Jay-Z had appropriated those words from Ice-T. You probably know better than I how the case ended.) I had written about the worrisome trend of criminal courts in America admitting rap lyrics as evidence, and then I learned that rappers in England were getting court orders amounting to five-year censorship sentences. At some point Donald Trump pulled some strings to get A$AP Rocky out of jail in Sweden; later his reelection campaign scored endorsements from Ice Cube and Kodak Black and Lil Wayne, who praised his criminal reform efforts. At some point Kanye, who appears here in a song glorifying the Grammy Awards, tweeted a video of himself pissing on one. At some point opp was an answer in a Times crossword. I could go on listing these screw-turns of complexity, these slippages of reality from where I left it, but my point is that eventually the list will just be this book itself. So it goes. I''ve expanded or nuanced or corrected some things, but even now what follows feels like a time capsule from a time remembered only distantly. At the end of this book I wonder about the notion that we speak a common language in America, about whether we can really take it on faith that we do if "black lives matter" is a controversial sentence and Eric Garner can say I can''t breathe plainly, repeatedly, and still be choked to death by police. And then this year George Floyd was murdered in the same way, in spite of saying the same words. A grim slippage, a terrible kind of rhyme. By then, and ever since, rap had begun to seem like a smaller and smaller subplot in a story about the world. Has it always been irresponsible to conflate rap with the black experience in America? Is it frivolous to think it can help us learn to understand each other? Maybe, maybe not. But rap is always present, its language, its attitude, its technologies of storytelling and misdirection and economy, the way it dramatizes pleasure and sadness and anger and pain. It finds its way into everything. It''s history telling itself in real time, it''s a telescope and a megaphone. It''s a loop, at least for me, that makes the present that much richer, that much more intelligible. Floyd was a rapper too, for a time. He didn''t make a career of it, but he made some moves in one of the most magnetic and strange rap scenes of the twentieth century, and if his talents were modest he still fit in perfectly there, sounded buoyant and airy and free even over the glacial grind of a DJ Screw beatscape. The thing is he still sounds that way now, however many years hence. His loss is senseless and tragic, and neither this book nor I need to see the future to know it will still be true at the moment you''re reading this, no matter many new bad things have happened since. No matter how late it''s gotten. But what a joyous, generous, weightless way for his voice to stay alive. What a place to spend forever. dlb, December 2020 ********* WORD MACHINES Coke like a caterpillar, I make butter fly Cam''ron, in Clipse, "Popular Demand (Popeyes)" (2009) ** As promised, we''ll start small. Poetry, said Mallarm

Description for Sales People

Much has been asserted about hip-hop's lyrical inventiveness, but there have been very few, if any, dives as deep into the way rap lyrics function. The book is as up to the moment as possible and embraces a wide range of styles and periods of rap, rather than limiting itself to one type of hip hop. This book is a love letter to rap and hip hop, similar to the sentiments of music writers like Hanif Abdurraqib in his Notes to a Tribe Called Quest as well as Nick Hornby's music column in The Believer. Levin Becker is equally likely to discuss the origins as the most contemporary chart-toppers. Artists discussed include: Sugarhill Gang, UGK, Young M.A, Rakim, Rick Ross, Rae Sremmurd, Jay-Z, Drake, and Snoop Dog, among others. The author wrestles with the very possibility of adequately representing and/or explaining a given set of hip hop lyrics. What's Good will appeal to readers of Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Rakim's Sweat the Technique(2019), Vikki Tobak's Contact High (2018), and Matthew Zapruder's Why Poetry (2018) *Daniel Levin Becker was an early contributor to the groundbreaking lyrics site Rap Genius (now known as Genius). The author has an excellent repuation amongst his literary peers having long served in editorial roles at McSweeney's and The Believer Magazine. Levin Becker is also a member of OULIPO, one of the most language-focused avant-garde movements of the last century. *More info on Rap Genius: In case you're unfamiliar, it is a pretty significant website for lyrics. It started as "Rap Genius," by a bunch guys from Yale who were into hip-hop and fascinated with the often difficult to parse lyrics. Now it's simply known as Genius, as it covers all genres. Genius is basically the lyrics site of the internet for all genres, though it started with hip-hop.

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