Adam Serwer on Hip-hop

"The new anthology Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai, is a love letter to Illmatic. … Born voyages into some cringe-worthy moments when writers try to seamlessly code-switch between contemporary black vernacular and academic-speak, a feat only Dyson has perfected. … The premature declaration of hip-hop's demise in Born's introduction casts a shadow over the entire book. The only problem with this view, which often happens to coincide exactly with the point at which a given rap critic creeps toward middle age, is that it's perennial. (Even Nas himself has pronounced hip-hop dead.) As rapper Common reminds us in the book's foreword, his own nostalgic eulogy for hip-hop's artistic integrity, 'I Used to Love H.E.R.,' was released the same year Illmatic ushered in hip-hop's East Coast Renaissance. And the hits of 1994 kept on coming. The Notorious B.I.G.'s hectic and haunting album Ready to Die changed rap forever and Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik foreshadowed Outkast's critical and commercial success" ("Literature from the Underground," The American Prospect, 2/5/10).