

From Damocles to Socrates: The Classics In/of Hip-Hop - tintinnabula
https://medium.com/eidolon/from-damocles-to-socrates-fbda6e685c26

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losvedir
Hmm... very interesting. Either hip hop is much, much more sophisticated than
I've been giving it credit for, or a Classics professor is inappropriately
shoehorning his interpretations onto the lyrics. My initial impulse would be
to day "mephistopheles" and "damocles" are used because they sound cool and
rhyme.

I don't know hip hop well enough to say which is the case, but it's certainly
a thought-provoking article.

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vinceguidry
Well, you have to know the words before you can put them in a rhyme. In the
poor black neighborhoods where hip-hop emerged, that's no mean trick. The only
reason I ever heard the word "Mephistopheles" growing up was because of Magic:
The Gathering. I don't think I knew who or what "Damocles" was until well into
adulthood. And you have to know the stories before you can invoke their
meanings. Kanye is almost certainly far better read than people give him
credit for.

A good intro to hip-hop history is _Can 't Stop Won't Stop_ by Jeff Chang

[http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-
Generation/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-
Generation/dp/0312425791)

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gumby
Boy this resonates with me (though I'm 10-20 years older than the author).
East coast hip hop in the 80s & 90s was more creative and wry than what you
hear today. But then it got sucked into the music machine and excreted as
either pap or a violent product.

BTW if you speak the language, a surprising number of French rappers still
reference classical and modern philosophers.

