Genres are entirely about the consumer, but discussions about genre too often seem to get dumped back on the artist. If Macklemore & Ryan Lewis get labelled "Pop" instead of "Hip Hop," then they're just a DJ/rapper duo making pop music and there's a general sense that they've lost the credibility that's so central to hip hop culture. Instead, the Grammy's General Committee trumps the Rap Committee (which is composed of who, exactly?) and these dudes take home four Grammys. Close one. Every story I can dig up about this cloak-and-dagger Grammy drama, though, hinges on a single anonymous source, who supposedly said the Rap Committee's reluctance to include M & RL was due to "their success on mainstream radio and their appeal in the pop world.” So just because these two independents from Seattle made a couple songs that somehow "out-populared" the likes of Drake, Eminem, and Jay-Z (I'm not going near that whole Ken
Poetry is the mathematics of literature. Many students suffer from “poetry anxiety,” which operates on the same logic as the more commonly talked about “math anxiety.” This anxiety involves a hands-off, get-that-away-from-me style of learned helplessness: “I can’t do it,” “I don’t understand poetry,” or “I prefer subjects with rules and clear answers.” Although children start out with a playful, delightful experience of language as “primarily poetic,” they too often learn to drag their feet when it comes time for a poetry unit in school (Fleming and Stevens 160). And no wonder. Poetry, like math, often makes students feel inadequate, slow, and stupid, particularly when many of their peers seem to be able to effortlessly navigate the ambiguities of poetry. As Sheila Tobias argues, however, this perception is usually incorrect. She describes how a major source of learned helplessness with math is the “widespread myth…that mathematical ability is inborn, and that no amount of hard w