FW: Rap Lyrics (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Darla Wells]

The best place I have seen for transcriptions of rap lyrics is a website
http://www.ohhla.com . Fans, many of whom presumably speak the same local
slang, send in transcriptions and other fans can and do correct them.
Eventually, they end up with pretty decent versions. The collection is very
comprehensive. A person can take these and check them against the actual
performed songs. When trying to use them to make a corpus, then, the problem
becomes more of a "how do I standardize the spellings of I'ma, Ima, I'm a"
type stuff. This is an interesting topic, because it does make a person
somewhat crazy trying to make sure the lyrics are correct. On the other
hand, I have had students try to use the lyrics in papers they write for me
without any checking, and I have gotten great amusement from some of the
versions they've come up with.
Darla

2010/11/22 Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil>

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> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      FW: Rap Lyrics (UNCLASSIFIED)
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> Interesting articles about the difficulty of transcribing Rap Lyrics in
> the new _Anthology of Rap_.
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2272926/
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> http://www.slate.com/id/2274223/
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> NPR's "All Things Considered" interviewed one of editors, Adam Bradley:
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131125923
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>
> and then NPR's music blog followed up on the growing controversy about
> transcription errors:
>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/11/12/131269570/why-the-errors-i
> n-the-anthology-of-rap-matter<http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/11/12/131269570/why-the-errors-i%0An-the-anthology-of-rap-matter>
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