FW: Rap Lyrics (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Ben Zimmer]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Darla Wells <lethe9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The best place I have seen for transcriptions of rap lyrics is a website
> http://www.ohhla.com .

Agreed, but if you read up on the controversy, you'll see that many of
the transcription errors in The Anthology of Rap stem from an
over-reliance on OHHLA.


> 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>
>
> >
> > Interesting articles about the difficulty of transcribing Rap Lyrics in
> > the new _Anthology of Rap_.
> >
> > http://www.slate.com/id/2272926/
> >
> >
> > http://www.slate.com/id/2274223/
> >
> >
> > NPR's "All Things Considered" interviewed one of editors, Adam Bradley:
> >
> > http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131125923
> >
> >
> > 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-in-the-anthology-of-rap-matter

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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