When we talk about rap music’s evolution and its influence on popular culture, we engage in endless debates over contrasting styles of rhyme, cadence, wordplay and symbolism. Often overshadowed by the beat and all the hype surrounding the music, are the lyrics at the heart of hip-hop’s pulse. Drop the beat and the baseline and the lyrics jump off the page with poetic stories of struggle and conquest that define the emcee. Looking at rap lyrics as poetry—and looking at the history of those lyrics as a chapter in the history of poetry—allows us to walk down a whole new path for appreciation of the rap genre. There is now a book that may help shine light on that path.

The Anthology of Rap, edited by English professors Adam Bradley and Andrew Dubois, attempts to pay tribute to hip-hop’s poetic form. It chronicles the entire poetic history of rap, rhythm and rhyme, presenting hundreds of transcribed verses from some of the most influential emcee’s to ever grace the microphone.

The book begins with a forward by American literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr., in which he traces rap’s poetic origins back to the early 20th century tradition of “signifying,” which can be viewed as a precursor to contemporary battle rap. The 867-page anthology breaks down rap’s poetic evolution into four time periods: “Old School,” “Golden Age,” “Mainstream,” and “New Millennium.” Lyrics within each respective category are organized according to artist. Absorbing the lyrics from these generations in written form rather delivered over beats reveals the evolution of the emcee’s power of expression in its rawest form.

Representing nearly 10 years of collaborative effort, The Anthology of Rap includes powerful lyrics from over 300 noteworthy songs by 100 different artists, from AfrikaBambaataa to Outkast. To have the work of these artists acknowledged as poetry rather than just entertainment is a powerful step in the broader recognition of hip-hop as more than just a niche entertainment medium. The anthology’s division into four distinct periods of rap history lays out the evolution of varied rhyme styles, lyrical approaches and modes of metaphoric expression for the reader to study.

At the beginning of each artist’s section, Bradley and Dubois provide a brief summary of each artist’s most notable accomplishments and contributions. They address the content, rhyme style and poetic structure of specific songs or verses that have found their place in rap’s poetic evolution.

Through this book, we see how the creative competition that has always been engrained in hip-hop culture has led to an ongoing musical renaissance that continues to define what it means to be an emcee. Learn about the lyrics that defined a movement and the artists who transformed tales of struggle, conquest and oppression and turned it into poetic expression. Discover who were some of the first emcee’s to implore multi-syllabic rhyming tactics, who pioneered the use of similes and metaphors in rhyme schemes, who mastered the art of storytelling and who broke barriers to take pattern and form to new lengths.

This book allows readers to view the lyrics that we have come to know and love through an entirely different lens. It provides nearly 900-pages of irrefutable evidence that rappers are more than just entertainers, but also educators, revolutionaries, outspoken social critics, powerful political activists, and above all, master poets.

For hip-hop aficionados, historians and poetry-lovers alike, The Anthology of Rap helps open a new chapter on the perception of rap music as an influential art form. -Noah Steinberg-Di Stefano