Review of Edwards' How to Rap (2009)

Edwards, Paul. How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009.

May 5, 2025

How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC is an instructional guide on rap and the art of the hip hop emcee, covering key aspects of composition, structure, rhyming, rhythm, and approaches to practice and performance. Author Paul Edwards divides the book into four parts: content, flow, writing, and delivery. The book introduces the reader to many key concepts and terms, ranging in approach from the exceptionally precise and well-contextualized (e.g., freestyle and its evolution in meaning) to the nearly tautological (e.g., the punch-in).

Particularly noteworthy is the tremendous amount of work and care that went into gathering direct quotations from a range of MCs, whose perspectives and styles vary. This is one of the most valuable contributions that Edwards makes to the literature on hip hop with How to Rap, turning what could have just been a straightforward how-to guide into a text with rich cultural and historical content for the many perspectives and artists surveyed. Nonetheless, much more work could and ought to have been done to include female MCs and to highlight their unique considerations as artists within a male-dominated field as well as their many contributions to the advancement of rap artistry. The overwhelmingly lopsided emphasis on male rappers and producers absents women's and girls' contributions to hip hop lyricism and vocal artistry almost entirely. With over one hundred artists interviewed for the book, The Lady of Rage stands alone as the sole female emcee interviewee and whose work is analyzed with any depth. The book sidesteps explaining this choice in representation or how gender plays into rap artistry. Indeed, the only comment on gender and its relationship to how MCs engage with their craft comes in the the final chapter after more than three-hundred pages of writing where The Lady of Rage is quoted, "It's gonna be a hard field to break into, especially a female, it's gonna be hard for her. So you definitely gonna have to come with it, and there's gonna be some hard knocks, so prepare to fight for it if that's what you want" (p. 312). Two pages later, the book concludes.

While Edwards' guide is not specifically a historical account of MCing, it does claim to speak to the views and techniques of "[m]ost MCs" (p. 4), "[t]he majority of MCs" (p. 5), and "[m]any of the most admired artists" (p. 7). Edwards emphasizes the importance of both historical knowledge and exposure to a diverse range of artists as a key part of developing as an MC:

How to Rap also provides valuable insight into the history of MCing, exposing you to many of the pivotal figures in hip-hop, their music, and their influences, and to the notable styles within the genre. And knowing this history helps you become a great MC by building on the decades of work and innovation of other MCs. (p. x)

It is only the author's interview of The Lady of Rage that sustains female MCs presence in the text in any substantive form.

The unique strength of How to Rap's extensive use of artist quotations ultimately contributes to one of its key weaknesses, which is the issue of gender misrepresentation. Male MCs make up an absolute majority of those interviewed for the book, at a staggering 103 out of the total 104 artists. These same MCs also almost exclusively reference the work of other male MCs, whose contributions to rap artistry they cite throughout, invoking among others, Melle Mel, Kool G Rap, KRS-One, Kool Keith, Rakim, LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Mos Def, Nas, Tech N9ne, The Notorious B.I.G., 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and André 3000 — and those are just some of the more frequently referenced rappers. By comparison, Roxanne Shanté and Missy Elliot receive only a passing mention in a single quotation from will.i.am (p. xi) in the book's introduction. For the many male MCs interviewed, female and femme MCs do not appear to number amongst their sources of inspiration. Completely missing from the constellation of rap luminaries mentioned in How to Rap are MC Sha-Rock, Queen Lisa Lee, Pebblee Poo, The Sequence (Cheryl the Pearl, Angie B, and Blondy), the Mercedes Ladies (whose MC members included Eve-a-Def, Sheri Sher, Tracy T, and Zena-Z), Salt-N-Pepa (Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella), J.J. Fad (MC J.B., Baby-D, Sassy C., and former members Lady Anna, O.G. Rocker, and Crazy J.), MC Lyte, Lin Que, The Real Roxanne, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Lisa M, Da Brat, Sister Souljah, Lady Luck, Yo-Yo, Left Eye, Eve, Lil' Kim, Foxy Brown, and Lauryn Hill, among many others.

The issue of female artists' near-total exclusion turns what might otherwise be the rather mundane issue of the book's index into a telling bit of evidence of the gender bias at play. The index contains no entry for Roxanne Shanté or Missy Elliot. Their absence, while presumably explained by the fact that they only appear in the will.i.am quote mentioned earlier (and, to be sure, there are many instances of blockquote mentions throughout the text that do not have index entries), is curious considering Kool G Rap and Eminem's mentions one page prior (p. x) are both entered in the index even though their mentions are also exclusively contained within quoted material. Furthermore, MF Doom's singular mention (p. 38), earns him a place in the index as does Timbo King (p. 56) and Rammellzee (p. 38) — so infrequency is not the issue.

To those who might protest that Edwards does not claim to provide comprehensive inclusion and who would point to the absence of others, it must be emphasized that the issue here is about imbalance — not completeness. This imbalance only further contributes to existing biases in media coverage and historical accounts of hip hop where women's exclusion is the norm, not the exception. As Rachel Raimist has argued, "[W]e need to reify that there are many agents of hip-hop, and it is the sum of all of our parts to make this a living, breathing and active culture and, for many of us, a movement."¹ With over one hundred artists interviewed, The Lady of Rage's presence constitutes less than one percent of total interviewees. To put this in perspective, male hip hop producers — notably, Dr. Dre, DJ Shadow, and The Alchemist — are better represented in a book about rap than are female MCs. Taking it a step further, white male hip hop artists — Eminem, Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow, The Alchemist, and MC Serch — outnumber them as well.

Simply put, it is unfair for the representation of women to rest on The Lady of Rage's shoulders alone for a text that seeks to speak to an entire art form. This is all the more the case given that some of the most referenced rappers in the text were at one time members of the same rap crew (like Sister Souljah with Chuck D and Flavor Flav in Public Enemy) or participated in rather well-known collaborations with women MCs on popular tracks (such as Lauryn Hill featuring on Nas' "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" or Spinderella on Big Daddy Kane's "Very Special"). Even to the extent that one may wish to lean toward giving a pass to the text's gender bias because of The Lady of Rage's participation, why should she and she alone be put in a position to speak on behalf of or at the very least stand in for a vast and diverse array of vitally important rappers, who undeniably have contributed to the artistry and evolution of rap in historically significant and deeply impactful ways?² The author should have provided context for these issues if for no other reason than that the women, girls, and femmes who might pick up his book looking to hone their artistry deserve an honest accounting for this editorial decision which robs them of a deeper understanding of the role models to whom they might look. But just as importantly, men, boys, and mascs and people of all gender identities should also have the benefit of female and femme role models, particularly if the goal is to hone one's craft by exposing oneself to a diversity of styles and techniques, as the book so rightly suggests at several points.

For decades, women MCs themselves have been raising the issue of the added challenges they face as artists in their field in both interviews and in their rhymes, few perhaps as famously as Queen Latifah, though she has hardly been alone. Given an industry that has stacked the odds against their success and a broader culture that devalues the voices of Black, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latin women, girls, and femmes, it is all the more impressive that they have succeeded against the barriers put in their way at creating space for themselves and for their artistry so that it can be shared with a broader public. This is why it is so crucial that younger rappers benefit from their wisdom, skill, and experience and why How to Rap, for all its rich detail and vital perspective, ultimately remains incomplete. While Edwards' book does much to enrich our understanding of the complexity of rap as an art form and performance practice, its inattention to its own gender bias leaves too much to the reader to have to surmise amidst its silences. Edwards has since released a follow up book, How to Rap 2: Advanced Flow and Delivery Techniques, which, one hopes, approaches the issue of gender representation more carefully than the first entry, but so long as one enters How to Rap with an understanding about its oversights, readers will still find much of value.