Tweet Of The Week

Walt The B-Boy?

Please don’t tell me that “b-boys” have a connection to Whitman’s “Bowery B’hoy.” In his book, Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem, Robert M. Dowling suggests that Whitman “discovered in the B’hoy a refreshingly American articulation” (57). Furthermore he cites Whitman as being referred to by 19^th century reviewers as the “Bowery B’hoy of Literature.” What this all add up to for me, is Walt being the American Disc-Jockey poet. Whitman seems to have been fascinated by the theater and the idea of creating arts that were distinctly “American.”

Musically, I believe that the “b-boys” of the Hip-Hop generation play a similar role to Whitman as a poet. Both Whitman and b-boys employ free verse as strategy of expressing their respective thoughts. Whereas Whitman writes, the b-boy utilizes dance as a medium of expression. 100 years after Whitman’s death, b-boys were reaching their zenith. Adidas tennis shoes, leather jackets and a mash-up with rock and roll launched Run DMC into stardom and brought prominence to innovative b-boys who articulated the culture via dance. A recent review of The Roots’ album Undone by Melophobe of www.melophobe.com asserts that MC Black Thought, of The Roots, is “the Walt Whitman of contemporary Hip-Hop” as he expands his barbaric yelp to supreme effect” in the last verse from the song One Time MC Black Thought states: “Then I went missing looking for the sublime/ A nigga stayed low left the ladder unclimbed/Time after time, verse blank, the line unrhymed” capturing what I believe is the essence of Whitman’s Song of Myself; specifically, the search for the sublime?