"Who Am I?" ?

I used the internet to research and find information about the writer of my song, Tupac Shakur. I think I preferred the internet over going to the library for so many reasons. One being, I am lazy and I did not want to walk all the way (fifteen minutes) to campus to have some librarian look him up and only find me two books. Another is that the Georgia State University library has disappointed me so much in the short time I have been here at the university. Unlike the Georgia State University library, I can sit back in my own chair at home and look up (rather comfortably) things about Tupac. I was able to find an array of things from just typing his name. My search on him brought up things such as online biographies, and online sites to buy books about Mr. Shakur. Also, there were many sites that offered the lyrics to all of his songs. In addition, there are still fan based sites for him.
What I also did was look at music videos of Tupac’s most popular songs. One of the videos that I looked at was one for the song that my essay is about. I decided to go onto YouTube, because I think that it was good for me to get a visual, to better understand the message of his song, even if I felt the video was not a good enough visual for the song.
That is what I truly like about the internet, because you are able to gather a large amount of information about anything, by just using your fingertips. On the other hand, there are some problems with going on to online biographies (such as Wikipedia), and fan based sites, because not everything you will find on these kinds of sources, wikipedia especially, will always be hard core fact.

Rhythm, Rhyme, and Rhetoric (an article about Hip Hop)

I believe that the article might be interesting to me because it does not talk about all rappers but it gets specific and discusses one gangster rap group known as Public Enemy. Unlike other articles that are always written about Hip Hop artists, “Rhythm, Rhyme, and Rhetoric in the Music of Public Enemy,” goes into discussing their music. Even before I read the first couple of pages of the article (from just looking at the title), I felt that I would enjoy it, because it would not be an article that I was used to seeing, engaging in an argument about Hip Hop. The article appears to address something that a lot of critics of Rap and Hip Hop take for granted. It feels like to me, that critics seem to only like to discuss the lifestyles and images that are attached to, and surround the Hip Hop genre. They do not appreciate the actual work that comes from Rap and Hip Hop.
Robert Walser, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote this article in 1995. His specialty is in jazz and other popular music of America. He was the chair of the musicology department and has won the Irving Lowens Award for Distinguished Scholarship in American Music two times. Not only has he written this article which discusses Hip Hop, he has also made publications on music types such as Heavy Metal and Jazz.

Dizzee Rascal (British Hip Hop Artist)

I decided to do some research on artist Dizzee Rascal because not only does he look like the average rapper ( a stereotype, yes I know), but when I looked up his story it was so similar to that of Rap and Hip Hop artists here in the United States. The image that is portrayed by most Hip Hop artists especially the men is one that reflects lives of poverty, stints in crime and at times involvement in violence. These same characteristics can be applied to the life of Dizzee Rascal, and I for one believe that it is the life someone has once lived contributes greatly to their own involvement in Hip Hop culture.
Despite his younger days, his music has gained him success in the United Kingdom. His music like many rappers seems to be a product of where he grew up and his background.
What does contribute to Dizzee’s own personal style of Hip Hop is the other music styles that he uses in his music. These styles are ragga (which comes from reggae and or dancehall), and grime (which comes from urban music from London). According to Dizzee though, he does take some from the American Hip Hop scene, but tries to maintain the British identity of his work.
Rascal is known in the United Kingdom to have music that is humorously entertaining. At the same time, he has done a lot of work that has included social commentary.

The Benefits of Peer Review

Today in English class we had peer review I normally hate peer review and feel like it is a waste of time but I actually liked it today. What I liked about the peer review that we had in class today was that before we discussed each other’s papers we had to write down things about other papers. For example, three things that worked for the paper and three things that did not (even though I could not find three things). The peer review helped me, because both people that I worked in a group with presented ideas that I should think about for my final draft that I would definitely take into account for my final draft. For example, they said I should think about what the opposing side would have to say about my argument and try to argue against that. I did not think about that when I was writing my two page rough draft, so now that I will hopefully make that apart of my final draft; I would reach three to four pages. :)