When we watched that video on Spoken Word Poetry it reminded me a lot of Slam Poetry and how it has a Hip Hop kind of vibe to it. Some of the hip hop artists that have been involved in the Slam Poetry scene are Kanye West, Mos Def, Common, who came to Kutztown last year and I got to meet, and Talib Kweli are just to name a few. Here is an example of what I mean by Slam Poetry.
That verse that Kanye does comes from one of his songs called Bittersweet Poetry. Whether people want to admit it or not, Hip Hop can be very intellectual. When people hear the kind of stuff that does get played on the radio they always write hip hop off. Not that I don't agree with them becasue the things that do get played on the radio I feel can really ruin some people and the way they think, but not everything that there is in hip hop is like that. Kanye shows here that he can be intellectual, but as we know Kanye can be very stupid with the stuff that he does too.
There is also another connection I want to make with Spoke Word and Hip Hop. This is more based off of Indie Hip Hop also. There is a woman in the group called Doomtree named Dessa who actually was a Spoken Word Poet before she got into the Hip Hop scene. She uses that to her advantage and has some of the best lyrics that I've ever listened to. She gets deep with her things and really describes things well. As far as I know Doomtree is still around but they haven't released anything for about a year now. Some of the other artists have gone and done solo projects which is probably why but they all have a very Intellectual side to what they write and rap about. To finish off this post I'll give an example of Doomtree and Dessa.
Here is the Doomtree song called Kid Gloves:
and here is the Dessa song called :
