Werner goes in. Link
Prelude: Slate just posted their third article, now, on The Anthology of Rap – more shadiness uncovered. Some people in the comments of these discussions point out how nerdy the discussion is, but I think that’s because they’re missing the point. It’s not about how many errors nitpicky bloggers can find in The Anthology’s transcriptions. Of course it has errors… God knows how many embarrassing errors I would make if I attempted to transcribe nearly 300 rap songs. No, it’s about the fact that these particular errors showed us that The Anthology stole all of its work from online writers without giving them credit. The book was printed by Yale University press, and its by two profs who are using that prestige to sell the book, essentially saying, “Yeah, all these lyrics are already available online, but you need this book to legitimize them as an anthology, because this book is from Yale and inherently superior.” But if Yale students presented this book as a school project*, with 95% of its content lifted from an uncredited source, they’d be up in front of the academic review board, explaining how their parents would freak if they were expelled.
