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(More customer reviews)Unfortunately, I bought this book before I read the article by Slate magazine (available to read online, the article is called "Fact-Check the Rhyme") which mentions that there are lots of mistakes in the transcriptions and goes through a number of big ones which jumped out at the writer. These mistakes range from getting names wrong, to not understanding the slang being used, to simply getting certain words wrong.
The mistakes listed there are the EXACT same mistakes in the online site - "Original Hip Hop Lyric Archive" which has been going for years and is riddled with mistakes as it relies on listeners to add lyrics.
Having exactly the same mistakes suggests that the transcriptions for the Anthology were pulled directly from that site, mistakes and all.
In the comments to the Slate article, one of the editors of the book admits there are loads of mistakes in the Anthology and suggests that later print runs of the book will be more accurate, after readers have sent in corrections and it has been updated. So I guess early buyers like me will be guinea pigs, owning a pretty expensive book full of errors lifted from the internet, while later readers will benefit when the "correct version" is finally available.
One of the reasons I ordered the official, Yale anthology is because I thought it would be scrupulously checked, otherwise I could have stuck to reading the lyrics on the internet at that archive. You might expect a very small number of minor mistakes, but not loads of glaringly obvious ones which change the meaning of the lyrics.
I did not expect it to just be a printed-out version of the erroneous online stuff.
Seeing as this anthology will most likely be used on courses, studying HipHop prose, then it's sad that in a lot of cases students will be studying mis-transcribed lyrics.
It's a slight to the rappers in many cases (albeit unintentionally) because they've used clever references or devices of language which have been rendered as just random gibberish.
This reflects badly on Yale, as they have an academic standard to adhere to. The anthology lists a long line of people on their rap "advisory board," though it seems none of them knew enough about HipHop or cared enough to check over the Anthology to correct the many obvious mistakes in the text.
It's best to wait until they bring out a thoroughly corrected version of this, as you don't want to be stuck with this version with all the mistakes from the internet in it.
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