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* * 1/2 “Rap: The Lyrics,” edited...

By JONATHAN GOLD
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* * 1/2 “Rap: The Lyrics,” edited by Lawrence A. Stanley, Penguin Books ($15). Can rappers’ rhymes work on the printed page? On the evidence of this comprehensive collection of transcribed rap lyrics, probably not--as they were probably never meant to. This is a good collection, completely uncensored, set out in reasonable-looking verse and remarkably free of the blatant mistakes that usually mark transcriptions of rap lyrics. Still, the selection can read more like the work of an obscenity law attorney (which it is) than the product of a real rap fan: Most of the major artists are here, but the song choices often seem arbitrary.

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Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold was the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2007 and was a finalist again in 2011. A Los Angeles native, he began writing the Counter Intelligence column for the L.A. Weekly in 1986, wrote about death metal and gangsta rap for Rolling Stone and Spin among other places, and was delighted that he managed to forge a career out of the professional eating of tacos. Gold died July 21, 2018.

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