Covach's Musical Worlding

As I read through Covach's article, the one term that stood out to me was the idea of "musical worlding." Although Covach focuses on Rock, since I am focusing my research on mainstream Hip-Hop/Rap I thought of "musical worlding" in relation to the genre. Before I actually relate his information to my genre, I would like to emphasize that I am focusing on mainstream rap because for me it has been the easiest to get to. I know many people would argue that it does not represent the rap artist's true ability but, in all honesty, I have little desire to search and search for unknown songs when I have a multitude of ones readily available. With that said: When one listens to the lyrics in rap, one quickly realizes the amount of "referential" material that the artist uses. Specifically in lyrics (although many times in beats), the rap artist builds upon their ideas by alluding to previously released songs by other artists or themselves. One of the prime examples is Trina's "Pull Over" that came out a few years ago. In her song, she uses the line "Sisqo make that song when he see me in a thong . . .". Her reference is to Sisqo's Thong song that had came out before her song. Because of his song's popularity, Trina's lyrics develop in a "world" for the listener. One hears the line then immediately (or in moments) realizes her reference. The allusion adds an almost comical tone to her song while emphasizing a specific idea. Another song that creates this "world" is "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent. In the song, he states "I got the magic stick, I'll be your love doctor". His allusion is a self-referential one. A song that was released from the same album was called magic stick that implied a very sexual connotation. Thus, when he uses this phrase in his later released song, he builds a world for his music. It adds both to his identity as an artist (demonstrating that he knows he had a popular hit with magic stick) while adding a multiple layer to his lyrics (emphasizing his sexual prowess without saying more than a phrase).


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