Hip hop poetics

"Rappers create, observes music critic Kelefa Sanneh, 'an outsized hero that has more sex than you're really having, that does more violence than you're really doing, that sells more drugs than you've ever sold.'LL Cool J as lover... Pac as thug poet. Biggie as lovable gangsta. 'The persona overshadows the person and the person can be crushed by the persona,' Nelson George remarks." -Adam Bradley, from Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop