Wednesday, 26 January 2011

Rap fail again

Talking to some friends about my difficulty finding a way to start listening to more rap, we briefly discussed what makes music rap.  Today I was looking at the Southampton Psalter in St John's, a wonderful Irish Psalter from the early eleventh century.  It has prayers at the end of each quinquagene.  (A quinquagene is a set of 50 Psalms, each a third of the full Psalter.  I would bet money that few blogs use the word quinquagene as often as this one does.)  Here is the prayer after Psalm 50:
Deus altissime rex angelorum
deus laus omnium elimentorum
deus gloria et exultatio sanctorum
custodi animas seruorum tuorum
qui regnas in secula seculorum, Amen.
Here the one after Psalm 100:
Deus quem exercitus canet angelorum
quemque ecclesiae laudat sanctorum
quem spiritus ymminizat uniuersorum
Misserere obsecro omnium nostrorum tuorum
qui regnas in secula seculorum, Amen.
And after Psalm 150:
Te dominum de caelis laudamus
teque omnium regem regum rogamus
Tibi uni et trino in quem speramus
cum excelsis angelis imnum cantamus
per dominum nostrum, et rl [= et reliqua, i.e. 'and the rest']
In the Middle Ages they liked rhyming Latin, and it's a good language to do it in.  Hurray for Hiberno-Latin!

This also isn't rap, it's a Freemasons remix of a song by Alexis Jordan.  When she says "you'd better have some cake" what does she mean?  Presumably not actually cake?  Only there should be more cake in pop.  I tried googling "cake slang" and according to this page it probably means either money or nice buttocks.

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