Grammar girl here. Recently a listener named Harrison wrote in to ask me about

something I'd never heard about called hashtag rap. Here's an example from the

rapper Drake who's known for using this kind of rap style. One line from his

song over goes like this I could teach you how to speak my language comma Rosetta

Stone. He's not saying that Rosetta Stone is the name of the language he

speaks. If he were we'd classify Rosetta Stone as an a positive phrase. He's

also not addressing a listener named Rosetta Stone. If he were we'd classify

Rosetta Stone as a noun of direct address. What he's doing is throwing in the

name of the famous tablet then enabled archaeologists to decipher the ancient

Egyptian hieroglyphs. Or more likely he means the language learning software

company by the same name. It doesn't seem to have any particular connection to

the rest of the sentence other than that the idea of teaching a language reminded

him of it. So how did this get the name hashtag rap and has this kind of

sentence begun to creep into ordinary spoken English? Well an article on the

website policy mic.com gives a concise history of hashtag rap. The name was

coined by Kanye West in an interview in 2010 and he also claimed to have

invented the style. Other rappers took exception to this claim and the policy

mic article even provides an example of what they consider hashtag rap from

2004 from the rapper Killa Cam. Other artists who are known for using hashtag

rap include Nicki Minaj, Big Sean and Lyrichris. But even though he didn't

invent it Kanye West's name is the one that stuck. In the interview he said that

hashtag rap is quote what we call it when you take the like or as out of a

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