A fundamental guide to understand the phenomenon of rap in all its complexity at the hands of one of the most influential and relevant authors of international literature of the late twentieth century. In 1989 David Foster Wallace moved to Boston to study the postgraduate course in aesthetic philosophy at Harvard. He moved into the apartment of his former roommate at the university, Mark Costello. Living together they discovered a common interest in the then nascent rap music, and DFW ventures to write a short essay in which it tries to shred the cultural DNA of this genre. Mark Costello writes small replicas that he then extends to full essays, intertwined with those of Wallace. The result will be Ilustres rappers, a kind of treaty that tries to find the meaning of rap from sociology, economics, philosophy or law. The book not only deals with music: from speaking about rap, the small digressions lead to entire pages about television comedies, the then called Reaganomics, postmodernism, the difference between art and entertainment, or the importance of using prepositions correct in cultural criticism.