Professor Roy Gottfried, a Joyce expert, once told our Joyce seminar that an entire paper could be written on the symbolism of teeth in Ulysses. If I added a mention of gold teeth in "Afro Connections At A Hi 5 (In The Eyes Of A Hoodlum)," I might be able to write a three-page paper on the symbolism of teeth in the work of De La Soul.

Though they don't match the encyclopedic nature of Ulysses, De La Soul's lyrics are so packed with connections, faced with writing a hypertext project, I imagined myself weaving a web that would elucidate every connection I had found in their work. I imagined that unpacking these connections would give academic validity to De La Soul's lyrics, giving them a chance at canonization when they aren't even lucky enough to be considered as marginalized texts.