Why Is Rap So Annoying?

The BBQ Pit
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First and foremost, let me begin with the fact that I am an artist and refuse to permit the censure of any form of music or art. (We’ll go into Government funding for crucifixes submerged in jars of urine later.) Before any of the inevitable objections are raised, allow me to say that I have been to a few rap concerts.

I have seen Digital Underground, Humpty Dumpty, Queen Latifah, Yellow Man and my own personal favorite, Eek A Mouse (a truly creative genius). I have also jammed with a rapper. I play a dozen different instruments and I write my own lyrics in addition to composing my own music. My music ranges from Classical and Baroque to Hard Rock and Indian Ragas. There is just something about rap that really galls the shit out of me. Maybe it was designed to, I don’t know.

I maintain that rap “music” is for people incapable of nonlinear thought. The overly emphasized monotone / monologue aspect of rap is like listening to a skipping record album (Boy howdy, that dates me now, doesn’t it?). Especially ironic is the fact that I find the ability of an artist to “scratch” quite fascinating. That old LP’s should play such an important role in rap is almost scary in it’s homage to all previous music.

Back to what I dislike about rap. An “artform” that so routinely includes misogynistic content, advocacy of violence and (I know that this is debatable) the gratuitous use of foul language falls short on redeeming qualities. I have listened to rap that contains positivistic content spoken in polysyllables and it still didn’t do anything for me. I’m just tired of having to listen to someone’s music selection solely because they have chosen to install a large scale public address system in their car. I have had the pleasure to see a person’s car slowly vibrate itself apart because of their (extra annoying) sub-woofer output.

One obscure example of this problem involves a strange comparison between Christian fundamentalist airplay and rap. Notice the almost complete lack of instrumental music in either format? What is the problem with some “pure” music being played? Is there some sort of difficulty in having performance time devoted strictly to instrumental passages? (What is very odd is the near complete absence of “scratched” vocal content in rap.) The strident nature of the content in both Christian and rap music really nauseates me. It betrays some sort of insecurity in their own belief. Be it musical or religious.

I welcome the comments of rappers that are not violent. Please submit your favorite lyrics to this venue. If what you have to say strikes our audience, you will receive feedback. To those who find rap offensive, feel free to join this tirade in a well balanced fashion.

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Please do NOT submit the whole of copyrighted material. For instance, it’s all right to quote a couple of lines from a song, but not the whole song, unless you happen to hold copyright to that song.

Lynn
Administrator
For the Straight Dope

3

Rap is like any other forms of music. Some rap artists show creativity, some do not. Some rap is good, most of it is not. You can easily say the same thing about country, metal, or alternative-gothic-industrial-death-emo-core even.

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Four months, four weeks, two days, 46 minutes and 9 seconds.
6081 cigarettes not smoked, saving $760.16.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 2 hours, 45 minutes.

*“I’m a big Genesis fan.”-David B. (Amen, brother!)

4

I’ve noticed a huge depression in quality rap since No Limit, Cash Money, and the like all ‘broke out.’ It now seems that anyone who can speak relatively quickly and can say “yeaaah, nigguh” every few lines is a certified, bon-a-fied rapper. Don’t get me wrong, I love rap, GOOD rap, that is. Puffy/B.I.G/Mase were alright, Bone kicks ass (until their latest, that is), NWA rocks, there’s alot of good rappers out there, but every since fucking Master P, everyone’s cousin is putting out a CD. And you can always tells the ones that suck, too. They have the curved gold lettering for the ‘artist’s’ name, with a flare effect, and the album title is always done in diamond-studded gold lettering at the bottom. The ‘artist’ is always sitting on a throne or leaning against a car, with his fist thrust towards the fish-eye camera lens, showing off a huge watch, or brass knuckle, or gold and diamond ring. Sometimes, it’s a closeup of the ‘artist’ in black sunglasses, grinning, with gold plated teeth spelling out his name. On the back, the label is prominently displayed in a neck chain symbol with gold and diamonds, and to the right is the list of tracks, with half the tracks *'d out because of curse words in the title.

That, sir, is the mark of a crappy rap CD.

–Tim

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Rap: (noun): smart, sharp impact of brief duration and moderated force. (Rap, rap, rapping on my door.)

Rap: (noun) Discussion. Short for rapport. Circa 1960s.

Reason for being so disliked by certain percentages of the general population:

  1. Basic subject matter mostly dealing with one or any combination of the following:
    A. Being put down by ‘da man’
    B. Extolling abject poverty
    C. Extolling racism
    D. Aggrandizing gang membership
    E. Glorifying violence
    F. Glorifying killing
    G. Lauding the abuse of women (bitches)
    H. Embracing drug abuse and sales
    I. Eulogizing prison life
    J. Promoting poverty ravaged lifestyles
    K. Promoting antisocial behavior
    L. Simple, annoying, repetition ‘poetry’ verse
    M. Unimaginative, basic ‘jungle’ beat.
    N. Insistence, in most cases, of ‘singing’ in a ‘homey’/ghetto form of slang and word distortion.
    O. Insistence on dressing and acting ghetto ‘tough.’

    In short: being a general annoyance essentially created to expound on racism and hatred ranging from self to racial despisal.

    Hopefully, as someone once whispered to some conqueror sometime in the past, ‘this too, shall pass.’

    And I used to think that real country and western music of the old type was bad! It was better than this rap crap.

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Crap! I forgot to add:

Rap: A form of music. Originating in American ghettos consisting of a basic, simple, heavy bass beat, loose poetry of basic rhyme and primitive style music mix.

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I enjoy the simple beats and lyrics of rap music. The music is easy to remember (which makes it stick in your brain), has lots of energy, is typical aggressive (which allows me to work out some of that inner aggression which I have been ‘saving’(not repressing), in a positive way) and causes my walls to thump!

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Cuz you can’t booty dance to Beethoven’s 5th symphony

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The OP is

As the kids who heard Frank Sinatra in his first year must have told their parents…Oh, Dad! Puulleeze!

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There was a time when rap was used as a unifying positive force in music. It was to provide an eloquent way for youngsters to get out of the ghetto, by becoming positive rap stars such as LL cool J and Wil Smith. It was also used as a call for protest, with such stars as Public Enemy leading that charge. Then the suburban rappers came in, with their exaggerated stories of drug dealing, organized crime and street violence. The record companies decided to squeeze out most of everything positive in rap, in favor of the gangsta rap. It reached its nadir with the assasinations of Biggie Smalls and Tupac, coupled with the advent of mediocre ‘stars’ such as Master P, who was so bad in promoting hip-hop for Time Warner’s WCW Wrestling that it got those fans to listen to country again. A group of wrestlers who were to play the pro-country part came up with a minor country hit ‘Rap is Crap’.

Oh by the way there are instumental masterpieces in hip-hop. Most famous one is ‘Terminator X Speaks With his Hands’, done by the DJ of Public Enemy.

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Satan has a point, in that most rap sucks, but some is really good. Granted, it’s totally subjective, but I think that some rap displays genuine talent.

Some of these guys can just, well, for lack of a better term, flow.
L.L. Cool J can bust rhymes like nobody’s business, and so can Wil Smith. Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre are really good, and Tupac was definitely good.
There are some people who can’t really rap that well, but they have a voice that sounds cool, like BIG, Fred Durst, and ICP.

In any case, it’s varying degrees of entertainment. Many of theses artists don’t have a poignant message, but so what? Sometimes it’s nice to be pandered to.

The annoying aspect of this type of music that I can agree with many people on is the idea that everyone likes rap. Why people who enjoy listening to rap feel the need to broadcast their choice of music to a 10 mile radius I have no idea.

There was a thread awhile back in which we talked about this very thing. Everyone except GaWd said that they hated it when they had to listen to some assholes stereo from across three lanes of traffic.

The bottom line is that I don’t think rap in and of itself is annoying, it’s that it has lately been shoved down our throats. I garuantee that if everyone started blaring Mozart out of too-loud car stereos all the time it would get old too.

Too much of anything eventually sucks.

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As to the OP, I think I better question might be, why is country music so whiny and irritating?

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It’s really simple… there’s “Rap”, which is entertaining, and then there’s “Gangsta Rap”, which deals almost exclusively with fucking your bitch and busting in a cap in a cops’ ass (read: it sucks).

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What is often ignored in rap are the female artists.

Salt-n-Pepa and Queen Latifah are amazing rap artists
who put forth complex and intelligent messages of
empowerment in their work. Well past the simplistic
messages in Push It, Salt-n-Pepa released the song Expression that extolled the virtues of tolerance.
In her hit Ladies First, Queen Latifah had a strong feminist message. Not all rap is misogynstic crap. But a lot of the stuff released lately is.

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Speaking only for myself, I’ve ALWAYS hated when lyrics were spoken rather than sung - Mike Douglas doing “The Men in my Little Girl’s Life” was the first one that came to mind, but I know there are more - I just blocked them all out. I see rap as a variation on that theme. Of course, the booming bass and the contrived rhymes don’t appeal to me either.
Dare I confess that I listen to the local muzak-type station…? Well, it’s just something in the background at work - I can’t think if I’m actually listening to the radio.

Who am I kidding - I just think rap sucks!

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It’s repetitive, it’s unsubtle, it’s a threat to society…

It’s rock in the late '50’s and early '60’s. Oh, wait, this is supposed to be about rap.

Don’t listen much myself, mainly because I don’t like music with corny lyrics, and even most the better rappers have such a limited vocabulary and range of subject matter that any one of their pieces tells all one needs to know about them. One thing rap doesn’t seem to share with musical trends of the past, however, is the glorification of extreme violence as a valid response to any display of ‘disrespect’. That’s callow youth talking, and I find it boring and offensive.

Undeniably, some rappers have considerable talent and a flair for the adventurous, but just as back in the '60’s, where for every band like the Beatles there were ten like Herman’s Hermits, there’s a lot of dreck to wade through. Plus, the images of violence and misogyny that attend much of the music completely negate, for me, the work of otherwise highly talented individuals (hands up, Eminem!)

Like a lot of popular music, rap works best for me when the artist is clearly trying to do something different with the form, or when hip-hop elements are successfully incorporated into other forms (Beck and Massive Attack come to mind).

Hey, thanks for the opportunity to spill on this subject.

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The glorification of violence is what mainly gets to me. Tupac t-shirts even became an unofficial uniform for the rebels in Sierra Leone :eek:

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Generalizations are so often wrong.

Now then, I shan’t deny that a lot of gangsta rap is shock for shock’s sake (not unlike Marilyn Manson, IMO, but I digress).

However, the origins of the movement showed a world that did not want to see the problems of the inner cities. If you were not quick to judge a whole genre, you would know that many of the things which CNN finally saw in LA race relations - police brutality, angry young black people ready to boil over because of it - was spelled out several YEARS in advance of the actual carnage.

They rapped about fucking your bitch because of bravado, but they wanted to bust a cap in a cops’ ass because of what the cop did.

Now, I am not gonna get into the whole LA Riots debate here in terms of what motivated a lot of the people to go ape-shit.

All I’m saying is that NWA and others saw what was happening in their community YEARS before you and I did, and maybe if we weren’t so quick to write them off as you did, we might have been able to do something about it before it escalated.

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

*I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, four weeks, two days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 37 seconds.
6101 cigarettes not smoked, saving $762.65.
Extra life with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 4 hours, 25 minutes.

*“I’m a big Genesis fan.”-David B. (Amen, brother!) **
[/QUOTE]

19

That’s easy. Generally, it is hard-core, gangster rap that is pounding from the $3,000 stereo system in the $2,000 Honda Civic. The rappers in those songs are “bad-asses”, hence, since said person is blaring this song he is a “bad-ass”. Watch out and clear a path for him, and watch his bitches, I mean women, flock to him because he is such a “bad-ass”… :rolleyes:

20

zenster, you are a musician and rap is not for musicians. there is definitely a technical aspect to rap, but it sure ain’t instrumental. i’ve played guitar in several bands over the years and have always sought accomplished, experienced musicians and vocalists with good range and an understanding of harmony. i can’t imagine that rappers look for people like that when putting together an album. rap seems less about actual music and more about style. instead of interesting chord progressions and melodies, it’s about cutting edge pants and attitudes. rap is to music what performance art is to art. sure, anyone can make a sound and call it music, but i’d have to hear a rapper sing a melody or harmonize on key before i’d call him a singer. or a scratcher play a song on an instrument before i’d call him a musician.