There have been studies that have shown that infants a mere few months old, do “discriminate” between sets of facial features, and exhibit preference towards familiarity. One particularly stupid Yahoo news clickbait called it “baby racists”, or somesuch inanity…
^^^ Highly relevant point. There are huge numbers of Africans & diaspora the whole world over, who actively hate rap for the very reasons that get “middle-aged white guys” like the posters above, mocked and made fun of, for the very same points. There are plenty of black people who want nothing to do with the hate, nihilism and flat-out stupidity of most rap, or who dislike it on musical grounds. No instruments= no music, to many.
Rap is the only genre that drones on endlessly about “bitches”, “niggas”, “faggots”, “hos”, about killing police, and the like; with the ridiculously low exceptions of a few hardcore punk bands who preach fascism and the like. Other than that, the overwhelmingly worst offenders are rap and reggaeton.
Can you name for me one single jazz musician of any race who ever advocated beating gays to death, or pimping women? :rolleyes:
Seriously, your idea that rap is uniquely bad is a really really stupid and ignorant idea. Referencing jazz, which is much more often purely instrumental, is a stupid thing to do when comparing it to a necessarily oral tradition like hip hop. Why not ask if I can find any blues songs about necrophilia or mass murder?
Speaking of “really really(sic) stupid and ignorant ideas”, do you understand that jazz singers exist, and that entire subgenres of jazz are devoted to vocals and lyricism? :smack:
“Ignorant”, by the way, implies lack of familiarity with a theme. If I’ve listened to extensive amounts of rap and reggaeton, by definition, I am not particularly “ignorant” of its shortcomings.
Once again, another liberal duhmerican boy long on the self-righteous posturing and ad hominem attacking, and short on substance. Next? :rolleyes:
Full disclosure: I work as a full-time professional musician. You might want to keep that in mind before your next attempt to school me on the topic of Western popular music.
Well you’re wrong about rap music. Sure, lots of it is crap, and lots of it is violent, misogynistic, and homophobic. But lots of it is not. You don’t have to like it, but dismissing all of it because some of it is crap is ignorant.
Being a full-time professional musician doesn’t mean much. I mean, sure, I’ll be glad to come to you if I want to know how to best modulate my beautiful minor section into a nice swingy mixolydian, but your opinions on whether a particular musical genre is any good are just as good as the rest of us.
The problem is entirely people who think “rap is so violent and misogynistic, as compared to other music!”, and endlessly praise white rappers for “giving a good message” while ignoring black rappers who have done the same, and also ignoring how violent and misogynistic most music is. I mean, one of the hottest pop songs right now is basically a ballad to rape. But somehow that gets a free pass.
Once again, “ignorant” means unfamiliar with a subject. Shall I copy-and-paste the Oxford definition of the term to the thread, in order to help to clarify it for you?
I have listened to, and analyzed at length, more rap and reggaeton than most US-dwellers even realize exists, and found antisocial content in the vast majority of the lyrics. The exceptions out there were far less than half of what I sampled. The signal-to-noise ratio was overwhelmingly bad; meanwhile, the near-total lack of melody, pitch variation and mechanical instrumentation sure don’t help its case.
Are you that obtuse; or are you simply determined to see only what fits your ideological beliefs about, as usual, the great US “race” obsession?
I personally would argue that you are judging it by an incompstible set of standards. IOW, you are judging it by the values you consider good in music, but not those that rap/hip hop does. It’s like me complaining about Schoenberg’s music for being tuneless and aggressively avoiding the sense of a tonic.
ETA: And, no, not liking rap does not make you racist, of course. It makes you bit of an old fuddy duddy, though.
I answered “maybe”, but I kind of regret that now. My reasoning was that whether you were racist depended on your reasons for not liking rap… but that doesn’t mean that you’re racist for not liking rap, it means you don’t like rap because you’re racist. Completely different statements.
If you’re dismissing all rap music because much of it is crap, then that’s ignorant. I don’t know if it has anything to do with race – I just know that there’s lots of excellent rap music, that involves real artistry, real talent, and real skill, in addition to the large amount of crap, and dismissing it is foolish.
As someone mentioned earlier, mainstream (white) society has a history of denigrating the black music of the day. ‘Everything EXCEPT rap’ used to be ‘everything EXCEPT rock and roll’ used to be ‘everything EXCEPT jazz’ used to be ‘everything EXCEPT those noises in the fields’.
So, not liking rap certainly doesn’t mean you’re racist. It’s not for everybody. But singling out rap for your emphatic disdain and mockery is gonna raise eyebrows. History dictates as much.
Well, you haven’t responded to my earlier posts, so I am not sure you will here.
There are quite a few musicians here; I’m not sure how that matters.
You’ve listened to a lot of rap - yay. You’ve made it clear that you think 95%+ of it is crap. Cool; as the saying goes: 95% of everything is crap (and 95% of the remaining bit is mediocre).
So? Does that mean it is okay to write off the genre? You seem to be saying Yes - that’s the problem. Especially as a “pro musician” - I’d expect a musician to look past the noise and be open to the good stuff.
I think it’s more of a class issue than a “race” issue. I think rap does have a weird social purpose where it gives sheltered middle class folks a glimpse into the culture of other groups with a lot of burdens on them (which is never entirely a bad thing) and middle class kids like to use rap to learn about the facts of life, “the reality of the streets” etc. Country has some of that going on as well.
I’m not really sure why middle class people would want to continue listening to rap/country in their adult life, but to each their own…
Piss on that. We have a limited amount of time on this planet. I’m not going to waste a second of it trying to find rap music I like, or even tolerate. I’ve been forced to listen to enough of it to know I don’t like it. I can and will write it off as wasted time and effort. Ditto norteño music and Montovani’s 1000 Strings.
Racist? No. Fuddy-duddy? Probably. But I’ve never heard Thelonious Monk blasted out of a car at 120 Db either.
There’s a big difference between “it’s universally crap” and “I am open to the possibility of good rap, but can’t be bothered to seek it out.” There’s no homework requirement ;).
I am a black woman from the ATL. Based on my age, race, class, and background I should like nothing but R&B, hip hop, and (shudder) urban gospel, right? Probably should be able to twerk too.
Yet I wouldn’t be able to point out Jodeci or Charlie Wilson (or any other random R&B singer) in a crowd to save my life. I have a couple of Tupac songs that I like, and I can jam to some Outcast and old school gangsta rap with the best of 'em. I like one Kayne West song (oh yeah, I do like that “H to the Izza” song by Jay-Z"). But I don’t know who 99% of contemporary rap performers are. Nope, if I had to label my music preference with one genre, it would be classic rock. I like other genres, but classic rock is what dominates my mp3 list.
Am I being a poseur? Am I trying to get the reality of “the lily-white suburbs”? Or is it possible that a person can just like what they like just because that’s the kind of stuff they like?
It’s obvious but I’ll go ahead and give you the reason why people don’t abandon the music of their youth: people don’t stop liking something simply because get older. In fact, the music you’re exposed to in youth stays with you forever because this music carries with it nostalgia. Which is why a lot of Dopers insist that music stopped being good once they graduated from high school and refuse to update their tastes beyond whatever esoterica the critic on NPR tells them they should listen to.
