Jesus freakin christ. I shudder to think of what it says about my pants that I like at least some of all of the genres listed above, including many more. Maybe that’s why I am wearing a skirt!
I’ll almost anything once, but there’s a certain point when it’s reasonable to just accept that I have tastes and go with it. I’ve tried sushi a number of times, even from a world renowned sushi chef, and I disliked it every time. Sure, it was more palatable when it was done by that famous chef, but even then, I’d have much prefered nothing. Are you really saying you’d eat food that, even after trying it several times, even from a well respected chef, you still found unpalatable? Are you going to have a strong opinion about finding the taste and texture of a certain food repulsive, but still eat it anyway?
By all means, everyone absolutely should try everything, but there’s a difference between trying something and making a fair judgment about it, realizing that it’s your opinion on the matter and not a statement of fact, and flat out refusing to even try it and having an uninformed opinion on it.
I think I did a point job stating my point, because I wasn’t try to make a tu quoque argument. Rather, my point was that the association of rap with race is racist. Yes, rap and hip-hop artists are overwhelmingly black, but rap doesn’t belong to black people, it isn’t uniquely black, any moreso than country belongs to white people. One ought to be able to praise or condemn any style of music without it reflecting on the demographics of the artists who make it.
For instance, I’m a big metal fan, much like rap, as a style, it gets a lot flack for having violent themes, moral depravity, and all of that. And as a fan, I can say that it is a fair description of some of the style, but not a fair description of the genre as a whole by a long shot, and that someone who is making that criticism is just uninformed about the genre. At the same time, metal artists are overwhelmingly white, but anyone who construe a condemnation of that style as racist against whites is patently ridiculous. The genre doesn’t belong to any particular race, even if the people who make it are overwhelmingly from one race.
Now, certainly, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that someone condemns rap for being violent and is racist, but I don’t think the one begets the other, at least without making the association that rap=black. In fact, I think it’s quite likely that someone who condemns rap for being violent probably comdemns other forms of music for it’s “questionable” content. A lot of the same people I’ve seen say rap is too violent, say the same about metal and some of the shock rock acts, and they’ll say how popular artists like Madonna or Lady Gaga make young girls sexually promiscuous or whatever other nonsense. But those are just ignorant opinions.
Hell, look at profession sports, professional football athletes are overhwhelmingly black as well. I hear people condemn football as violent all the time, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that someone who says football is violent is racist. Why? Because the idea that football=black doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t come across as racist.
That all said, yes there certainly are people who condemn rap for racist reasons, but that’s why I reject the notion that rap inherently has anything to do with race. It’s the very idea that If we can break down that idea that rap=black, and just evaluate it as a genre in and of itself.
How many segments has Fox News done about the moral depravity of metal in the last decade?
It’s especially interesting, because black people are often the face of rap, but there are definitely other types of people behind the scenes who aren’t black, who have had just as much hand in making it a lucrative profession for those involved-- from song writers, producers, the original artists they borrowed the samples from, A&R staff, show promoters, etc. There is then a matter of who actually purchases and listens to the music, which is much more varied when you start to include the consumer demographic.
As such, I agree, in that it’s better to stay away from tying a race of people to a music genre. But again, there are certainly indicators out there, which raise flags when people frown upon certain styles of music. It doesn’t need to go to the extreme and achieve the label of “racism”, but there are other attitudes which are as ignorant and damaging, in what they suggest.
Well said.
Also, your SN is very close to “The Blastmaster”, one of the chief pioneering figures of Hip Hop, known for speaking out against the negativity inherent in a lot of the music. Just found that funny.
No, it’s not remotely racist. Because of social constructs, many social trends and cultural institutions are organized along racial lines in the US. It’s totally appropriate to associate polka with old white people and rap with black people, even while recognizing that there’s not a one-to-one correspondence or thinking that any given black person can rap or any given old white person can play the accordion.
Once again you’re ignoring social context. Is there a very long history of nonwhite people denigrating and marginalizing white culture by declaring its creative efforts brutish, thuggish, criminal? If there were, then your point would be relevant; but since there’s not, the analogy fails on the most fundamental level.
Actually, plenty of people say something similar, which is that if you spend a ton of time beating your breast over the violence in football, but you don’t worry so much about hockey, maybe there’s a reason for the disparity that’s related to stereotypes about the players.
Once more: saying you dislike rap isn’t racist. Having a problem with violent, misogynist rap isn’t racist. Behaving as though rap is uniquely violent or misogynist is to participate in a racist tradition of unfairly singling out African-American cultural trends for condemnation.
I don’t for a moment think disliking rap is “racist” no more than disliking disco or Motown would have been. By the way, IMHO, disco and Motown was great, but rap is crap for the most part. Not much talent other than being able to talk fast needed. All strictly IMHO.
By the way, if memory serves, wasn’t rap started by a band with white men in it?
Wait, it’s OK to associate rap with black people because there’s an overwhelming representation there, but it’s not OK to associate rap with violence and misogyny even if there’s a vast amount of rap along those lines? :dubious: I doubt there are many people who think rap is uniquely violent/misogynistic. Do you have any examples of people who say they dislike rap because of its often violent/misogynist content but have no problem with other offensive media?
Likely, people who are racist will say they hate rap. But IMO this does NOT go the other way - in isolation, saying you hate rap provides NO indication that you’re racist (unless you say you hate rap because it’s mostly done by black people :p). Are people who say they hate j-pop or k-pop racist against Japanese people or Koreans? Surely those are music genres even more explicitly tied to race than rap.
There was one in this very thread.
There’s an element of truth to this. I might like rap more if the rap listeners I knew were more pleasant, but honestly most rap I hear is from people who seem to be going out of their way to be a pain in the ass. (This transcends race, btw.) The same honestly goes for country; for good or for ill, I’ve come to associate both types of music with people who could probably stand to have their consciousnesses raised just a bit. I cannot say I hate rap or country; I’ve performed both publicly, so that would be hypocritical, but I do not prefer either.
I like jazz, I like the blues, I like classic rock, I like alternative rock, I like classical to a degree, and I like Celtic and bluegrass in certain circumstances, but I don’t like rap or country, probably because of the associations I have with both. If that makes me a racist, than so be it.
Although you structured those two clauses the same, that doesn’t actually mean they’re analogous.
Not every bagpipe player is Scottish, but bagpipe music is undeniably a Scottish kind of music. Not every Tuvan throat singer is Russian, but it’s undeniably a Russian musical form. Not every rapper is black, but it’s undeniably a black musical form. That’s because each of these musical genres comes from a particular culture.
Now, it’s definitely true that a lot of country music has got a cult of jingoism in it, that a lot of it glorifies criminal violence, that there’s a ton of country music that makes light of domestic violence. But that’s different: its origins aren’t in violence. Its origins are in working-class rural white American culture.
The fact that you missed the guy earlier in the thread who claimed that rap was uniquely violent makes me think you ought to go back and reread the thread before you comment any more.
Thanks, I had only read part of the thread before posting. I don’t agree with huesos that the entire genre of rap should be dismissed because the majority of it is low quality or offensive, but he may have a point that the genre contains much more offensive content than other music genres (perhaps even on both an absolute basis and a % basis). Is it a wrong observation? It seems similar to me to pointing out that horror movies have a lot of gore (there are many horror movies that don’t have gore, and there are many non-horror movies that have gore).
Don’t underestimate the difficulty of talking fast, rhythmically, while rhyming and saying interesting things.
I don’t like rap; I don’t enjoy listening to it; but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect it, at its best.
It’s an impossible-to-verify observation because of how vague several of the relevant variables are.
Are you offended by Johnny Cash shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die? Does Folsom Prison Blues count as a country song?
Compared to what–heavy metal? Goth? Blues? Bluegrass murder ballads? Top 40 pop?
Some genres are gonna contain more offensive content than others, sure. If you focus your ire on the offensive content no matter the genre, that’s totally appropriate. If you focus your ire on the genre no matter the content, that’s inappropriate. And given the proud American tradition of calling black popular music offensive, you might want to be extra reflective on your reasons for that inappropriate focus.