Excellent point.
There’s no argument to be made that would dissuade me from my opinion, because it is, in fact, informed. The conclusion you guys draw, for whatever reason, is that the reason we dislike the music is because we just haven’t listened to it. No, we dislike it because it sucks. That’s the bottom line. You can share our opinion, you can completely disagree, but it’s still a matter of opinion, and mine is that hip-hop eats it raw.
I’m certainly not going to advance that position, nor have I tried to in this thread. This statement is irrelevant to the prevailing opinion among many of us that hop-hop sucks the 10-pound fattie. And from the responses to this thread, I am scarcely alone in holding it. I guess we’re all just ignorant of what a vibrant, innovative, exciting art hip-hop really is. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.
I am Iron Man.
Actually, it’s been thoroughly demonstrated that DragonAsh hasn’t listened to it, and he didn’t actually argue that point. Whether you have or not, I couldn’t say.
Nope, you’re just ignorant in thinking that just because you don’t like something, that thing must therefore be bad.
I’m sorry if you’re honestly stupid enough to believe that. But there’s no way to describe that belief as anything but stupidity. See, the point is that everyone has their own likes and dislikes. But when you lack the perspective to understand that your opinions aren’t special just because they’re yours, it simply means you’re stupid. Normal people go through that process as children - understanding that just because one person doesn’t like strawberry ice cream, that doesn’t mean that strawberry ice cream is inherently bad, or that other people are wrong to like it. I couldn’t guess whether an inability to make that leap reflects a deficiency in your emotional or your intellectual development. Hopefully, though, you will one day become a mental adult and progress beyond that stage.
If I don’t like it, by definition it’s bad. Likes and dislikes are personal tastes.
No, that’s exactly what it means: if you don’t like it it is by definition bad. If it’s good for you, that’s great. It’s not for me, therefore it sucks. Eggplant makes me puke, but because it is enjoyed by others I must have the wrong attitude about it: it’s really good, I’m just too infantile to realize it, right? :rolleyes:
Spare me the psychobabble.
That’s not remotely what I said. Apparently you’re also too stupid to read and comprehend. To reiterate something that I said earlier, I don’t particularly like hip-hop. I don’t listen to it much at all. But I’m capable of distinguishing between my own opinions and objective facts. If you lack the capacity to do so, it means you’re stupid.
There’s no objective fact in an opinion.
Ooh! Look! You’ve made some personal growth!
But on the off chance that that was a sad attempt at arguing with me, then I have to point out that apparently your inability to read extends to the OP as well.
Nope, this guy is Iron Man, but we can still be Spartacus!
(Music starts when window opens!)
CMC fnord!
Arguing hip-hop is like arguing modern art. It’s the same type of arguments, and nobody ever changes their viewpoint, so why even bother? But what the hell…
There’s a lot of genres I don’t like, but I cannot even begin to think of dismissing an entire cateogry of music (well, maybe smooth jazz excepted;)) as “sucking.” There’s iconic bands in the genre of music I listen to that I’ve never gotten. Like, say, Husker Du. I don’t like Husker Du. I’ve tried over and over to get into them. I simply can’t. Does Husker Du suck? Well, no. Obviously, a lot of listeners and musicians I respect latch onto something in their music that I just can’t grasp or don’t understand. Why dismiss it? I simply write it off to my own shortcomings as a listener. People with more informed opinions than me say there is something worthwhile in it, so I’ll take them at their word.
I don’t pretend to understand all genres of music. I don’t like Aboriginal didgeridoo music. I don’t like Indian music. It all sounds like noise to me. I come from an informed musical perspective in the sense that I grew up learning classical piano, am a multi-instrumentalist, know music theory like the back of my hand, recorded and toured with a European indie band, etc.
But can I really judge these genres, so much so as to dismiss them? Fuck no. Obviously, there’s people who understand and know Indian music and can make informed judgments based on their understanding of the music form what is good and what isn’t good Indian music. I can’t. I come from a Western musical tradition. The typical complaints leveled against hip-hop are all people trying to understand hip-hop in a rock context. Of course people are going to be frustrated if they do this, because hip-hop does not follow the same music theory as rock. It is not a melody- or harmony-based music form. It does not place special value on live instrumentation. There’s a whole different set of musical values in hip-hop, and many serious academic treatises have been written intelligently trying to piece together hip-hop music theory (see, for example, Robert Walser’s “Rhythm, Rhyme, and Rhetoric in the Music of Public Enemy.”) Such papers make it quite clear that what seems like a simple music form to some listeners is anything but.
Now that’s something I don’t agree with at all. If you can’t say that strawberry ice cream is objectively bad, you can’t say that it’s objectively good, either. Therefore, “Strawberry ice cream is delicious!” is as valid (or invalid) as “strawberry ice cream is disgusting!” Taste being subjective, the only valid metric for determining quality is one’s personal taste. Lots of other people may like strawberry ice cream, but that’s only important if the question is, “What do people in general think of strawberry ice cream?” If the question is, “What do you think of strawberry ice cream?” then, “It tastes like shit,” is an entirely valid response, wholly independent of the popularity of strawberry ice cream at large. Of course, generally speaking, nobody cares that you don’t like strawberry ice cream. Raw opinion is just about the dullest thing out there. I mean, Airman Doors doesn’t like hip-hop. Who gives a shit? It’s the reasoning behind that opinion that makes it interesting. And if that reasoning is flawed (such as ambused’s Double Standard Hall of Fame post) or un-informed (anyone who claims that “all hip-hop” is about gangstas and bling) that opinion can, and should, be discounted. The person offering it clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Why do you think it’s bad? Because you don’t enjoy it? Or because it lacks in any inherent merit and has nothing in it to recommend it or admire in it?
You can dislike anything you want. I dislike most jazz and don’t listen to it. I will not contend that it has no inherent value, that there is no artistry in it and nothing to admire in it. That is because I know that my taste is subjective and just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that jazz musicians aren’t skilled artists creating something with value and beauty. My inability to appreciate it does not negate it as art.
That’s because I don’t feel the need to take a shit on anything that I don’t like. Airman Doors, I like you, but you sound like a fucking idiot in this thread, and a cranky baby to boot. That’s too bad.
Word. 
Wha–?! No! I take it back! I mean, that’s not what I meant! :eek:
What difference does it make? I don’t have to justify my tastes to you. However, if you’re interested, you might look at my first and second posts in this thread, which lays it all out for you. It’s interesting that you’re bracing me for my opinion, however, because you immediately follow it up with this:
So I can dislike it, you tell me I can dislike it, but I’m coming off as a “fucking idiot” because I have the temerity to say that I dislike it, which you have given me explicit permission to do?
That’s fine, too. I personally think that some pieces of art are magnificent and others are pretentious twaddle. Do I have your permission to say that, or must I approve of everything because of its intrinsic value to others?
This is one of the key issues. Hip-hop is sometimes speculated as being a descendent of African musical traditions on the basis of its rhythmical complexity. Traditional African music is harmonically simple as compared to Western music, but rhythmically far more complex; Western music is fundamentally based around harmony, but hip-hop is based in the same way upon rhythm. Based on reviews I’ve read of hip-hop albums, I’m pretty sure that I’m simply not capable of perceiving the rhythmic complexity of it - I just don’t have the experience with the artform to recognize what’s being done with it. That phenomenon is at work in every aspect of life, though. You have to be either wholly inexperienced with the world or kinda dim not to have noticed that people with lots of experience in any particular thing start appreciating aspects of it that completely elude those who don’t have that experience. It doesn’t make much difference if it’s wine, Thai food, a style of music, fashion, whatever. If you’re not familiar with it, you’re not capable of appreciating the things that folks who are familiar appreciate.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Airman Doors said this: “No, we dislike it because it sucks. That’s the bottom line.” He, in his defense of the OP, stated that hip-hop “sucks”; that’s not a declaration of one’s personal opinion, that’s a statement about the art form. As far as I can tell, you’re trying to convince me to read something contrary to what he actually wrote - you’re saying that Airman Doors meant to say, “I don’t like hip-hop” but he expressed himself badly. I don’t see any basis for that assumption.
We can objectively declare that certain things suck. Yugos suck. They are simply, and objectively, inferior to other cars in many respects. Hurricanes suck. They damage property and injure and kill people. And, in fact, I reject the notion that aesthetics are entirely subjective, and that no actual standard can be developed for evaluating art - I think it’s perfectly fair to say that, say, Jessica Simpson’s music sucks. However, describing a musical genre with dozens and dozens of different styles and thousands of artists of differing levels of talent as “sucking” is simply nonsense. There is no meaningful way to draw a comparison between such enormous and broad categories as “rock” and “hip-hop”; further, very few people have any kind of in depth understanding of all the styles of music that exist in genres they like - so it certainly beggars belief to suggest that someone might have that amount of perspective on a genre that they don’t like. Hip-hop is an enormous and varied style of music, and anyone who tries to claim that it inherently is inferior to other forms of art - like the OP, or like its defender, Airman Doors - is making an invalid statement.
I would argue, further, that anyone who claims that they’re capable of making an informed judgment that they don’t like such a large genre of music is almost certainly deluded. As I said, few fans of, say, rock or jazz or classical music have the broad perspective required to evaluate one of those genres in their entirety. It beggars belief to claim that you have that sort of broad experience with a genre you don’t like. What you can accurately say is that you’re not interested in becoming further acquainted with that genre of music based on what you’ve heard. Personally, I don’t quite understand that attitude, as I generally feel pretty compelled to try to experience such things, but I understand that life is short and I certainly can’t blame anyone for not knowing all that much about every different genre of music. I’d be a hypocrite if I did, since I certainly can’t claim that kind of broad knowledge.
But unlike many people, I’m capable of making several distinctions. There’s music that I don’t really know enough about to honestly evaluate it. In my case, that would be true of classical music. There’s musicians who I don’t like or even can’t understand, but still appreciate that they’re doing something that requires talent and brings others pleasure, even if I don’t like it. That’s true of most hip-hop, for me. I feel the same way about most free jazz. Then there’s music that, in my honest evaluation, simply isn’t good music. It doesn’t reflect any particularly great degree of talent, it’s uninteresting, it’s bland, or unpleasant, or whatever. I feel that way about, say, Anthony Braxton, or Jessica Simpson. Jessica Simpson sucks. Her music bites. My cat is a better singer than she is. But I’m neither foolish nor arrogant enough to try to claim that’s true of an enormous genre of music like hip-hop, or country, or Indian classical music. Because I recognize that some acquaintance with the theory underlying a system of music is required to understand it - and I’m obviously not capable of evaluating what I don’t understand. And I understand that those genres embrace tens of thousands of artists, and dozens or hundreds of individual styles of music that might be very different from one another - so how could anyone possibly think that such enormous variety could possibly all “suck”?
The thought is, quite simply, ridiculous. To believe it would require either being ignorant of the breadth of what you’re describing or being so utterly arrogant that you think you’re capable of formulating a meaningful opinion of things that you don’t actually understand or have any experience with. The ignorance might be easily curable, but folks like the OP and Airman Doors here are resisting such efforts to educate them. What’s stupider than being so arrogant as to think you could judge an entire genre of music without knowing anything about it, or being completely unwilling to abandon your ignorance and acknowledge that your own experience with something is limited and non-representative?
I was foolish enough to think that way about things as a young child. As an adult, I’ve grown up a little. It’s sad that not everyone has. I expect a child to declare that something “sucks” just because they don’t like it. If an adult does so, I can only shake my head an feel pity for someone who hasn’t grown up any as they’ve aged.
That’s not what you said. You said it “sucks”. Do you routinely get mad at people for reading your words rather than your mind?
If you go around declaring anything you don’t understand to be “pretentious twaddle”, then (once again) that means you’re stupid. Isn’t that kind of obvious?
You can say you don’t like it. You can’t say that it has no intrinsic merit or value as an art form simply because you dislike it. Is that clear enough for you?
What does your approval have to do with any of it? No one gives a rat’s ass what YOU like or dislike except you. You are coming in here and telling us that something WE like, that we think is art, is shit and has no value. NOW who’s claiming the temerity to dictate taste and inherent worth? It ain’t me.
Because I find this fascinating, but feel like a discussion about hip-hop specifically is a sort of loaded and charged argument, I invite folks to talk a little more about what makes for appropriate or useful criticism of an art form over here in the CS.
Educate me on what basis? This is a question of taste. I may as well try to convince you not to be gay, which according to you I can do simply by educating you. Of course, I can’t do so because that is your preference. Yet somehow you have the arrogance to think that my opinion lacks validity simply because I don’t like rap or hip-hop and quite clearly stated the reasons why, and you can educate me as to why I should appreciate the artistry of a form of music I dislike.
As I said before, you can like it all you want. I do not. My opinion. Dead stop. I don’t begrudge you your opinion, so you can back off of mine.
More psychobabble. Blah blah blah. Why else would someone say that something sucks if not for the fact that they don’t like it?