Sig line says it all…
“Rap is to music as Etch-A-Sketch is to art.”
-Anon
I defy any of the three (assuredly non-musically-trained) persons who claimed “rap isn’t music” to propose a definition of “music” which excludes rap.
Ian Rey, you reading this thread?
THANK you, DoctorJ.
Think about how most rock in the eighties was that crappy glam rock. Rap was the alternative then, and it was creative and fun.
Satan, Doobieous, and Omniscient covered most of my favorite rap bands, but I’d like to add Public Enemy, US3, and The Jungle Brothers to the list.
Public Enemy simply made some powerful music in the day. It’s too bad they sold out…
US3 samples jazz music in their raps, and Hand on the Torch is a really good album.
Jungle Brothers are relativily new to me, but I really like what they do. The songs I’ve heard from them are the hip hop sound I really like.
I think one problem in this discussion is that people don’t realize that rap has sub-genres, just like country, rock and roll, jazz, and classical.
I think the main problem with today’s rap is that it’s gotten too popular, and has sold out. It’s the exact same thing that killed other formular great musicall genres, like alternative, heavy metal, and eighties party bands (Enuff Z nuff, anyone?).
I know I’m showing my age here, but you gotta go back to the source to really judge rap.
Doobieous: Man, Humpty Dance is one of the best songs. How about the other two big songs from Sex Packets, Dowatchalike and Freaks of the Industry? I love those songs!
A final note for the detractors: Rap has had such an influence on popular music in general. A lot of rock and roll songs have used elements from rap in some way or another. And of course, and a huge fan of techno, electronica, and trance, I’ve gotta give props to the rap genre. Peace out, Y’all.
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
Generally speaking I don’t like rap. I do consider it music though, but only on a primitive level. Old school rap was far better than rap today; however, there is one rap band today that I would actually listen to. They are the Diggable Planets. They actually play their instruments and do some rudimentary singing. Also, their albums tend to have a concept that doesn’t center around killing, drugs, guns, ho’s, and all the typical junk that rap has become.
Now back to the music portion of my discussion. Rap is music simply because it it has elements of music played over a period of time. Sure it is cacophonous, but so is Stravinsky, Phillip Glass, Milton Babbit, Shostokovich, and many other twentieth century composers. For cacophony one can even going as far back as Carlo Gesualdo. For those who don’t know he was a melomaniac in the Rennaissance period who wrote music that sounded like Rennaissance music written by a twentieth century composer. It is very unusual and cacophonous to the earlier listener. Anyway, rap is more akin to African music in that it places rhythm as the strongest cohesive aspect. Music in Africa, such as the song/stories sung and played on the Kora by the griots; the yodeling done by the Baha (Pygmy) culture, the thumb piano melodies played by the people from central Africa, all have rhythm as its theme. Oftentimes this is syncopation or multiple rhyhms played against eachother…2 against 3, 3 against 4 primarily. Also African music tends to have primitive and repetitive melodies in comparison to what we as westerners usually think of as music. If we compare our western music to Indian, Chinese, or Japanese culture, we would discover that our melodies are painfully simplistic. Our main ideas of music come from harmony which only western music has, or I should say western music developed.
My basic conclusion is that rap is music because it follows paths set forth by predominantly African culture and then attempts to update it by placing influence on pop culture and some minor westernizations. Personally, I believe that the majority of the music has become trite and overused and will eventually extinguish itself unless they start to branch the music out to be less “gangsta”. Basically if your music perpetuates the stereotype that killing is good and “HO’s” make good girlfriends, then I believe that the music itself will eventually extinguish its fan base because throught basic human principles this can be proven as false.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Gasoline: As an accompaniement to cereal it made a refreshing change. Glen Baxter
Sorry for this post, it seems pldennison raised a question when he asked about a definition of music which excludes rap. If you take a western stance on music that would be pretty easy. Music is an element of sound that contains all three of the following simultaneously: melody, harmony, and rhythm: played over a period of time in that which is commonly called a performance, yet can be written in a cohesive fashion to show that all of these elements exist. Rap, if you follow this definition (which incidently I paraphrased from my Junior level music history class) only has the element of rhythm, and has either incidental melody or harmony. I don’t believe this; although, there are many musical scholars, particularly those who are classically trained, who think otherwise (rap not being music). I think they are fairly closeminded about this issue, becuase the few I have debated with (in person) don’t consider any source of music other than western music as real music.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Gasoline: As an accompaniement to cereal it made a refreshing change. Glen Baxter
And for those complaining that rap doesn’t involve “singing” or “instruments”, you may want to chack out the Roots or the Brand New Heavies.
And if that’s going to be the working def’n of music, does that mean that classical or barbershop quartet aren’t music?
Ack! That was supposed to be “check”, not “chack”.
In case you thought I was using some new street dialect in order to keep my post “real”.
Rap Music… doesn’t this belong in the oxymoron thread?
While I don’t care to listen to rap myself, I will concede that it has become its own style, and the argument against it being music is just arrogance. I grew up with Rap music on the periphery, and enjoyed a few artists such as RUN-DMC and Mellie Mel, but got seriously turned off around the era of public enemy and NWA (Hey! I thought we weren’t supposed to call them the N-word!) when it started taking a darker turn.
Someone mentioned the racist card. I don’t see my opposition to modern rap as rascist so much as culturist. I just don’t like “Niggaz” and gangbangers, whether they be white, black, hispanic, or asian. I don’t like any music that glorifies the culture. And I seriously despise attempts such as Kid Rock or Limp Biscuit to crossover into the homie lifestyle.
http://www.madpoet.com
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
You know, I can understand why some people don’t like rap, but I don’t understand the seemingly constant vitriol it seems to bring out in people. That being said, here are my thoughts on rap music (and it is music):
I pretty much lost interest in rap when Biggie Smalls died. Since then, DMX is pretty much the only rapper I’ve enjoyed. (Redman and Method Man are good too, but I can’t really get into them.) Today’s rap mostly sucks, and I find myself going back to the old school stuff like Public Enemy, Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5, and of course the pioneers of gangsta rap, NWA. Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and Dr. Dre are also favorites of mine.
Anyway, to just say rap isn’t music because you don’t happen to like it is a pretty stupid attitude IMO, and it just makes you sound way too much like your parents. Just a thought.
Mr. Armageddon
“Just when you thought you had all the answers, I went and changed the questions!”–Roddy Piper
"Let freedom ring with a buckshot, but not just yet
We need to truly understand the nature of the threat
And a pale man walks in the threshold of darkness
Roughly 20,000 years ago the first humans evolved with
The phenotypical trait, genetic recessive blue eyes,
blonde hair and white skin
Albinism apparently was a sin to the original man, Africans,
So the mutants traveled north of the equator
Called Europeans later, the first race haters
So here’s the devils’ alpha to the beta
Cuz history’s best qualified to teach one
Quoting German philosopher Schopenhauer
“Every white man is a faded or bleached one”
Migration created further mutation
Genetic drifts, evolution through recombination
Adaptation to the climate
As the Caucus Mountain man reverted to that of a primate
Savage Neanderthals until the late Paleolithic age
That’s when the Black Grimaldi man came
With the symbol of the dragon fire and art
Check cave paintings in France and Spain to the Venus of Willendorf
Around 2000 B.C. southern Russians migrate in small units
Those who traveled west populated Europe
Those who went east settled in Iran, known as Aryans
1500 B.C. some crossed the Khyber pass into India and
Created Hinduism, the first caste system
The origins of racism
A white dot on the forehead meant elite
A black dot-the feet
Untrustable, untouchables
They wrote the holy Vedas in Sanskrit
That’s the language that created Greek, German, Latin and English
Now the Minoans also around 2000 B.C.
Start on the island of Crete in the Agean Sea
The Greek culture begins Western Civilization
But “Western Civilization” means “White Domination”
Myceneans learned from Kemet, called Egypt in Greek
It had existed since at least 3000 B.C.
Creating geometry and astronomy
This knowledge influenced Plato, Socrates and Hippocrates
Cuz Imhotep the real real father of medicine
Was worshiped in Greece and Rome in the form of a Black African
The word Africa comes from the Greek Aphrike meaning “without cold”
The word philosophy means “love of knowledge”… stole from first man
Greek power expands
The first Greek fraternities band
The word gymnasium is Greek for “naked”
This was the place where adolescent boys were educated and molested
This was accepted cuz Greek culture was homosexual
for example, Sappho trained girls on the island of Lesbos
Hence, the word lesbian (let these muthafckas know)
December 25, the birth of Saturn
A homosexual god, now check the historical pattern
December 25, now thought the birth of Christ
Was Saturnalia, when men got drunk,
Fcked each other then they beat their wife
Fact is, it was still practiced, until they called it Christmas
So put a gerbil on your Christmas list
The Hellenistic Era, Alexander the Great
Conquers all the way to India leaving four successor states
By the Fifth century B.C.
R.O.M.E. succeeds to be
The conqueror of Egypt and Greece
But had the threat of the Black Phoenicians in Sicily
The Punic Wars began 264 B.C.
The Black general Hannibal and Carthaginian Peace
In 146 B.C. Carthage fell after a six-month siege
Rome sold every citizen into slavery, the first genocide in history
And more bisexuality in sight
Julius Caesar was known as “every woman’s husband and every man’s wife”
Spartacus Revolt-a slave rebellion that lost
Where 6,000 slaves got nailed on a cross…
Cross? Aw, sht! Jesus Christ!
Time for some-act-right
Christians get your facts right
Cuz Christ was not his name, that’s Greek for “one who is anointed”
Yoshua Ben Yosef was his name, do Christians know this?
So who do you praise, do you know his name?
Or do you do this in vain?
Accepting the religion they gave slaves to behave
Peep the description of historian Josephus
Short, dark, with an underdeveloped beard was Jesus
He had the Romans fearing revolution
The solution was to take him to court and falsely accuse him
After being murdered by Pilate how can it be
These same white Romans established Christianity
Constantine would later see the cross in a dream
In his vision it read “En Hawk Signo Wonka”–
“In this Sign We Conquer”
Manifest destiny, in 325 he convened the Nicean Creed
A separated God into three
Decided Jesus was born on December 25
And raising on the third day is a myth
Plus to deceive us
Eventually Michelangelo was commissioned to paint white picture of Jesus
He used his aunt, uncle and nephew
Subconsciously that affects you
It makes you put white people closer to God
(The man got game…) True indeed, fck it…Jihad!
In the 8th century Muslims conquer Spain, Portugal and France
And control it for 700 years
They never mention it in His-story class
Cuz Ofays are threatened when you get the real lesson
Moors from Baghdad, Turkey
Threaten European Christians, meaning: the white way of life
Hence, the Crusades for Christ
On November 25, 1491
Santiago defeats the last Muslim stronghold–Grenada
King Ferdinand gave thanks to God for victory
And the Pope of Rome declared this day to forever be
A day of Thanksgiving for all European Christians
Now listen:
When you celebrate Thanksgiving, what you are actually celebrating
is the proclamation of the Pope of Rome,
who later in league with Queen Isabella
Sent Cardinal Ximenos to Spain to murder
any Blacks that resisted Christianity
These Moors, these Black men and women were from Baghdad, Turkey
And today you eat the turkey for your Thanksgiving day
as the European powers destroyed the “Turkies” who were the forefathers
of your mothers and fathers…now fight the power
Now around this time whites started calling us Negro
That’s Spanish for “black object,” meaning we’re not people
But property and the Triangle Trade begins, they seize us
Queen Elizabeth sent the first slaves on a ship named Jesus
Stealing land from the indigenous natives
Gave them alcohol to keep the red man intoxicated
Whites claimed they had to civilize these pagan animals
But up until 1848, there’s documented cases of whites
being the savage cannibals
Eating Indians, in 1992 it’s Jeffrey Dahmer
They slaughtered a whole race with guns
Drugs, priests and nuns
1763 the first demonic tactic of biological warfare
As tokens of peace, Sir Jeffrey Amherst passed out clothing
And blankets to the Indian community
Infested with smallpox, knowing they had no immunity
Today it’s AIDS, you best believe it’s man-made
cuz ain’t a damn thing changed
Let me explain:
Now since the people of color are genetically dominant
and Caucasoids are genetically recessive, if whites expect to be
predominant
Meaning survive as a race, then they simply must take precautions
That’s why they’re worried about the future now
Cuz by 2050 almost all the Earth’s population will be Brown
Then Black, so understanding that whites counterreact
(The world white minority is a tea spoon of milk in a world colored
majority)
So they created a system to force Blacks into an unnatural position
That reinforced a position of natural inferiority, in addition
Created guns and developed the ethnocentric view
That God justifies every fcking thing they do
Conditioned people to perceive white culture as civilized
And every other culture considered primitive–not true
Racism is the system of racial subjugation
Against non-whites in every area of human relation
Education, entertainment, labor, politics
Law, religion, sex, war and economics
See Blacks were 3/5 of a man with tax purposes intended
You think you’re Afro-American, you’re a 14th Amendment
And a good ngger
Jews don’t salute the fcking swastika
But nggas pledge allegiance to the flag that accosted ya
They never teach about the Breaker Islands like Jamaica
Where, before slaves came here, whites would take a
pregnant woman, hang
Wow. I’m surprised that so many of the posters in this thread feel negatively toward rap music. And it is music as categorized by the dictionary definition (http://www.dictionary.com) by the way.
Personally I find interesting and pleasing music works in every genre: Blues, Jazz, Classical, Electronica, Rock, Folk, Rap, etc.
Even if you decide to limit your experiences, though, I think a key point should be made about popular art. As a rule, anything, which transcends a niche market into mainstream, will have wide variety in the aggregate. This is simply because of Economics: Demand will encourage entry into the market from lesser talents because there’s room for making some money. Also, this boom in new resources will also bring more variety in form.
So, what this means is basically 80% of what’s on MTV is garbage simply because of the Economics behind MTV. This doesn’t mean that what’s on MTV or inside a teenager’s CD player is descriptive of the aggregate population of artists.
Of course I’m generalizing, but not as much as some others in this thread.
RAP “MUSIC”?
naah-put a “C” in front of it…it’s CRAP
My 2 rules of musical taste:
[ul]
[li]the group can not have anyone in it named “DJ” something;[/li][li]the group can not have “Boys” in it’s name.[/li][/ul]
Hey Mojo, I think rap is music. Although the definition I printed earlier most definately would NOT exclude classical or barbershop. Rhythm is not synonomous with drums. Rhythm is a driving force that moves the music forward. You don’t have to have syncopated or complex rhythm in order to have rhythm, it just makes it more interesting. Rhythm is a fundamental part of all music. It isn’t necessarily as straightforward as it is in Rock, Country, or Rap, but it is something that you can’t turn off. If you think about music in a simple form… lets say common time, you can divide the measure up into one whole note, 2 half notes, 4 quarter notes, 8 eighth notes, etc… you can also divide it less standardly, by mixing those stated above or even throwing in triplets, quintuplets, or any number of notes equalling whatever beat. For this discussion, I will keep it on a more simplistic level. For instance, 4 quarter notes in a measure would be a steady rhythm. All western musicians know this, playing steadily along with other musicians means following the 4 beats (quarter notes) in a measure means they stay together. Polyphony is different, but on a simplistic note it would be like playing the first two beats and having another instrument come in playing something else on the second two beats. It is part of the rhythm. I hope I did not confuse any one. But all music has rhythm to it. It may not be a standard rhythm but it is there. Thus the definition listed earlier would still contain classical and rap.
HUGS!
Sqrl
*Beat and rhythm can be synonomous terms.
Gasoline: As an accompaniement to cereal it made a refreshing change. Glen Baxter
GEEZ Mr.Scott! I did not expect to get a racist diatribe. I do suggest one looks into genetics and environmental mutation concerning various physical traits in response to the home environment.
I have no problem with ‘Black’ people but I do have a big problem with ‘Brothaz’ or ‘Homeys’. I also, having come up through the Civil Rights movement and recall separate water fountains and bathrooms, have seen some major changes in the Black attitude leaning more towards general world population conformity rather than racial individualism.
But then I have a problem with the religious and cultural fanatics of the middle east, the stubborn, isolation attitudes of ‘family and race’ oriented Vietnamese, the obvious unconcern for individual rights of the Chinese ‘Traditional’ family, the religious squabbles of Ireland, and the patriarchal Society of Iran, Iraq and so forth where a woman has virtually no rights at all. Plus, I find the still acceptable practice among the men of India of killing off one’s wife to get her dowry as appalling and disagree with the barbaric but still somewhat practiced among some Arabic countries of female circumcision. Should I get into the equally savage racism practiced currently in Europe among peoples of the same color but different ‘nationalities’?
Perhaps not. Black people started Rock and Roll - (Sorry - Elvis did not create it) and the Whites loved it. Today, many White kids love Rap. I think it sux, especially the obvious hostile racist, supressive, oppressive, woman abusing, crime glorifying, killing idolizing, segrationist, drug aggrandizing form it has changed into.
Hey! I loved Chuck Barry songs! Donna Summer is still a pretty woman and I enjoyed her songs.
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”
SqrlCub, my post wasn’t very clear coming directly after yours. I was responding to the person who said that rap isn’t music because there are no istruments and no singing, not your def’n.
Working where I do, I have now heard enough hip-hop to know that I hate it. Not every single bit of it, but I don’t care for the form, and I despise sampling. I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying they hate opera – I might possibly find an aria or overture they’d enjoy, but if they don’t like the form, they don’t like the form. Race is neither here nor there.
R&B is, however, making a comeback; not just the girl groups but real singers like Brian McKnight – “Back at One” is a huge record in many radio formats – and Marc Nelson. The only difficulty is that it’s almost all ballads, but someone is bound to reinvent uptempo R&B somewhere along here.
Catrandom
> And for those complaining that rap doesn’t involve “singing” or
> “instruments”, you may want to chack out the Roots or the Brand New
> Heavies.
Um…no. I get enough headaches, thanks.
> And if that’s going to be the working def’n of music, does that mean
> that classical or barbershop quartet aren’t music?
Classical has instruments. Barbershop quartets sing. Rappers talk.
You’d have done better bringing up Gregorian chant as a non-traditional form of music. Chanting, however, qualifies as singing in my book. Talking doesn’t.
Let’s see. I don’t like RAP. So I’m a racist? Okay. I don’t like country music much either. So that would make me a … ummm… cowboyist?
As I said in my post: Whatever YOU want to listen to is fine with me. Just don’t blare it up and down my street forcing me to listen to it. I don’t force other people to listen to my old ABBA records nor my RUSH collection. If I want to blare some tunes I have headphones.
Best!
Byz