After reading this thread in the pit…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=83597
I got to thinking. Just where is the talent in rap? No real lyrics…nothing but talking and pointing and records being scratched. That takes talent?
Is it a message music just speaking to a certain percentage of listeners? Tell me why I should listen to it.
BTW…I am a big fan of R&B. But rap ain’t got a thing on it.
Obviously you’ve never seen The Roots feat. Razell.
One of the greatest oxymorons of all is rap music… second only to Military Intelegence
I always did like rap… but only because it has the slow bass music like snoop or Dr. Dre but now adays it’s all what I like to call Wuss Rap… or Hip hop
Neither take more talent… but I listened to rap for the bass… but hip hop is whniey sappy teenyboppers that prey on the weak and impressionable idiots of america
ANYWAY… To the point… there is a new type of poetry called “Slam Poetry” (Excuse the fact that I can’t spell) And this sounds exactly like rap…
Here are the components of slam poetry… You have speak and can’t sing… You must speak in the most deep bass voice you have… you have to get mad… and finally you can’t have music
When I 1st heard… I said WT fudge! That’s Rap!!!
I have to confess that I just don’t “get” rap. I feel quite old when I say that. In my time (I’m 37), I listened to all kinds of music from the somewhat normal to the somewhat not - from Basie to Bach, from the Grateful Dead to the Dead Kennedys. Today’s rap doesn’t seem musical to me. All rhythm, no melody? The DJ is considered a musician? The performers appearing with tapped music? Sampling other songs? That one really blows my away. Explain the musical talent in playing a song by the Police or Superfreaky Rick James or anyone else and singing your own lyrics over/around it. I just don’t get it.
Just to be the odd man out here, I’ll confess to liking rap. Not just a little, a lot. And not Will Smith, either. I like trash-talking, nasty, ghetto-ish, booty-and-dope-mentioning rap. I’m a married suburban twentysomething mom of two preschool-age daughters. I don’t go to clubs or dance, ever. I just like it. I love to pop a CD in when I get in the car and feel like my unhip, unoppressed self might just be something to be reckoned with. Yeah. That’s it. I’m tough, because I listen to rap.
Ahem. I’m leaving before the embarrassment spreads.
I hate, hate, hate rap music! It’s not even music, it’s just alot of bass noise. It drives me insane when I am at a stop light next to someone who has it thumping the whole street. It makes me angry, it makes me want to get out and beat the shite out of them.
Oh yeah, twenty years later, and people still hate it. They try to mold it like Play-Doh, put it through charm school, groom it so it would be sensitive to Preoria, yet it still comes out buck wild. Record companies try to spit out assembly-line gangsta rappers, like they did to girl groups in the 60’s, but those who keep it real throw the phonies out of the business. The Roots, Outkast, Common, Lauryn Hill, Eminem and Dr. Dre, they keep the tradition alive.
Pop music already killed the melody, and rap don’t need to waste time resucitating it. Singers know that they can’t compete with the power, so they co-opt the hip hop to their own sound.
I would second the reply that the Rap you hear is commercialized and not the good stuff. I am not a big fan of rap, but The Roots play all their own intstraments and Rhazel is just amazing. When he gets going it is hard to tell if someone is really playing the drums or not.
I was all set to post something, but I like capacitor’s post better than anything I can come up with myself.
If hip hop isn’t your cup of tea, fine. But let’s not run around dismissing an entire freaking genre of art just because it isn’t produced by a guitar, a bass, and a set of drums (well, except for the Roots).
No offense to anyone that believes it, but saying “Rap isn’t music” is starting to sound a lot like “Rock is too noisy”… it makes the person saying it seem very out-of-touch.
The coordination of words and music in a rhythmic manner is really all music is. In most rock, those words are being sung. In rap, they are manipulated in an entirely different way, in which the words, technically, are spoken but those words and even individual syllables are timed and emphasized in such a way to make them VERY different from normal speech and to go along with background music.
Now that I’ve used all those big words… I really like a lot of rap, even though I’m no expert on the subject. Outkast’s “B.O.B.” blew my mind away like no song had done since Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.”
Rap has always used a lot of sampling. But the key is a lot like wearing makeup… you have to make it as natural as possible. This is why, in my opinion, P. Diddy sucks. He makes no effort to hide the sampling. Of course, many of his fans are so musically inept they have no idea he’s ripping off another song.
Of course, for those artists that use original music, by instrument or electronically, more power to them. They’re expanding the art form, but you can do the same with creative sampling.
What annoys me most is people who say they hate rap but love the Beastie Boys. I have a feeling the reason those people hate rap isn’t that they don’t like the music, but rather have stereotypes about the people putting it out. 
200 posts. Yay.
I think the problem that rap is having currently is the same problem that punk rock went through a decade or so ago. When rap (and punk) first started, alot of different things could be called rap (or punk). The only thing that seemed to matter was that it was underground, and appealed to a certain cross section of society. Then, certain “hard-core” groups came around, redefining the sound, and redefining what it means to be a rapper (or a punk). This has the unfortunate effect of having people not familiar with the genre think that all rap (or punk) sounds the same, because the definition has become so narrowed.
There’s rap music out there that isn’t just bass booming, sample-the-whole-song type of stuff.
If you haven’t grown up with hip-hop music then I think you have to become acclimatized to it. The gym at my school only plays hip-hop on the radio. Gradually I noticed that I liked some of it. Mystical, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, and the Beatnuts had songs that I liked. But perhaps age is a factor. At 42, I only occasionally listen to the classic rock that I’ve loved all my life.
I think that you are probably the type of person, who like myself, isn’t necessarily supposed to be listening to hip-hop. However, whether or not you hate rap music or that you don’t “get” hip-hop says nothing about it’s artistic value or cultural importance. Music, I feel, is the most important art form, and should instill some emotion in everyone who hears it. When Stravinsky broke from form and tradition he was demonized by whatever establishment existed at the time. Now, he is considered a great genius of the 20th century.
Plus, you gotta dig on some level a song whose performer, in complete macho BS braggadocio repeats the line “Cuz baby I’m a thug!”
Like I respond to anyone who says something ‘requires zero talent’, I challange you to put out a rap video on MTV.
Hey, you should only listen to it if you like it. Someone could explain to me all day long why I should listen to country, but it wont change my oppinion that country sucks.
As a white upper middle class male in my twenties, we listened to a lot of Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Naughty By Nature, Busta Rhymes, Onyx etc when we weren’t listening to early 90’s grunge music. Why?
-Its got a good beat and you can dance to it
-It talks about topics we care about at that age like drinking, smokin chronic, and hitin da hos (making love to women).
-It taught us terms like biatch, chronic, 40’s, thug
-It sounds cool when your cruising in your car (even if they are mostly Jettas and Beamers)
Sampling isn’t restricted to rap, and I think the thing you disdain here is “artless” use of what is used. Fatboy Slim, who is simply a DJ, fills entire CDs with music formed around samples of other songs. And he does it in a way that takes a little bit of a song, throws it in with other little bits, and creates something completely new and different from the disparate parts. He knows how to sample well (FTR, I prefered him being Norman Cook with the Housemartins, but that’s neither here nor there [then where is it?]). Sean Combs (what’s his moniker today? Is it even worth knowing?) wouldn’t know how to do that if he apprenticed under any competent DJ for a year.
Basically, sampling is an artistic device, but it’s up to the artist to make it worthwile.
I have no shame - I love rap music. It’s all I listen to in my car. It gets me moving in the morning. I also love Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Tori Amos, and Ben Lee (that’s a short list of the CDs that have been in my changer for the last three weeks.) But I do love rap, especially the Dirty South stuff - like Ludacris and Mystikal. I also love danchall reggae, which sounds a bit similar. It’s all gravy to me.
Perhaps it’s a matter of growing up with it - the second tape I ever owned was Salt N Pepa, and I still know all the lyrics to every song they ever made right up to “Whatta Man.” I loved Bel Biv Devoe, Naughty by Nature, and Dre when they first came out. I was a big Beastie Boys fan right around the time of “No Sleep till Brooklyn,” and still am a fan. I love the Roots (they are incredible live), I love Dre, I love Lil’ Kim just cause she’s so nasty, and I love Lauryn Hill and Eminem (he also puts on a great show) and Tupac and Biggie.
Newer, less mainstream rap like what Missy Elliot and Timbaland are doing was hard to listen to at first, even for me. But with both of them, it’s more of a soundscape than a song. It’s not about the chorus, it’s about doing something new and different with the bass and twisting the sound around. “Get Ya Freak On” by Missy is an example - it sounds like nothing I’ve heard before, but the sound is incredible.
Slam poetry is not “recent.” It’s been around for years. I first heard it when I was all of ten, and for the past few years slam poetry has been a big force in all the readings I go to.
And, IMHO, rap does take talent. If you can do what Eminem does, I’d really like to see it. It’s a lot like poetry in that the sound of the words - the alliteration, consonance, and assonance - is extremely important to the overall flow of the work. Not everyone can write a poem, nor can everyone write a kick-ass rap song.
One of my favorite songs ever is the remake of Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low” featuring Lautyn Hill. Here is a sample of the rap lyrics she added:
It reads like a poem, but when you add Lauryn’s voice, the background of Bob Marley, the music and beat, it’s incredibly beautiful. It’s not Dirty South, they aren’t playing it on the radio, but it’s rap, and it clearly demonstrates true talent.
Of course, you don’t have to listen to it if you don’t want to. But it IS music, and it DOES take talent.
Semp, I guess I wasn’t wondering if rap music was art. It could be. There’s lots of art I don’t understand. I was wondering if it was music. That is, is it music to play records? That’s what’s going - in a sense.
As for Lauren Hill singing over Bob Marley’s Turn Your Lights Down Low, why didn’t she cover the song? Why does her interpretation of the song include the original version? There’s some analogy to the art world here, I think. Can I paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa and call it my painting? (And, yes, Lauren Hill’s singing is much nicer than the mustache I would draw, but I hope you get my point.)
I think she did it as a tribute to him - Ziggy Marley, Bob’s son, is the father of her children. A CD came out last year called “Chant Down Babylon” that was a compilation of artists re-making or adding to Bob’s songs as a tribute to his artistic influence.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a classic and adding something unique to it. “Redemption Song” is my most favorite Bob song of all, but I wouldn’t be opposed to someone adding to it. If you consider art to be subjective, as I do, in that the response of the viewer is as important as the work itself, then transmuting a work in some way doesn’t render it non-art. Of course, I belong to the Oscar Wildean school of artistic thought. Robert De Niro, Sr., said that if you like it, it’s art.
I don’t like Thomas Kincade, the schmarmy Painter of Light, but my aunt shelled out about $400 for an “original” with a special light that changes the time of day of the piece. If she considers that to be art, then fine - it’s art. I don’t believe anyone - any critic or layperson or whatever - has the right, or ability or responsibility, to decide what is and is not art or music.
The level of sampling that rap musicians (or other musicians, for that matter) use is wide and diverse.
Some people take the most famous part of one song, leave out the original lyrics, and rap some more of their own. Is this analogous to drawing a moustache over the Mona Lisa? Perhaps. But I don’t think that MC HAmmer would claim that he wrote “Super Freak”. I don’t think that Duchamps would claim that he painted the Mona Lisa. They created something new, using something that already existed, to which they added a piece that was clearly their own.
What about if I took several copies of the Mona Lisa, cut them up, and used them to create a picture of something new, something that you wouldn’t even recognize as the Mona Lisa?
Moreover, what if I took a several much-lesser-known pictures (including some ones you had never seen), made copies, chopped 'em up, glued them together in one rather moving picture?
Would this be art? Yeah. Same thing with rap music.
Rap music can be good, but I’ll never admit it.