Rap music

[FunkDaddy]

Rap covers a lot of ground to dismiss it quickly… but feel free. I do it with other genres (show me a country song I’ll like, and I’ll show you my small intestine, seppaku-style). I don’t claim to be a big fan of rap, and I don’t know the scene from a hole in the ground, but I know what I like - there’s some local boys who do rap (a trio who rap over their hard-rock, really… it’s neat). I like them more because they rap comedically and rant about local stuff, plus I went to high school with them. Rap is just angry music with a different sound than thrash metal or whatever… if you like it, you do. If you don’t, that’s fine too… why people rag on one type of music is beyond me.

I don’t like a lot of rappers but it’s something that has grown on me. Ever see Office Space? I’m the white dude in his car in the beginning… while I’m listening to rap I can be one angry mofo, then I show up at work and act professional and sane for a few hours. Who doesn’t wanna be ‘the man’, right? (note after preview: this ‘the man’ is good, as in “you da man!”). Besides, as people have mentioned, it’s got a nice beat, and the lyrics are usually pretty funny. It’s even funnier to watch me singing along to Rage Against the Machine… as a 22 year old white male, I’m “the man” in waiting if you believe Rage. (n.a.p.: this “the man” is bad; he’s the man who’s holding down the minorities, and is to blame for all bad in the world). I’m part of rap’s biggest market: white kids from the burbs who wanna be bad-assed. Unfortunately for rap, I don’t buy much music anymore since I don’t have a CD player at home.

I look at it the same way when I listen to Zeppelin or Hendrix… for a little while, I get to be a cool classic rocker, or when I listen to classical music I get to be tasteful and mature. It just depends on my mood.

And I take issue with someone saying that sampling doesn’t take talent… you can sample, and you can SAMPLE, if you catch my meaning. Moby samples - you might not like his music, but don’t tell me he isn’t good at it. Same’s true of hundreds of other folks. They get my ‘mad props’ even if I don’t like the product.

FunkDaddy… or maybe it’s F-Diddy. Or maybe it’s Beyotch. Who knows.

[psychogumby]

Yo dem muthafuckas dat say dat rap is not music, dey is talkin’ outta dair ass! Rap is da BOMB! Ya know whut ahm sayin? Dem bitchass muthafuckas dat say dat shit don’t know whut it’s like to be down wid da G’s on da west side! Dem pissant muthafuckas don’t be dissin’ me, or me and mah posse will whoop dair bitch asses and fuck dem up reeeal good. Ya know whut ahm sayin?

Gotta go, mah ho wants me to give her some inches in da crib. Chill and peace out, man.

[Semp]

*Originally posted by Marc *
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.

I’d say it is “music to play records,” but I also think that doing so means that the threshold of respect is higher than it would be for the original artists (unless we’re talking about N’SYNC, but who the hell is going to sample them? Oh yeah, Puff Duddy probably will in toto.). So to a degree I agree with looking down on DJ music as proper music, but only because I think it takes a lot of skill to really do it right.

**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.) **

Don’t forget that Natalie Cole won a bunch of Grammys for doing the exact same thing with an album of her fathers songs ten years ago, so we aren’t talking about some new phenomenon. And, as above, it needs to be done with skill (yes, that does mean no P. Dodgy) in order for it not to sound like just another cash-grab.