It may well be that some rap has good lyrics. But, for me, no lyric is going to be good enough to redeem the boring, repetative sound of rap. And, no I didn’t grow up with it. It came along years after I grew up. I like a lot of types of music, esp. classic rock, folk, and classical.
Perhaps the problem is not that rap is too boring for you, but that you are in fact too boring for rap.
I’ll make this brief, boy. I been to the ghetto, having had the opportunity to work in it for some years and having worked along side it, or at least one of them. You know, dirt lawns, roach motel houses, buildings with several layers of paint exposed, suspicious scents wafting out of alleyways, young thugs hanging about looking for trouble to get into, $20,000 cars in front of ramshackle, falling down, broken windowed apartments, old guys loudly playing cards all day under an Oak tree, passing the bottle back and forth, and basketball courts made of asphalt with a raggedy, torn chain net on the hoop. Project apartments that are noisy and dirty, neighbors that prey on each other, and drugs of any kind available at almost any corner. Not to mention the sections where seedy hookers lurk to sell their wares and burly pimps watch from doorways or shady low walls.
You know, the kind of place that if you white and you get dumped off in the middle of, you might not make it out in one piece at night, though in the day time you have a fair chance.
The little stores selling over priced goods, with worn glass doors, burglar bars on every window, some sleazy, oily looking guy at the register and the coolers stocked with 40s of every cheap beer and wine you can find and the paint worn off of the floor in front of them. Shall I mention the Meat Houses and the Mom and Pop stores that are built like little forts? The little bastards playing in the streets that barely move out of a cars way and have mouths on them like you would not believe? How about the seedy doctors in their little dirty offices, the small BBQ places where the meat is either beef or 'coon, but to spicy to tell which? The restaurants cooled in summer by ceiling fans, stocked with battered and dirty furniture and tables and the floor tiles worn down to the cement? You don’t go in the back ally and look too long in those kitchens if you want to eat there.
I almost forgot. At the edge is usually the free public health clinic, the waiting area full of heavy black and Hispanic women with dirty, screaming kids and smelling of piss and sweat. Around the corner is the welfare office or social services with their two armed guards. Not to mention the old A$P supermarket, with one set of doors bolted shut, and an armed guard on a lifeguards tower positioned by the only operating set while another armed guard paces inside.
And the garbage in the streets with the homeless wandering or laying about.
Think I got the picture?
When I worked in there, I carried a gun. Not allowed, but my bosses ignored the rules because I got my truck back undamaged every day.
Hey. In my day we wore tight jeans and T-shirts with jack or motorcycle boots if we wanted to look tough, not pants with the crotch down to our knees so we looked like clowns, or striped boxers pulled up to the nipples and the waste band down below the cracks of our asses and thought we were hot shit like the morons of today.
Emulating poverty and raising drug selling, abuse and smacking women around to a high art form in song is not cool. Nor is promoting racial separation or hatred.
If only all rap fans were like you and downloaded their music for free instead of paying for it, rap will be gone soon enough.
No you won’t.
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Yes, just like I said. You get your idea of “the ghetto” from TV. Watching Good Times and Starsky and Hutch reruns is does not count as “been to the ghetto.”
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WTF does this mean? No I don’t know of any place like this. What white boy paranoia wet dream did you get this from?
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Or maybe it’s not TV. Maybe you’re channeling Raymond Chandler.
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Holy shit! Armed guards at the A&P and the welfare office? And I thought The South Bronx was a rough neighborhood! Oh wait, I actually grew up in the South Bronx and am not having Paranoid White Boy Fantasies.
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No, I don’t think you’ve got the picture. I think it’s PWBF syndrome. The only thing missing from this screed is the part where you get arrested for walking around with a gun so that you could spew about how white people are unfairly targetted and all you were doing was protecting yourself.
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Ah, it’s all becoming clear. You were a skinhead in your day.
You are not listening to rap if this is what you think it is all that is going on. But I’m not waisting my time on you anymore because you’re TV induced PWBF have apparently made so you deaf and blind that you cannot hear or read what anyone in this thread has written.
You could have made your post really short and just written: I don’t like rap because poor black and hispanics scare the bejeezus outta me.
I’m through with you in this thread LongRoad
Dryga_Yes
I don’t need to be converted. I like all kind of music either old or new, either rap or pop or reggae or rock or… But mostly rock, I must admit it. As I’ve personally noticed, there is always a tendency to turn non-music into music through the creation of new styles. Personally I think that rap hasn’t been the most fruitful in this respect. But, of course, this may be a matter of taste.
Now may be a good time to quote Rick, The Peoples Poet from The Young Ones: "The only reason you dont listen to our music is because you don`t like it!"
That’s the point here that you are apparently missing. The rap advocates here keep ranting “Just listen to it, just listen to it”. The fact is, as has been pointed out, rap has been around for 25 years; critics of the genre HAVE listened to it and we’re STILL critical. How long does it take to “get used” to something? That WOULD be called brainwashing.
It’s a little conceited to think that if someone is critical of something, they are miseducated in it or underexposed to it.
Would it be such a slap in the face to accept that there are those who HAVE educated themselves, HAVE exposed themselves, and wouldn’t dream of speaking out on something unless they’ve gained the proper experience and STILL are critical of the subject in question?
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, good night!!!
I love you, Biggirl.
Tarkus: I’m not an expert on Japanese culture just because I’ve seen episodes of Iron Chef. I don’t know jazz just 'cause I’ve heard Kenny G. Get the picture? The music recommended on this thread is being recommended because it counters your perceptions about rap music. You are, therefore, miseducated and underexposed to the degree that you’re making generalizations which are inaccurate. If someone says, “rap music’s all about bitches and money,” and is then pointed to fifty different rap artists whose music has nothing to do with either, I’d suggest it was incumbent upon them to educate themselves a little bit more before continuing to paint all members of a genre with a single, broad, quasi-racist brush.
So take my De La Soul…please! 
And Tarkus, your claims to have listened to rap would carry a little more weight if you had even once made a statement that didn’t start with “it’s all [insert generalisation]”. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen you name one single rapper with whom you have a problem. You’re taking the cheap shot of making blurry statements about a whole body of work, and not bothering to concede that in individual cases you might be wrong. Sure, there are examples of rappers that embody everything you find wrong with rap (and most of them are in D-12, it seems). But there are counter-examples to every single complaint as well. The fact that you persist in making broad statements of misguided opinion tells me that you did not bother to actually go listen to any rap, or at least not any that might prove you wrong.
Personally, I’m only responding to this thread because I think it’s sad that something I enjoy immensely can be ignored for such dumb reasons. And more than that, it’s sad that someone can be so determined to dislike something that they wilfully ignore every possibility that they might be wrong.
So what’s Tarkus supposed to do, search far and wide to find one song that isn’t offensive to an entire genre and be converted. They’ll always be exceptions to the rule.
Forget gengre’s, take one artist that you like, are you going to tell me that you like everthing that artist has done? You can probably make the statement that “I like that artist, but that song is shit”. And if you can make THAT statement, you can also say “I like that song, but the rest of it is shit”.
Thanks Omni. I’m fighting a cold and I’m all Nyquil’d out. I don’t have much fight in me today.
What LongRoad and Omni said, I concur.
FearItself, that’s funny. Couldn’t have said it better.
I’m going to take a nap.
I can give you the name of the city, BIGGIRL, but why bother?
As for rap, one of the main reasons I dislike it is because I do not like the way it sounds. I don’t consider the droning of poor poetry with a ghetto accent as music even with a musical back ground.
And in this case, the exceptions are the rule. That is, the number of artists we’ve cited to the contrary–those that don’t embody your stereotypical notions of rap music–far outweigh any that have been invoked as constitutive of “typical” rap music. Put up or shut up.
Plus, as someone said on the first page, you can make ill-informed generalizations about every genre of music, because (as Sturgeon says) 90 percent of everything is crap. Rock music is all about partying. Techno and ambient are all about taking drugs. Country is all about shitkicking and crying in your beer. The blues are all about who done you wrong (hey to Yemen). Repeat: That some examples of a musical genre are awful does not mean that the genre itself is awful. Tastes differ, sure, but when you’re putting statements out there such as “rap all has the same beat” and “rap is all about gangsta ghetto topics,” then expect to be proven wrong when someone rattles off umpteen examples to the contrary.
LongRoad, you can meet me in the Pit. Gimme about ten minutes, 'kay?
Here ya go.
The funny thing is, I don’t like much rap either. I don’t seek it out, i’ve only ever bought one album, and I’m not real educated on what’s going on in the rap world.
The difference between myself and Tarkus and Longroad is that I’m aware of my ignorance of the field, and I therefore don’t make these big generalizations.
My reasons for not liking most of the rap that I’ve heard are similar to my reasons for not liking most of the heavy metal that I’ve heard:
-Melody with chordic structures isn’t emphasized in a lot of rap, as in a lot of heavy metal
-There’s a lot of “fuzz” in both (electric guitars in heavy metal, percussion/recordscratching in rap)
-The voices in both often sound shouty, which makes me tense.
This doesn’t, of course, apply to all heavy metal or all rap. But it applies to a lot of both genres, and my tastes in music run toward:
-Strong melodies and harmonies
-Tonal noises over fuzzy/percussive noises
-Non-shouty voices
There are other things I like in music – stories, clever metaphors, rapid and complicated note progressions. Rap and heavy metal both use these things pretty often.
But when I turn on the radio, I tend to listen to '80s rock or country, since it tends to have more of the stuff I like. If there were a station that played lots of Arrested Development or Sweet Honey in the Rock, I’d listen to it more often. Or if I had a friend who knew both my musical tastes and a lot about rap, I’m sure they could recommend stuff to me that I’d like.
You see how i phrased these things without condemning the genre? Any judgement made from ignorance reflects more on the judge than on the judged, IMHO.
Daniel
This is a truly fascinating thread.
Some details to contextualize my perspective:
As a music lover who is largely rap-ignorant, I have to say that my impression of most rap is also negative. I have enjoyed a few songs, like the collaboration between En Vogue and Salt ‘N Peppa, “What a Man”. (I am very afraid that this makes me sound like a schmoe who walks into Cordon Bleu restaurant and says “Hey, I sure like those French fries!”) I am also a biracial, Asian American in his thirties who grew up in and around Chicago and its northern suburbs. Definitely upper-middle-class. Most rap sounds quite monotonous to me, but, as this thread clearly illustrates, one’s impressions of rap (and hip-hop) cannot really be separated from cultural experience.
Some thoughts inspired by this thread:
I have not given rap a fair hearing. I will try to find some the suggestions made here and see if I can hear the virtues being described. You make it sound really fascinating!
I have avoided listening to rap more because of many of the negative cultural associations already described here, rather than any sense of musical aversion. After all, I enjoy other musical forms which have no melody at all, like Japanese Taiko or Korean Poongmul drumming. Listening to rap means confronting my own prejudices, and automatic association with poor, black and latino criminal cultures. I would really love to hear more in the music, if only to help me move past my own fears to develop a larger understanding of cultures very different from my own.
While much of this conversation has understandably focused on race, it seems to me that class culture is really more germane. I would bet that many of rap-haters here may very well say they love George Benson, Leontyne Price, Lenny Kravitz or Ray Charles. Of course, trying to separate racism and classism is problematic at best, but the point I am trying to make (in dealing with my own troubled feelings about all this) is that my antipathy for rap and arises from its negative associations with violence, misogyny, and drug cultures. It is too easy for me to associate this with race, and then to blame race for things that are really caused by economic conditions.
Perhaps the most interesting thought this thread has inspired has to do with beauty. I have come to understand that the mystery of beauty is very much tied to one’s sense of order. A piece of art, be it literary, visual or aural, is perceived as beautiful according to how it stimulates and reflects one’s sense of order in the universe. But art is not simply about beauty, it is about expanding the boundaries of human understanding and experience, which is why Great Art is often perceived at first as ugly or even profane; it reaches beyond the current sense of order and shakes its assumptions, it establishes dissonance to challenge one’s understanding of The Way Things Are. As one’s understanding of a particular piece grows, so does one’s aesthetic sense. Eventually, a piece that may have struck me initially as hideous may help me understand not only beauty in a new way, but an entire realm of human experience. Frida Kahlo’s work would be an excellent example of this.
Now, I am not trying to say that rap is Great Art (or that any art could or ought to validate violence, misogyny, or drug abuse). However, rap clearly comes from and communicates an aesthetic very different from my own, and many of the posters in this thread have persuaded me that rap has much more to offer than I ever appreciated. Thank you!
Tastes in music like a lot of other things is entirely subjective. One person’s favorite music may be another person’s soundtrack of the damned. Posters who were not exposed to it when there musical tastes were being formed aren’t going to like it. Not everyone likes the same music, nor should they.
I personally dislike country with some exceptions. Many of the comments that people have made about rap all sounding the same have been made by me about country. I think that if you are predisposed to not like a genre or haven’t been exposed to it, upon hearing it you will think it all sounds the same. I realize that there are some country artists who are very talented and maybe even some that are doing truly groundbreaking stuff, but as a rule, I don’t like the genre, and I maybe never will. This is the case for many people with regard to hip hop
Wow Gadarene, someone’s spending too much at their computer. Stop being so sensitive. It’s not good for the heart.
Time. Spending too much time.