Rap Music

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: dwditty
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 07:25 PM

Oscar Brown,Jr. wrote and performed a rap song (although it wasn't called rap then) called Man Earnest Boy on his circa 1962 release, Tells It Like It is. It is one more reason I harken back to Zappa's quote, "You know, people, I'm not black, but there's a whole lotta times I wish I could say I wasn't white."

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: meatrail
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 07:11 PM

As a far as monotonous music goes, I've had folks come up and say to me that all bluegrass sounds alike after listening a while, not something I ever noticed though.

I read somewhere that the first Europeans to visit Africa couldn't appreciate the multicomplexity of the African rhythms and so thought it was just one big cacaphony. And olde English, Irish, and Scottish folksongs do rely on a mostly unvarying tune from verse to verse - letting the changing words tell the tale, convey the emotion, whatever. Pretty much like contemporary country music does. Which according to what I've read and heard first-hand from other musicians, is why country music as well as Brit folksongs is considered boring by many blacks - who are used to more of a mosaic of music and more repetition of words to tell the tale, convey the emotion, etc. as in blues and rhythm & blues.

I really enjoy thinking about your alls articulate discussions on this thread. A lotta time I don't express my views exactly like I think 'em - but looking over what I just writ, it may be that black Rap musicians are experimenting with "white" music - more words and less tunes.

Tunney

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Fortunato
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 05:28 PM

It's crap.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: TIA
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 05:23 PM

Clinton Hammond: on 14 Nov, 02 at 1:58, you quoted me (GUEST TIM) as if to dispute me, but then made my point (albeit much less subtley). Read me again, I totally agree with you.

Tim

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Wordless Woman
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 05:02 PM

Shame it's not hum-able. On the other hand, no danger of the tune getting stuck in your head.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 11:59 AM

Adam, Thanks for telling. Figures, you write a mean post, my friend. My father taught German and was a poet, at Western KY U.

Guest above, I once mistook half a dozen songs by different "alternative" bands for a record by one pretty good band with a narrow stylistic range. Also, I believe all Dickenson's poems can be sung to The Yellow Rose of Texas. Variety is where you find it, I guess.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 08:01 PM

I reemeber my nephew who lives in Australia, many years ago put on a rap LP, (Rember them) and I was listening to it, and after a while I thought to myself that's a long song, so I got up and I found that the 'rap singer' had really sang four songs.
So how can anyone say that's folk music.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From:
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 06:42 PM

I'm at Truman State University, a small public liberal arts college in NE Missouri, generally well thought-of. I teach language and literature of the middle ages, cover some linguistics, pinch-hit in German (picked it up when a pretty Austrian girl said she'd have me. We had to talk SOMETIME.). To my chagrin, some scribbled poetry and fiction has won more attention than my scholarship (hard fight with a short stick) so they've got me teaching that, too. My specialty in medieval was comparative oral tradition (which leads actually out of English and into anthropologically-oriented folklore). I'm webmaster and currently prez of the Missouri Folklore Society -- will you put up with a plug? http://www2.truman.edu/~adavis/mfs.html.

So there's my story, such as it is. I'm very interested in all things folk, and glad to be tolerated on the Mudcat, though my musical ability/knowledge is far behind my enthusiasm/interest (I like to think I make a contribution by promoting folk music events in my area). For those who live in or around the state that (I think) borders more states than any other, the homepage maintains a calendar of events (plug, plug).

Thanks for asking. I love this place and everybody in it.

Adam

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: poetlady
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 06:19 PM

I think rap can sound odd, disturbingly so, when one is not used to it. Growing up I heard rap music all the time. I did not like it at all, and will admit to having had a very closed-minded view of it. Just recently, I have listened to it again, and caught myself actually liking it. It mayn't be the most intelligent music, but it sure beats the largest portion of pop, and some of it is actually, as Fred Miller said, quite amusing (intentionally amusing). However, maybe I'm just getting nostalgic about ugly music because it reminds me of my childhood.

I do think age has a bit to do with it. I think people usually end up liking what they're used to, and unless you're younger you probably haven't heard much rap.

I, myself, used to hate folk music, but I had a teacher who played it quietly at the back of the room all the time, and before long I started liking it. It was like learning to drink coffee. Most people hate it when they first drink it, but try it a few times, and you don't mind it. Drink it a few times more and you are a scary caffeine addict who has to have their latte to keep from killing people.

Because people usually like what they're used to, ethnicity is also a factor. I can see why white people from predominately white areas might find the music foreign and unpleasant sounding, but I grew up in a place where they called me "white girl," so that doesn't apply to me. Having moved to an area where there are few African-Americans, I'd have to say that even the young people here don't tend to like rap.

I think it just boils down to what we are used to and what we can relate to. (Of course, you can always try to expand your horizons and like new things. :) )

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Ron Olesko
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 05:40 PM

This discussion has nothing to do with "black" content - it is simply about art, music and free speech.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: wilco
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 05:27 PM

If the request were made for some very offensive, adolescent pop lyrics came from any other source, they would have generated no interest. The politically correct position is to be hyper-sensitive about anything that has any "black" context. Rap is adolescent, hormone-driven drivel.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:13 PM

I don't have anything to add to this, but Adam, who are you, what do you teach? I keep noticing your posts and imagine you write?

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 12:45 PM

Duck of the Irish, I'm absolutely with you on that one. The monotony and tyranny of the beat is what drives me away from embracing the genre wholeheartedly, despite what I consider to be the importance and sometime high quality of the lyrics. There are very interesting things being done with the language of rap and hip hop--fascinating things that are highly original. But the beat really drags down too much of it for me personally. I can love Ja Rule, because he has that R & B melody thing he is doing with the beat, but then lyrically, I don't think his stuff is as strong as Dre, or NWA, or some of the hardcore stuff.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,The Duck of the Irish
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 12:15 PM

I remember the first time I heard rap long ago. It was kind of interesting, but i kept hearing it again, and again. I can't figure out why so many people love so many renditions of the exact same tune.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 09:20 PM

Maybe it is rap spelling that throws you off.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,I hate rap music
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 08:18 PM

How can anyone call Rap Music 'Music' all it is crap, with a capital C.
It's a idiot who is chanting with a drum beat playing behind them, and being offenceive, and I have never funny rap record, exepct when a Scottish Comden called Johnny Beattie did one called the Glasgow Rap.
but a part from that Rap music is mostly shite.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 07:53 PM

This is an excerpt from "Newswatch" a newsletter from the Annenberg School of Communications, at UPenn:

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/jsexton/NewsWatch/issue9.htm

"Reading between the lies"

Volume 1, Issue 9

August 4, 1997



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Rewards of Responsible Journalism

In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News printed the infamous "CIA-contra-crack" series "Dark Alliance" by reporter Gary Webb. The story documented links between crack cocaine dealers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, drug smugglers, CIA agents/contacts and the CIA-backed terrorist army in Nicaragua. The story gained national attention, especially in African-American neighborhoods which had been destroyed by the effects of crack addiction, drug dealing, drug-related crime, and gang violence (the US mainstream media tended to report these concerned African-Americans as paranoid conspiracy theorists).

This story is not new. The contra war began in 1981-2. Reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that some contra troops were involved with shipments of cocaine sent to the United States through Costa Rica back in 1985. The Associated Press wire service refused to run the story. Interestingly, the story was accidentally sent out to some foreign AP offices, and then printed in most Spanish-speaking countries in the Western hemisphere. But word still did not get out to the audience in the United States.

Gary Webb's articles secured more attention than any other article in the Mercury News' history. One would think that this would make him a hero, and that he would be treated as such by his paper, and the journalistic community as a whole. Not so.

Despite thorough research, the "Dark Alliance" was attacked by most mainstream newspapers for its wild claims (mainstream news could hardly agree however, as they had been suppressing this story for years. To praise Webb would be to admit either incompetence or complicity. In some circles the CIA-crack connection has been common knowledge. This humble editor has know for at least 6 years); since these criticisms, Webb has found even more evidence and written four additional, highly detailed stories that he submitted to his editors several months ago. However, Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos claims that Webb had merely turned in "notes," not complete articles (Webb denies this). And just recently, Ceppos printed an editorial apologizing for not being as responsible as they should have been regarding the "Dark Alliance" series. Ceppos' apology makes very few concrete concessions, but to the casual observer, it would seem to be a retraction.

But perhaps these are just efforts to fend off external attacks. Surely Webb has received internal support, a raise, promotion pat on the back? Hardly. Webb has been transferred to the Mercury News suburban bureau in Cupertino, California,150 miles away from his home, wife, and children. Webb says, "This is just harassment. This isn't the first time that a reporter went after the CIA and lost his job over it." These actions by the Mercury News are not only a punishment to Webb, but serve as an extremely potent warning to other journalists: "Avoid real controversy or you're out of a job."

Sources: EXTRA!, San Jose Mercury News, The Progressive, Fooling America by Robert Parry

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 07:46 PM

To the guest who defended gangsta rap (I wish you would use your name!), you are right.. I didn't mean to suggest that ALL gangsta rap is harmful. That goes against the point I was trying to make. Wrong choice of words on my part. You very eloquently described why rap is important.   It is not my choice of music that I like to listen to, but it has a very important role.

Ron

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From:
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 04:52 PM

Well, Chris Cooke, I think there's a responsible running acknowledgment of the limits of our experience, and therefore the limits of our claims. That said, yes indeedy, I'll re-affirm what I said about what is called "rap" on mainstream radio, and I do bleeve I've heard enough and more. Very secure in my judgment of it. It's mass culture crap, like pretty nearly everything else on mainstream radio, except the rest of it doesn't play the race card or claim to be folk, and I'm hostile to those claims when I find them to be dishonest, because they attempt an end-run around criticism. I think there's a very serious distinction to be made between countering criticism and declaring something off-limits to criticism.

I have no argument with the hostility to mass culture, white-culture, the enunciation of young blacks' experience in the roots of rap, and in music which I haven't heard and therefore don't take it on myself to judge. But the mall-hip crowd, the eight-mile crowd (I spent my teen years crusing Eight Mile)? Puh-leeeze. Those are different claims.

Somebody else can take the trolled bait about the CIA inventing crack.

Adam

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 04:23 PM

You're all

There is no "all". Reading through the thread you actually see a range of different views about this.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Chris Cooke
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 04:04 PM

I think the number of people passing rap off as music from a culture guilty of enforcing social stereotypes are incredibly short sighted not to see the obvious hipocracy involved in their statements. Since when has a catch all net of generalisation and presumptions based on little knowledge other than a vague recollection of a concept been a constructive basis for judging a genre/race/culture/system of beleifs. You're all a bunch of inbred red necks

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:43 PM

And I LOVE Ja Rule.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:42 PM

From Pacific News Service:

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=759

Grindin' -- When Hip Hop Goes Retro, It's Woe in the Ghetto
Kevin Weston, Pacific News Service, Jul 26, 2002

The thump and crack of early 1980s hardcore beats are back on the streets of urban America, writes PNS contributor Kevin Weston. That means desperation and violence are back, too, as a cutthroat drive for survival energizes hip hop even as conditions in the 'hood deteriorate.

OAKLAND, Calif.--That earthquake-like beat in the distance is the sound of hip hop returning to underground roots put down in the '80s. Hip hop was hardcore back then, because hard times were spreading like the flu -- just like now.

Tik crack

Thump/thump

Thump/thump

Boom/Boom/Boom

It's the sound that only hip hop can make. It's different from the usual West Coast/Southern "funk" hop (Lil Wayne, Dre, DJ Quik, Snoop), NY superstar rap (Nas, Jay Z) and flavor-of-the-month hip pop/R&B (Ashanti/Ja Rule, Usher) that booms from car stereos.

That "tik crack" drum track "Grindin''" by Virginia-based rap duo The Clipse comes through my East Oakland three-way intersection four or five times a night, toppling The Big Tymers' "Hood Rich" from first place on my own unofficial street-bump chart.

To "grind" is to work your hustle, whether it be drugs, stocks or real estate. In these tough times, everybody is grindin', with the same cutthroat "earn by all means necessary" attitude of a CEO or gangster.

Listen to Malice, who, with Pusha T, writes The Clipse's raps:

"My grind's 'bout family, never been about fame

From days I wasn't "Abel/able", there was always "Cain/caine"

Four and a half will get you in the game

Anything less is just a goddamn shame

Guess the weight, my watch got blue chips in the face

Glock with two tips, whoever gets in the way

Not to mention the hideaway that rests by the lake

Consider my raw demeanor the icing on the cake

I'm grinding."

Sound familiar? Reaganomics, excessive materialism, high crime, crack, the first round of welfare reform, the scourge of AIDS, high unemployment, urban decay, poor schools, the rise of gangs and rampant police brutality defined the nation's urban landscape in the 1980s.

Now, more than just the attitude in Malice's lyrics or the song's infectious beats recall the '80s. Nationwide, the overall crime rate is up for the first time in a decade. In Oakland, the number of murders threatens to double from last year's total of 48.

Preachers and community leaders held a "peace march" in response to the recent rash of mostly Black-on-Black violence. A similar march was held in 1986, when Oakland was literally "crackin'." At the height of the crack-inspired turf wars in 1992, more than 200 people were murdered here. Most of the killings were drug related, with Black victims and perpetrators.

The bloodletting of the mid-'80s through the early '90s set the stage for the L.A. riots in 1992, the massive jailing program known as the Clinton Crime Bill in 1994 and the redemptive vibes of the Million Man March in 1995. Eventually, rap music smoothed out and became mainstream.

But "Grindin'" has the aural aesthetic of hip hop born in early '80s hardcore beats. The single -- produced by the Asian and Black hit-making duo known as The Neptunes -- is all beat and boom, completely stripped down to the naked soul of ghetto-bred rhythm.

There have been similar sounds in the history of rap. Run DMC's "Sucker M.C.s," Mantronics "Fresh Is the Word," Audio Two's "Top Billin'," Ice T's "6 in Da Mornin'," UTFO's "Roxanne Roxanne" and Easy E's (RIP) "Boyz in Da Hood" -- all were made in the mid- to late 1980s, when hip hop wasn't on commercial radio.

Dr. Dre's classic "The Chronic," released in 1992, and its melodic hit single "Nuthin But a G Thang" was more like an R&B tune, a sing-songy departure from the hardcore. "Nuthin" was one of the first gangsta rap singles to get mainstream radio play. The sound was reconciling and laid back, like an L.A. sunset. The video featured a barbecue and house party -- two activities that were almost impossible to do in the roaring '80s of drive-bys and crack kingpins like Oakland's Felix Mitchell, L.A.'s Rick "Freeway" Ross and New York's Nicky Barnes.

That smooth formula has ruled from the mid-'90s until now.

The "raw demeanor" that Malice raps about is the attitude of desperation and greedy ambition that drove Felix Mitchell and many others to contribute to the destruction of the community while feeding their families -- a bitter irony made possible only in America. I expect the music to get better as times threaten to get worse.

"Grindin'" reaffirms hip hop's musical power. If hip hop becomes a revolutionary cultural force for change again, know that conditions in the 'hoods where the sounds are born are getting more desperate and hectic. That's good for the music, bad for the 'hood.

Weston [e-mail] is editor of Youth Outlook (YO!), a magazine by and about Bay Area youth that can be found at www.youthoutlook.org.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Firecat
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:36 PM

I appreciate that everyone has their own taste in music, but from what I have read of this particular thread, it seems that all people are doing is saying that rap is rubbish.

Please bear in mind that a lot of people in the 15 to 25 age group (myself included) happen to like this particular form of music and accept it for what it is. Sure, it may occasionally include some controversial topics, but if people criticise rap for that, how do you think they'd deal with some of the folk songs? Just because rap doesn't fit into "acceptable" criteria, people say it's bad. Rap is meant to listened to and enjoyed, not analysed deeply.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:32 PM

Now wait a minute--I have to defend some gangsta rap too. The original gangsta rap wasn't concerned at all with the niggas and bitches thing. It was about police brutality, the politics of extreme poverty, and the grassroots response to the so-called "war on drugs" that came hand in hand with what I, and a good number of other people including Maxine Waters, believe was the deliberate introduction of crack cocaine to the most impoverished sections of urban America by the CIA.

That, to me, is what rap music comes out of--that rage of the crack wars, and the fight for the survival of a completely ostracized American community--the poor and working class inner city black community. Our government declared war on that community in the wake of the 60s and early 70s radicalism of those communities--crack cocaine was introduced by agents outside that community, to destroy it.   THAT is what gangsta rap was all about. And thank god they fought back with that music, otherwise that community may well have been destroyed, the same way many other marginalized poor communities have been destroyed over the centuries.

If you didn't live in an inner city neighborhood that was being destroyed by crack, then you have no idea what that music was about, unless you have made an effort to learn about it. Absolutely no clue.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:20 PM

I was away this weekend at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference. I attended a wonderful workshop with Oscar Brand, Gene Shay of WXPN in Philadelphia and Rich Warren of WFMT in Chicago. The topic of the workshop was censorship.   In regards to radio adn television, one of the items I took away from the workshop was how 1 letter of complaint can taint or destroy. Even if the complaint has no validity, the PERCEPTION can become reality.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is a lot of interpreting of SOME elements of rap music, but to read some of the posts here one would think that this music is completely destructive. Most of you (myself included) claim to not listen or like the music, but are also quick to point out what a terrible influence this music is.   In realty you've probably read or watched a news report about a murdered rap star or looked up Eminem's lyrics.   That is snapshot of segment of rap music, it is not the entire genre. It is NOT what MTV is presenting on a daily basis.

Remember how the Weaver's were blacklisted, how it took decades for Woody Guthrie's hometown to RECOGNIZE that he was born there, how people burned Beatles albums and Catcher in the Rye, how the Nazis outlawed music, and how government and commercial interests dictate what we listen to today.   

Do you have to like the music? Of course not, I don't care for it either. Is gangsta rap healthy? No, but the answer is to provide an alternative and educate. I think rap is doing that in it's own house.   Not all rap is destructive, much of it is empowering. It's all well and good to air ones opinion here, but make sure it is thought out and researched and you have a solution, not just a complaint.

Ron

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 03:01 PM

The 41-year old friend I mentioned above says he likes Kid Rock, that KR is 'up' in the face of defeat, that there are two CDs of his he particularly likes. Me, I decided that there are LOTS of other forms of music I like; I don't have to like them all.

Strangely enough, I realized that there are two songs from the fairly distant past (50s and 60s) that are basically rap, albeit with a more tentative presentation: Alley Oop and Love Potion Number Nine.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: meatrail
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 02:43 PM

Sarah Jones is one of them I like. And Queen LaTiFah (sp?). Glade turned me on to Arrested Development who she got turned on to after hearing them and then hearing them disrespected by Rush Limbaugh or sum son. Unfortunately Arrested Development broke up. A shame, cause they was good and had some real inspirational lyrics and definitely not women haters. I can't say I know too much about Rap or Hip Hop but I think AR was one of the few groups ever who had men and women members.
Tunney

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 12:52 PM

I don't have a problem with the rejection of popular mass youth culture of rap and hip hop, because that isn't the "folk" aspect of the music. The Last Poets, whom I mentioned above, Sarah Jones, and many others, have appeared on the HBO "Russell Simmon's Def Poetry" series. Try giving that a shot, and you'll quickly find that it ain't all about the adolescent male "niggas and bitches."

Gil Scott Heron was heavily influenced by Last Poets. Sarah Jones had a hip hop song "Your Revolution" that challenged the niggas and bitches shit banned by the FCC. You can read about it at her website:

http://www.yourrevolutionisbanned.com/

There is a strong connection between the counterculture hip hop movement and the spoken word/poetry slam movement.

My biggest criticism of hip hop/spoken word/poetry slam stuff is it is still monotonous after you listen to it for awhile--it is still a movement dominated by the young, screaming at their elders. Just ask me--I judged for the National Poetry Slam in Minneapolis last August.

Like anything else, there is a good deal of mediocrity and monotony to the sound of the stuff. But when it is good, man it is ASTOUNDING.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From:
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 12:28 PM

Agreed, agreed and agreed. I'd want to be very clear that I consider myself almost totally ignorant about the range of music that might be called "rap," and the things that make me reject what I hear on the radio may have to do with why I reject the products of mass culture pretty generally. So I wouldn't want to be understood as passing a general judgment on a variety of music so much as on a wing of the entertainment industry which continually represents itself as democratic, while production and distribution are far more elitist than the snootiest poetry curriculum.

Adam

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 10:37 AM

Wow, the above thoughtful post, with which I know just enough good rap, hip-hop, to very respectfully disagree, on some points. And I think if I took the implication about the performance values, apart from musical interest, and if I ever went to rap or hip-hop things, I might disagree more.

   I worked out for myself that I needn't feel compelled to take a respectful approach to expressions of culture that I can't in fact countenance. I don't shed crocodile tears for the ancient traditions of cultures that were built on human rights infringements, for example, and permit myself not to have to care--I've got my own culture to examine for whatever lessons that may teach. But I found some good rap by knowing a few people who liked it, and who hate the commercial mainstream probably more than people who just wish it would all go away. The good rap I know is mainly a comedic thing, sits all right with Aristotle (it's characters are worse than his average), Bergman (something mechanical inlaid over the human), and asks profound questions like those lightly touched on in the Re-writing Someone's Song thread.

It's quite possible that people who say they hate rap really do, no matter which stuff they've heard. I leave the door half-open.

   I also believe that aesthetics is still the critical question of art, although the trend has been a shift away from that. It seems to me that a pseudo-scientific empirical approach, a needing to account for art that is widely accepted as important art, is part of the shift. I'm comfortable thinking that some of that Important Art isn't as important as it seems, and that aesthetics, rather than Art History, should be at the center of an art curriculum.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From:
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 09:59 PM

Interesting point raised a while back: is rap folk music? If so, most of us would be troubled by rejecting it, not because we're in love with the label, but because there's an ethic of self-restraint that kicks in when you approach the material of another folk. I'm thinking I would react very differently to the same material I took away from my kid (Tupac, Eminem) if it were being played live (and in a club or other intimate, human-scale venue, rather than a stadium-size concert). Nope, what's on the radio is mass-produced crap, poisonous posturing. You hate to court charges of racism by rejecting a form of music considered "black," but I know more than a few black people who resent the hell out the identification of rap culture as black culture, and cheerfully reject the "culture" of adolescent hedonism, violence, sexism, indolence, arrogance, grandiosity, laziness and the self-indulgent pose of despair, along with the mystifying assumption that all of this shitheadedness is supposed to be exitentially heroic.

Several noted that more traditional folk music (sure, call it "white" folk) deals with ugly stuff too. But not in celebratory ways, and here's the really important point: it comes from a different economy of music, pre-recording; its dynamics assume face-to-face presence, reciprocity and equality between singer and listeners. Under those conditions, there's a back-&-forth that makes the song a communal production, and imposes mutaul contstraints -- constraints which ARE the warrant by which such music is called "folk." What makes a music folk is not the performer or the style, but the total interactive event (though styles, once sufficiently invested in this dynamic, can summon appropriate responses from those listening even to recordings, at least until the original event-types or venues which trained the listener in this type of response disappear altogether). Rap, on the other hand, is a one-way communication, rooted in individual, personal aggression and the tawdriest of ambitions -- superstardom, celebrity without reference to the value of what makes you notorious.

Or a completely different level of rejection, and maybe too deep for me this late: aesthetics has always been a branch of philosophy because it's always been understood, intuitively, that what you think is Beautiful must be closely linked to what you think is True and to what you think is Good. Rap, at least the commercial stuff which is all, I admit, I'm acquainted with (and that as little as possible) makes noxious propositions on all three.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,uncle bud
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 09:46 PM

Isnt Rap Music an oxymoron? Bud

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 09:10 PM

Kendall, as the senator from New Mexico (?) said, when called 'mediocre', "Mediocre people need representation too".

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 05:44 PM

Well, thiis is a bit pedantic on my part, but that's just another word for wanting to keep things accurate. But surely "mediocrity" just means doing something middling well, and that covers most people most of the time.

I don't see that the fact that I might do some things, like playing the guitar, moderately well in any way gets in the way of my admiring people who can play the guitar a lot better than I do. In fact I'd say it helps me appreciate what they are doing a lot more than I would if I didn't play.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: kendall
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 05:27 PM

I hate to sound like a snob, but, Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Glade
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 05:22 PM

Ah, Tunney, m'dear, would that Dan Quayle had studied Wittgenstein!
Glade

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 09:51 PM

Just yesterday I sat here at the computer with a 41-year-old friend who used to be the sound man for a traveling punk band. He was telling me that some rap is GOOD, "not that I expect you

So I said, 'OK, let's read some lyrics.' I put 'Eminem' into Google.
We sat here and read five or six 'songs'...

Elvis may have trivialized 'love' but there's no way anyone can say that he promoted gang rape, murder, incest, stalking, or the ugly imagery of committing sundry varieties of harm.

Beware! The Rap Gods are on the loose. Part of my post disappeared. It should have said:

"...some rap is GOOD, "not that I expect you/em> to like it", given my age/history/bent. He also said that Presley in his time had generated the same kind of negative attention from parents, clergy and 'good' musicians as rap 'musicians' are getting.

"So I said, 'OK, let's read some lyrics', etc, etc.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 06:49 PM

"You ever stop to think that perhap you are NOT the target audience (and I'm sure the rappers are very happy about that" Clinton Hammond

"...the answer comes out of fear, hatred, and insanity. You can't respect that. Ron Olesko

Just yesterday I sat here at the computer with a 41-year-old friend who used to be the sound man for a traveling punk band. He was telling me that some rap is GOOD, "not that I expect you
So I said, 'OK, let's read some lyrics.' I put 'Eminem' into Google.
We sat here and read five or six 'songs'...

Elvis may have trivialized 'love' but there's no way anyone can say that he promoted gang rape, murder, incest, stalking, or the ugly imagery of committing sundry varieties of harm.

I have no problem with the language - I am an adult. I'm also not going to act out what I listened to. But the target audience is our young'uns.

After linking to that and to the above rap links, the only thing I'm afraid of is that I'm going to start getting some really odd spam!

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: meatrail
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:29 PM

There's some Rap I like real well. I don't see why any music site should be all things to all people or why folks should feel apologetic about if they ain't. Sounds like most folks here don't care too much for Rap or know too much about it and like Wittgenstein said,"That of which we do not know is that of which we should not speak" or some such or mebbe it was Dan Quayle said it. Not that you ain't entitled to your opinions on sampling a little bit of something. You're on the right track when you didn't hold yourselves out as Rap Music experts when the first guest asked his question.

Tunney

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 10:32 AM

I was teaching a "pop" culture course at Winston Salem State, a predominently African-American school. We were studying rap music and its effect on culture. I asked my students to bring in some CD's so we could analyze the music.

I warned students that if they were offended by the lyrics that they didn't have to participate and could be excused from class (none responded).

So we put on a "gangsta" rap CD and cranked it up. Much to my surprise the head of the music department came in the class. He came in and caught some %&%^^%#^ and @#%^$^. I turned off the CD and he turned red as a beet (he is African-American also but does that matter).

I still consider rap to be an art form and a music form and it's not just for blacks so don't stero (boom box)type it.

Is Kemo Kimo is a rap song?
Teemy tim-o in the land of neo Pharoah said a rat trap peeny winkle timey doodle rattle buggy rat trap peenie winkle tie me oh (just kidding).

-Richie

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: Amos
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 10:18 AM

Harvey,

THe image of you standing on a chair and beating a speaker with your hat is one which will stay with me for years. Thanks for having the hutzpah --even if under provocation--to do that!! Made my morning!


A

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: kendall
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 10:06 AM

If being dirt poor and disadvantaged were the only requirements I'd be king of the rappers.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 09:43 AM

I think a few people may be missing the point of rap playing into the stereotyped black male, the big bad wolf, which rap didn't invent, but uses. Again, it can be very deeply funny, transgressive, inventive. The closest Tupac Shakur was to a gang when he was growing up was the mouse king in the nutcracker. It doesn't matter to me musically whether someone white or black had it hard or not.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 09:18 AM

... and you would be no different than those who carry boom boxes!

There is a certain civility and ... respect... that all parties should maintain.   There is no reason for a retail store to blare out ANY type of music.

Sample everything! I bet Delius had trouble in his time!

Ron

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: harvey andrews
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 07:35 AM

Okay Ron, point taken. Live and let live, but let's keep it out of the shopping mall speakers or I might have to walk around with a sound system strapped to my body playing Delius. That'd shift the bastards!!

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,A
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 10:40 PM

I think Ron Olesko and Richie have the right take on this. Some of the music is damn thought-provoking. Not all of it is centered on violence. Most of it, as someone mentioned, is about the human condition, from personal to all-inclusive. The presentation grates on me, and my ears take a beating, but I remember when my kids were playing Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, etc. on the basement set-up. Now I realize that some of those people were damn good, inventive musicians.
I have caught up to their messages. I still prefer older folk, blues and classical music ("my kind"). I can't shed my spots but maybe I can add some different sizes and shapes to them.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 10:18 PM

I teach some rap and new rock music. Rap is definately in the white rock mainstream and is one direction new music is headed. Many new rock songs have sections of rapped lyrics.

I say there's nothing wrong with it. I think it should be OK to allow rap and other types of music to be dicussed here.

-Richie

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 10:04 PM

I guess you don't consider haiku literature either Kendall? Look at Keith Haring. There are some great graffiti artists.   

Technically, I don't think a poem or graffiti would be literature.

Subject: RE: Rap Music
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 10:01 PM

Thanks McGrath, you summed it up.

Sorry Harvey, I guess I'm not explaining myself. Somehow a discussion about music and art and turned it into a defense of monsters. I'm not saying that you can respect everyone. I certainly can't find respect for Hitler or Bin Laden and I can't tolerate an insinuation that I was. Can I respect a George W. or a Margaret Thatcher? Good point, I may have been to quick to suggest that you can, although it is possible. There is a point of "walking" in another person's shoes to figure out what forms their point of view. Certainly with the Hitler's of the world the answer comes out of fear, hatred, and insanity. You can't respect that.

Getting back to rap and music, my point was that even if you don't agree with a person's point of view, you can respect the art they are trying to create - based on what they are doing with their art. MOST rap artists that I've heard (forget what the media promotes) are talking about the human condition and promoting empowerment. I respect an artist who is making their voice heard and inspiring people to think about more than the drivel that passes for pop music.   

The negatives that have voiced about rap music focus on violence, racism, and homophobia. To discredit rap music for that, or to say that it promotes that is like saying that folk music promotes incest. You can't make blanket statments about a genre of music because the media has focused on a small segment. No, I do not respect the songs that promote hatred and violence and I would not repect a folksong or singer-songwriter who tried to accomplish the same thing. It is not art to hurt another.

Ron