Calling myself "A" because I started this thread, and other guests are contributing.
Rap is the music of the inner city Blacks. As noted ib some threads, the music industry is capitalizing and spreading commercial versions around the world. Now no major city in the north America is without a rap radio station.
Do I like it? No. But I also realize that it is the music of millions and much larger than folk, country and the other branches of music we talk about here.
Unfortunately, we are only one half of what remains two solitudes, the white and the black (borrowing from the title of a book by a Canadian author talking about the separation between the French and English in Canada). We get almost no Black input here at Mudcat.