Whatever MacLuhan thought, the medium isn't the same thing as the message.

The medium - rap, folk, country, print, pictures - can be used to carry a whole range of messages, a whole range of contradictory meanings. If you hear a medium used for messages you hate, you can be trapped into thinkingf that's the only message it can carry.

So you get religions and cultures where pictures are seen as evil, or where fiddles are seen as the devils own music. You get stories about Robert Johnson having to sell his soul to the devil in order to becomes a bluesman.

That's the way some people see rap, and it's easy to see why - most of the rap I've heard seems to be loaded with attitudes and assumptions that I hate, both in the words and the way the backings are done. (And I can undersatnd why that is - a combination of people being damaged by circumstances and trying to survive in desperate and disatrous ways, together with moneygrabbers exploiting them ruthlessly.)

But it needn't be done that way, and it needn't be carrying this kinds of messages.

That's why I posted the Four Men and a Dog rap, just to show that the medium can be used differently. And I'm sure that a lot of the time it is being done differently and better, in ghettoes and in slums - but we never get to hear that. And if we did hear it, we likely wouldn't recognise it, because we've learned to shut our ears against the bad stuff.