TimTheTwangler I agree with you totally. I am 26 now and was brought up on Folk music but I always liked Rap music. The funny thing was I never liked American Rap music.

I loved some of the English rap stuff that was being produced years ago and the lyrics were very similar to the folk songs I listened to at the time too. To a virginal ear they are the same, it's only because we have now built up walls in our heads that make us think differant ways about what is really the same thing. (If that makes sense)

Rap song from a few years back that I liked:

And I'm way down the mine
In another lifetime
But I don't how this canary keeps chirping
And my lungs are tight
When you've got to keep working
What's the point in life
There's a hundred miners here in the union
March through the manor while the owner takes communion
I'm going in to get my wage for last year
Plus a big bag of food
One of them big chandeliers
I affect the state and affect the earth
And pass my spirit on again
Until it's triggered by a birth

I'm in this for a better life
Staying clever
Got the soldiers on the hop
Slept in the oak tree
Raided a crop
They probably think I'm catholic
'Cause of my name
I caught the King's deer
They were giving me fame
And they heard about my antics
Up at the castle
When I didn't pay my taxes
Down came the hassle
They burnt my village and my family at the stake
I felt the whole ground shake
Why?
'Cause spirits resonate
They want my pagan head
Turn the hunters in my band and that's as good as it gets

Its by an English rapper called Braintax who also mentions about Eastenders characters and various other parts of modern English culture.

This stuff isn't obviously your mainstream rap, but it was what me and my friends found from going to see bands that we liked. Isn't that the same thing as going to see folk bands singing about the times they lived in?

I often say to my Dad its the same as folk music because it winds him up, lol.