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.