# the thread about rap / hip-hop that you don't like



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

On this forum, no variety of music is dissed more than rap or hip-hop. Here is a thread where you go absolutely nuts telling us how bad it is! 

If possible, you should mention particular songs that you don't like.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I've said it nicely, so have no need to diss:

Most of the genre is 50% about the text; 49% about the beat; 1% remains to be of actual musical interest, and that is slight.

This _is_ a fitting description of what scholars conjecture about ancient bards singing Homer, and similar narrative poetry: a non-elaborate near drone accompanied the singing, the singing may have been as much half-spoken as fully sung and was also very straightforward; most of the text was treated setting one syllable per beat, those words which were stressed for emphasis were held for a duration of two or maybe a few more beats.

This text delivery 'system' was in an era where the music was next to incidental, used as mnemonic when and where 
A.) there was no writing 
B.) there was writing but almost no one could read.

I think a lot of rap parallels that.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

It's the worst genre. Talking is not music. Lack of quality instruments. Annoying beats. Disgusting discussions about street life. Etc... And basically any song from Eminem I dislike intensely. The Way I am, Slim Shady,..


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My son is quite an expert on rap. He discusses various artists and styles in many of the same terms we use when discussing CM. But he's very unlikely to show up in this forum.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Swearing over a drumbeat is certainly not my preference in "music". Besides, on my turntable is a Clearaudio Maestro Wood MM Cartridge, and just the thought of someone using it to "scratch" percussive sounds from a record makes my skin crawl. So, you can _keep_ your rap and hip-hop. And ... your distance, too, thank you.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

You can hate all you want but they did some research on the vocabulary of rappers and they found out that aesop rock has almost double the vocabulary of Shakespeare.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> You can hate all you want but they did some research on the vocabulary of rappers and they found out that aesop rock has almost double the vocabulary of Shakespeare.


BAHAHAHAHA...HA! Sure, Piwikiwi. And who are 'they'? Who are these brilliant researchers spending the people's funds on such 'important' research. Humanity is indebted to them.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> BAHAHAHAHA...HA! Sure, Piwikiwi. And who are 'they'? Who are these brilliant researchers spending the people's funds on such 'important' research. Humanity is indebted to them.


Here you go

http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

_"I used a research methodology called token analysis to determine each artist's vocabulary. Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words."

"Hip hop is full of slang that is hard to transcribe (e.g., shorty vs. shawty), compound words (e.g., king ****), featured vocalists, and repetitive choruses."_

*'Quantity' and 'Quality' are not synonymous.*

*An example of Jay-Z's lyrical genius:*

_I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars

They criticized me for it, yet they all yell "holla"

If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be

Lyrically Talib Kweli

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense

But I did 5 mil - I ain't been rhyming like Common since_

*BAHAHAHAHAHA....HA!*


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> *An example of Jay-Z's lyrical genius:*
> [/B]


I wouldn't suggest anyone go out of their way if they're not interested, but I thought his book was good:

http://books.google.com/books?id=A7...oBg&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=jay z&f=false

In response to the OP: "Empire State of Mind." Heard that damned thing everywhere for awhile--nasty earworm.

*p.s.* Though who am I kidding?--it's a very good pop song.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> _"I used a research methodology called token analysis to determine each artist's vocabulary. Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words."
> 
> "Hip hop is full of slang that is hard to transcribe (e.g., shorty vs. shawty), compound words (e.g., king ****), featured vocalists, and repetitive choruses."_
> 
> ...


I was talking about Aesop Rock but it doesn't matter. You seem unwilling or unable to discuss this in a civil way. Why should I bother to respond this sort of posts?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I particularly hate Saul Williams, his work with equally hateful contemporary string quartet The Arditti Quartet is particularly loathsome. You should definitely not listen to it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Blancrocher said:


> I wouldn't suggest anyone go out of their way if they're not interested, but I thought his book was good:
> 
> http://books.google.com/books?id=A7...oBg&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=jay z&f=false
> 
> ...


How could I diva-diss such a plush Baroque jewel? I'll add it to all of my other philology books: "The Rosetta Stone of Ghetto Patois- by Jay-Z; or whatever he calls himself."_ Merci beaucoup_.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> You can hate all you want but they did some research on the vocabulary of rappers and they found out that *aesop rock has almost double the vocabulary of Shakespeare*.


So does the _Oxford English Dictionary_. But that doesn't make it more valuable than Shakespeare.

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary lists as main entries well over 200,000 words. Now, one could write nonsense lyrics using all of those words, but it wouldn't prove much of anything except that the lyrics use a lot of words. Lope de Aguirre already on this site insightfully pointed out "'Quantity' and 'Quality' are not synonymous." Word count means essentially little to nothing in the larger scheme of literary value.

There is certainly some contention about how many words Shakespeare actually did use. I recall hearing that he used nearly 30,000 in his total works (some 37 plays and 154 sonnets plus a couple of other poems here and there). That's a pretty profound count. It's also wrong.

More recent scholarship suggests perhaps 18,000 words at the outside. (See "Shakespeare's Vocabulary: Did it Dwarf all Others" by Elliot and Valenza at http://www.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/welliott/Shakespeare Vocabulary Chapter 911.pdf )

Of course, a lot depends upon how one counts words. And we have many more words available to our use today than did Shakespeare, since our advancements in science and technology, just to name two areas, have expanded our vocabulary several fold.

When I accessed a lyric page for your man Aesop Rock, I chose the first song lyric listed, something titled "Abandon All Hope". (I chose this one because it was first on the list; but it also appealed to me for another reason I won't get into.) One of the words I noticed used in the lyric, in the third line in fact, is "straight-jacket". Now, I don't know if Aesop spells the word that way or not, but the standard spelling for the confining harness used to disable violent mental patients is "straitjacket". The straitjacket was invented in France only in 1790 by an upholsterer named Guilleret, for Bicêtre Hospital, so Shakespeare couldn't have used the word. There are other such examples in the lyric, but suffice my point to stand as given.

But as I look further over Aesop Rock's lyric, I find such gems of sense as this:

I carve a notch in my wall for every stall
every fifth mark slants diagonal to symbolize your downfall!
Drunky peasants, honor the shifty Megatron presents
Slug a bolt one ceremonies of merit turned blood sport (Uh)
Voted hella high seas, I freeze your mega dumb company
Pumpin' out wise beads like, fly sneak-attacks on dry leaves
DUNCED
Crooked rumors turn zoomers when rookies talkin'
Bad seeds blossom the wookie walk, hawkin'...

"Wow!" I murmured to myself upon reading those lines. They made clear so many things -- none of which had anything to do with the song itself, or its meaning.

There are other things I could say, but what's the use? I remain satisfied to know that at the alphabetical top of the list of Aesop Rock's songs is "Abandon All Hope." I'm reminded that those words are printed over a famous archway that is written about in a rather famous poem, and that everything that lies beyond it is in a place called Hell.

I don't think I'll look further into Aesop Rock's lyric world, no matter how many words he's fond of using or misusing, whichever is the truer case.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

SONNET CLV said:


> So does the _Oxford English Dictionary_. But that doesn't make it more valuable than Shakespeare.
> 
> In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary lists as main entries well over 200,000 words. Now, one could write nonsense lyrics using all of those words, but it wouldn't prove much of anything except that the lyrics use a lot of words. Lope de Aguirre already on this site insightfully pointed out "'Quantity' and 'Quality' are not synonymous." Word count means essentially little to nothing in the larger scheme of literary value.
> 
> ...


Thank you dor writing such a thorough response. The spelling errors are not his fault because the songs have been transcribed by fans.

Does it have be easy to understand to be good? Have you read finnegan's wake or ulysses? Maybe some other modern poetry? It seems that your need to find simple meaning excludes you from an art form in which playing with words is more important than the meaning of it. You don't have to like of course, but I rather have someone dislike it who understands it in the first place.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> Thank you dor writing such a thorough response. The spelling errors are not his fault because the songs have been transcribed by fans.
> 
> Does it have be easy to understand to be good? Have you read finnegan's wake or ulysses? Maybe some other modern poetry? It seems that your need to find simple meaning excludes you from an art form in which playing with words is more important than the meaning of it. You don't have to like of course, but I rather have someone dislike it who understands it in the first place.


I think you've been thoroughly brainwashed by Pop culture. This isn't art, it's entertainment and therefore disposable. Joyce and Aesop Rock inhabit different universes; one driven by profit and popular taste, the other by a desire to create and communicate in an innovative, sophisticated and truthful manner.


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## Harlequin (May 30, 2014)

Rap is a form of expression; perhaps when it started it was an expression of an impoverished state, perhaps it developed into the expression of celebration, and then later perhaps it became a way to make money. Hate or like rap it is there, and yes it is harmful to young people and yes it is vulgar. However, I ask you, is it a direct reflection of the world we live in or does it sugar coat our world so we become unaware of the horrible setting we as humans have to act out our existence.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> Thank you dor writing such a thorough response. The spelling errors are not his fault because the songs have been transcribed by fans.
> 
> *Does it have be easy to understand to be good? Have you read finnegan's wake or ulysses? Maybe some other modern poetry? *It seems that your need to find simple meaning excludes you from an art form in which *playing with words *is more important than the meaning of it. You don't have to like of course, *but I rather have someone dislike it who understands it in the first place*.


I'll put my understanding of James Joyce up against yours any day. I don't say this to be arrogant. Your apparent challenge ("Does it have be easy to understand to be good? Have you read finnegan's wake or ulysses?") prompts my response. I _have_ read James Joyce. Many times. I would venture that I read Joyce before you were even born. I've taught Joyce and _much_ modern poetry on the college level (again, I'll venture for more years than you have been alive), and have received feedback from students concerning my discussions of Joyce. For instance, they prove somewhat amazed that it takes an entire hour class to set up the milieu of "Araby" from an analysis of the opening two paragraphs:

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: _The Abbot_, by Walter Scott, _The Devout Communicant_, and _The Memoirs of Vidocq_. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

To answer the following questions about the above paragraphs takes astute understanding of what Joyce is _really_ writing about:
What theme does the imagery of the opening paragraph establish?
Why are the pages of _The Memoirs of Vidocq_ yellow?
Who is the priest's sister?

So don't even go there with me.

Rather, provide an analysis of that portion of lyric I quoted from Aesop Rock's "Abandon All Hope". Explain it in clear terms so we all can understand it.

I carve a notch in my wall for every stall
every fifth mark slants diagonal to symbolize your downfall!
Drunky peasants, honor the shifty Megatron presents
Slug a bolt one ceremonies of merit turned blood sport (Uh)
Voted hella high seas, I freeze your mega dumb company
Pumpin' out wise beads like, fly sneak-attacks on dry leaves
DUNCED
Crooked rumors turn zoomers when rookies talkin'
Bad seeds blossom the wookie walk, hawkin'...

Or admit that it is incomprehensible.

Does a work "have [to] be easy to understand to be good?" Certainly not. But it essentially has to have a meaning. And to be "good" in the sense of the canon of Western literature, that meaning has to have some critical significance for humanity and the human condition in the largest sense. Words alone don't fly. Complex or numerous words alone don't fly. We can get those from a Dictionary. But literature remains the artful use of language instilled with significant meaning and a lastingness for humanity. We read Homer today for all of those reasons. Will we read Aesop Rock 2800 years from now? Will we teach him in our schools and universities (as we do Homer) all over the world?

Of course, those last two are questions we cannot answer with certainty. But we_ can _make informed speculation. I know what my position is.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> I think you've been thoroughly brainwashed by Pop culture. This isn't art, it's entertainment and therefore disposable. Joyce and Aesop Rock inhabit different universes; one driven by profit and popular taste, the other by a desire to create and communicate in an innovative, sophisticated and truthful manner.


Aesop Rock is happy if he manages to sell 10,000 cd's, I never listened to any pop music out of free will. I think you are brainwashed by hatred of something you don't understand.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

SONNET CLV said:


> I'll put my understanding of James Joyce up against yours any day. I don't say this to be arrogant. Your apparent challenge ("Does it have be easy to understand to be good? Have you read finnegan's wake or ulysses?") prompts my response. I _have_ read James Joyce. Many times. I would venture that I read Joyce before you were even born. I've taught Joyce and _much_ modern poetry on the college level (again, I'll venture for more years than you have been alive), and have received feedback from students concerning my discussions of Joyce. For instance, they prove somewhat amazed that it takes an entire hour class to set up the milieu of "Araby" from an analysis of the opening two paragraphs:
> 
> North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
> 
> ...


Okay but you're understanding of Joyce still doesn't mean that all of hiphop is without merit. If you are a college level literature teacher you should know that appealing to your authority is not a good argument to make in a discussion. I respect your knowledge and your points though.

About 90% of hiphop falls in the category of just showing off with their skill in the form of what they call flow and all kinds of wordplay. Does that mean that it doesn't have value? I think it has value. 90% of all jazz is without any extra-musical meaning, no one is going to argue that jazz isn't an art form. 
' 
All these reactions sound more like old people complaining about "kids these days" but pop music has always been terrible and the popular hiphop artists are no exception.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> Okay but you're understanding of Joyce still doesn't mean that all of hiphop is without merit. If you are a college level literature teacher you should know that appealing to your authority is not a good argument to make in a discussion. I respect your knowledge and your points though.
> 
> About 90% of hiphop falls in the category of just showing off with their skill in the form of what they call flow and all kinds of wordplay. Does that mean that it doesn't have value? I think it has value. 90% of all jazz is without any extra-musical meaning, no one is going to argue that jazz isn't an art form.
> '
> All these reactions sound more like old people complaining about "kids these days" but pop music has always been terrible and the popular hiphop artists are no exception.


Point one. In my initial response to science's topic I posted the following:

Swearing over a drumbeat is certainly not my preference in "music". Besides, on my turntable is a Clearaudio Maestro Wood MM Cartridge, and just the thought of someone using it to "scratch" percussive sounds from a record makes my skin crawl. So, you can keep your rap and hip-hop. And ... your distance, too, thank you.

Prior to my post, neoshredder said the following:

It's the worst genre. Talking is not music. Lack of quality instruments. Annoying beats. Disgusting discussions about street life. Etc... And basically any song from Eminem I dislike intensely. The Way I am, Slim Shady,..

Your first post immediately followed mine.

You can hate all you want but they did some research on the vocabulary of rappers and they found out that *aesop rock has almost double the vocabulary of Shakespeare*.

First of all, I said _nothing _about "hate" or "hatred" in my post. I used the words "not my preference" in response to rap. Nothing else I said necessarily indicates hatred either. I _did_ imply that I would not want anyone using my Maestro Wood cartridge for scratching, a common hip-hop technique for producing rhythmic sound. If you knew the cost of that cartridge, you'd understand why. True, I also imply a dislike for rap, but "hate" is a strong word. Be careful who you accuse of doing so. (By the way, I count in my music collection the original LP _Rapper's Delight _by the Sugarhill Gang on the Sugarhill label.)

Of course, you may have been referring only to neoshredder's comment. He did not use the word "hate" either, though his statement of "dislik[ing] intensely" referred to Eminem's oeuvre, not Aesop Rock.

Secondly, _nowhere_ in the article you cited is it maintained that "aesop rock has almost double the vocabulary of Shakespeare". The basis of the study was, to quote the author, to use "each artist's first 35,000 lyrics. That way, prolific artists, such as Jay-Z, could be compared to newer artists such as Drake." The word "lyrics" in that previous line means "words" .In the case of Shakespeare, the 35,000 words were garnered from a series of 7 plays, the first 5000 words of each play. Consider that Shakespeare wrote 30 additional plays. Had the first 5000 words from some of those others been considered, it's possible the vocabulary count would go up. Anyone who knows Shakespeare knows that his earlier plays tend to be more florid in language than the later plays. The earliest play on the sample list was _Romeo and Juliet _from 1595. Shakespeare wrote some dozen plays prior to that one, and they belong to the "florid" period. And _Macbeth_, a later play used in the sample, proves one of the Bard's most concisely worded structures. So, I would contend that we may not have gotten nearly as high a count from Shakespeare as could be possible. In any case, note where his ranking is on the chart. Some 75 rappers fall below him, and only 16 equal or fall above.

Still, none of this proves one person has a larger vocabulary than another. Consider that those who know more than one language have an increased vocabulary over those who are monolingual. Shakespeare is said to have had "little Latin and less Greek", but how true that is cannot be measured. We suspect he could read Latin well enough to gain information from the historians on whom he based plays such as _Julius Caesar _and _Troilus and Cressida_. He likely read Greek well enough, and I would suppose, because of the times, he was familiar with French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and most likely Chaucer's Middle English, a language related to Shakespeare's "modern English" but with a vocabulary all its own. So, how many words does that add to the writer's vocabulary?

Again, the study was not about some rapper having a larger vocabulary than Shakespeare. It was about a "work use" vocabulary covering 35,000 words. Consider that Shakespeare and Aesop Rock have different purposes to their writing. Shakespeare's never was to see how many words he could pile into a lyric. I suspect that if Shakespeare _had_ had that goal, he would have done a pretty good job of it.

Point two. When you suggest that I have no appreciation for word play - "It seems that your need to find simple meaning excludes you from an art form in which playing with words is more important than the meaning of it." - you misjudge me by a longshot. In several of my own writings I use puns and various other types of word play copiously. As well, I toy with words prolifically on Forum websites I visit. But the real test is probably my addiction to the daily Jumble puzzle which is the first thing I turn to each morning in the local paper. I always attempt to solve it without unscrambling the listed words, but rather by trying to reason out the pun behind the cartoon. And my success rate is pretty good.

No, I appreciate words and word use. But I understand that the fundamental reason for words is as symbols of meaning -- to communicate in some concrete form human thought. If I wish to make "lyrics" that pile up long lists of words without any functional meaning behind them, I may as well use syllabic grunts and whistles. What's the difference?

Too, I am fond of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" which, if used for a vocabulary count, would qualify quite a few words not found in any standard dictionary. But even "Jabberwocky" has a meaning that can be reasonably imposed upon the nonsense words; it is not just a pile of nonsense words. Indeed, any pile of nonsense words for the sake of creating a pile of nonsense words may merit qualification as an "art form", but it should not be compared to the work of poets such as Shakespeare, Joyce, or Lewis Carroll. And to contend that my "understanding of Joyce ... doesn't mean that all of hiphop is without merit" is a contention _you_ make, not me. I never said in any of my posts that "all of hiphop is without merit". Pay attention to what I do say, and refute me on those points. Don't create points from your own prejudices and ascribe them to me.

Point three. Pop music has not "always been terrible". In fact, I would contend it is not terrible now nor ever has been. But that is getting into another issue.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

View attachment 44442
View attachment 44443
Well crap rap music was once meaningful but then it went downhill .This is why i BOYCOTT it.I am going to buy music that sounds great not negative.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> Aesop Rock is happy if he manages to sell 10,000 cd's, I never listened to any pop music out of free will. I think you are brainwashed by hatred of something you don't understand.


Piwikiwi, are you 15 or something? Why this obsession with validating your taste for Rap/Hip-hop? I personally find it idiotic and tedious but if you enjoy it, listen away. Please stop trying to convince people that Aesop Rock is some kind of genius on par with Shakespeare. Ridiculous.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

I hate rap music, with one exception: "Wierd Al" Yancovic's send up of Chamillionaire's "Ridin" entitled "White and Nerdy".


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

This is the worst rap song I know:






For some reason, it worked when I was driving a convertible in Beverly Hills. It happened to be on the radio  But it's pretty much everything that is bad about modern hip hop.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

And really, a rapper can be just as motivated by the desire to create and communicate as any other artist can. We might not see a lot of evidence of that in the mainstream rap catalog, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Hip hop is not some unique genre that prevents its artists from creating and innovating. It happens all the time--but that type of hip hop isn't always what becomes popular.


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## peterh (Mar 10, 2012)

Deleted. 15 characters


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

I'm really disappointed how you lot can talk so flippantly and critically about any genre of music. Hip Hop is great, and if you refuse to acknowledge that there are some true gems of rap then I must accuse you of cultural insensitivity and snobbery.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Tristan said:


> And really, *a rapper can be just as motivated by the desire to create and communicate as any other artist can. We might not see a lot of evidence of that in the mainstream rap catalog, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there.* Hip hop is not some unique genre that prevents its artists from creating and innovating. It happens all the time--but that type of hip hop isn't always what becomes popular.





Jobis said:


> I'm really disappointed how you lot can talk so flippantly and critically about any genre of music. Hip Hop is great, and *if you refuse to acknowledge that there are some true gems of rap then I must accuse you of cultural insensitivity and snobbery.*


Of course rap will produce masterpieces. They will be few. The garbage will be heaped.

But look at any other musical form. How many rock songs from albums were merely filler for the one or two hits? Even in the field of classical music, much has been composed, little of it today survives to be performed and recorded. (There remains a fringe element in classical music that enjoys, mostly out of curiosity, the neglected works of major composers and the neglected works of neglected composers. Most of these works have been neglected for good reason -- they aren't of very good quality, they aren't innovatively interesting, they don't speak to the human heart, they have nothing new to offer that isn't offered in a better way with other works. -- I have collected the Hyperion series "The Romantic Piano Concerto" which is currently on volume 63. For the most part the concerti included in the set are obscure pieces, many hardly worth a second listen; but the recordings are valuable documents for preserving a heritage. Some of the recordings are the only ones in existence for the pieces. We may see the same with rap someday.) *But most of the art in any field of artistic endeavor is trash. * If it weren't, we'd all be mega-star artists.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Jobis said:


> I'm really disappointed how you lot can talk so flippantly and critically about any genre of music. Hip Hop is great, and if you refuse to acknowledge that there are some true gems of rap then I must accuse you of cultural insensitivity and snobbery.


LL COOL J is still a great rapper he lasted longer than most ,those gems you speak of are rare today.


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