Rap music on high-end speakers

>> I see rap as a least common denominator <<

There's the problem - "least". Rap "music" is the lowest form of musical expression. Black music is, as you correctly stated, based upon a call and response pattern - the great gospel music and much of jazz bears this out. However, the BIG difference is that those musicians are actually playing instruments and/or SINGING - not scratching records and woofing. Any idiot can run his mouth, curse, and degrade women - it takes real skill and dedication to get up and sing with the choir - that's music, my friend.

>> Kevziek, my little sister calls people like you "Scared White People".

It's just that you present it along with your prejudices and fears... <<

Ahem, now who's showing their prejudices? Just because Kevziek hates rap doesn't make him white and scared. Wynton Marsalis can't stand rap, either. I hate rap, too, and I'm white, but I am not much afraid of anything - except my wife .

Keveziek's main point is that American culture has declined dramatically in the last 30 years, and rap is one of the signs (Brittney Spears is another ). The fact that everyone gives rap artists a bye on the crap they produce is simply because it makes money and it is political suicide to criticize ANYTHING done by blacks today, no matter how tasteless or lame it may be.

You know, I was talking to my former college advisor a few months ago about noticing how scared the majority of white people live...

I say hello to my building manager from my balcony and she jumps! Neighbors have called the police because my sister forgot to bring back in the house the empty trash cans...when I was in senior in college I was living in 'the flats' and some white married couple moved below us. They immediately freaked and became the organizers of "Neighborhood Watch". The neighborhood was fine (blue collar), just that a lot of the residents were black. What the f***?

I was in the U.S. military, too. But that's another story...

BTW, I am white--and my Spanish grandfather was very fond of Franco and the Germans, if you know what I'm talking about.

Tru - I thought this thread was dead, too. I see a few listed objections to rap: glorifies violence and misogyny (unlike, say. the blues, right?), rappers don't sing, music is simply played off records, listeners listen to the music too loud. I can't help but think these are stereotypically ignorant statements. Take a band like, say, The Roots. I had the opportunity to see them perform a few times last summer and immensely enjoyed the sound. All music came from instruments (drummer was as solid as any I've seen this side of a 'big name' jazz performance) that were played well. Their performance was no louder than any of the other performers on the marque (another rap group, two rock & roll groups, and a not so unfamous electronica musician). While the words weren't recited in the melodic tradition, they were certainly sung, that is they showed rhythm, tempo, dynamics, and phrasing (When the poet writes, 'I *sing* of a man and of arms', what melody do you think he had in mind?). And finally, the lyrics were for the most part positive and well written. It's OK not to like rap. It's OK not to like Mozart. You just shouldn't go around criticizing an art form that ultimately you know very little about using arguments that are intellectually dishonest and easily dismissed by a single counter example.

Nilthepill, you continue to speak volumes about yourself by bragging about how an engineer at Boeing runs about in his car blasting rap music into his neighborhoods and proud of it. Frankly, none of your abusive comments deserve any attention, and will get no more in the future.

The lack of any substance to Psychicanimal's babblings in response to my thread are only further reinforced by his next thread which fails to address any of the valid points made by Rlwainwright. As far as his baseless comment that "You call yourself a professional musician but you don't know much about music," what are your credentials, Psychicanimal? Do you read music, do you play numerous instruments, do you thoroughly understand the structures of harmony, chord structure, polyphony, harmonic progression, orchestration? Have you sung and played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus?

Your diatribe about "Scared White People", this has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.

Rap is not music -- it is polluting noise. It doesn't have melody, it doesn't have harmony. To elevate this trash to an artform or to deign this to be music only exposes the ignorance and lack of sophistication of the writers in this thread.

Obviously some people have a serious problem with rap/hip-hop. More than just not liking the music, they seem to dislike what rap represents. I suspect that rap artists wouldn't have it any other way. As a form of expression rap music is created by a cultural underclass. They are a group of people who have little or no place in the dominant society. Is it surprising that this underclass strives to offend all the values of the larger society? It makes some people uncomfortable that young black men have figured out a way to make large sums of money telling America, in effect, to go fuck itself.