I appreciate your attempt to help me see the light and understand the diversity of the genre. The bottom line is....my hair on the back of my neck starts to stand on end when I hear that stupid bass beat with the odd background noise (jingle or scratch)....or a sample from a popular song from history...and then some person starts rapping. It absolutely repulses me.
Well feel free to be repulsed. But that's not all there is to hip hop. I know that is the stuff media shoves down people's throat, but it's really not what all of it's about. For example, if I go and play bass for a more rap oriented project, producers often ask for Jamerson type groove, or for funky Bootsy like stuff. Even walking bass requests are not unheard of.
I have heard the odd song that has some rap mixed in with it....I can handle it. Some I even enjoy. But it is in a SONG....not a pre-programmed bass beat. A bass beat that isn't even a real musical instrument, mostly from what I've heard.
Can't argue that. You haven't liked the most stuff you have heard. But a rap song is still a song. Just like those most minimalistic Tom Waits songs featuring a guy that sounds like he is singing trough a distortion pedal with a percussionist banging on some hollow logs of wood in the background. Oh, I love Tom Waits... Some of them may lack the most traditional elements, and some don't. You have obviously been exposed to the first kind.
And if there is a more traditional song featuring a rapper what do you call it then? Is it hip-rock? Rap fusion? The point is, it doesn't matter. Rap is a relatively new way of expressing one selves (at least in it's current form and in the mainstream media) and it's still expanding and evolving. That's one of the reasons that drove me, once a diehard hip hop basher to this music. I think there is so much going on musically there that I'm really glad I'm not missing out. I'm not saying you are though. I don't like 80's hair metal and I'm not missing out on it because I simply can't stand it. But I do like to think that it's not because of the music is profoundly bad and wrong, but because I just don't have what it takes to appreciate the things that might be good about it. I also hate coconut flavoured chocolate. I don't eat it, but I'm always interested in hearing a good argument defending coconut flavoured chocolate. I still won't like it, but I feel I may have broader horizons after hearing a good argument for it.
Saying the underground rap is so much better is fine and dandy....but if it's underground...then it's not part of this hip-hop rap genre we are speaking of. Those kids it Utah spewing profanity while rapping their order to the cashier at McDonalds certainly get their influence from the mainstream rap. As do 90% or more or our culture. So, I can't really comment on whether the underground rap would make me cringe or not....since I am in the 90% or more of our culture.
I disagree. Underground rap is still part of hip hop and rap genre. Just like a country song is still country even though if the lyrics aren't about driving a truck or dealing with alcoholism after the missis left. Joking aside, what's now considered underground hip hop is actually in many ways way closer to what hip hop originally was than the poop mtv plays non-stop. And to kids spewing profanity at McDonalds.. Well, idiots will be idiots no matter what music they listen to. And teenagers will be teenagers.
A culture where guys now think it's cool to where their waistbands down past the bottom of their a$$. Calling girls bitches. Talking some sort of english that isn't even understandable to most english speaking humans. All in the name of trying to be cool like the hip hop dudes...that get shoved down our throats at every turn if you are exposed to any type of media outlet.
I agree with the B-word stuff. I don't like it either. It doesn't really bother me or most females I know in that context either, but I still wouldn't say things like that. And I'm not a huge fan of the "Lookey me, I got myself a big truck with big rims, loads of money and a differend girl for every night" thing. It's funny, I don't even know when it came to that. I mean, if I listen to early stuff which was a complete opposite of what the mainstream rap is these days when it comes to ideogology and social commentary.
And when it comes to baggy pants and ridiculous jewellery, I wouldn't take that too seriously. I mean, with every generation comes new trends that don't go trough older generations well. It has been the case with grease headed rockers, long haired hippies, heavy metal people in their leather jackets.. These things come and go, but luckily the good music lives on. I like to listen to Jefferson Aeroplane but I'm not still going to leave the apartment looking like a hippie with head full of acid. Granted, I wouldn't leave my house looking like Ali G either.
The bottom line is, I don't ask anyone to like rap. But saying it's not music is just.. silly. Just like I would consider myself silly if I listened to a really hardcore metal song with a vocalist sounding like a regurgitating hippo and said that metal isn't music based on those songs that sound just like plain noise _to_me_.
And I might add, sometimes when hearing really good rhymers I can't help but to be a little envious for the ingenious rhythms and flows that I'd be more than proud of if I came out with them playing bass. And the use of words is an artform in it's own right.
