Rap "Music"

I'm no "Disco Duck" by a long shot, but I agree, Disco is better than rap. Why is it that everybody called for a quick death to disco and yet rap lives on and on and on and on. Why ain't folks gettin' just plain old tired of it? I mean, its the SAME THING over and over and over...

I don’t know what you heard about me
But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me
No Cadillac, no perms you can’t see
That I'm a motherfucking P-I-M-P

I don’t know what you heard about me But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me No Cadillac, no perms you can’t see That I'm a motherfucking P-I-M-P

I wrote a parody of this; forgive me, Catholics...

"I dunno what you heard about me;
Outta touch, an' gettin' worse, you see.
Homo-pedo priests ain't even botherin' me;
I'm the mutherfuckin' P-O-P-E!"

I got into a discussion about rap on here some time ago, when ODB died. Someone was so upset that he was gone, and just couldn't imagine the "rap world" without him.
I've heard some of ODB's stuff, and knew what his reputation was. I asked how he ever had time, in between arrests and prison stints, to make a career for himself. He was a horrible person; yet he was revered in that "world" as an "artist" and valued as a person.
What bothers me about rap is the unnecessary bluntness and very frequently violence of the lyrics. I can't stand it...there's just no need to be that sexually explicit, for example. there's no "art" to rap. It's all classless, trashy noise that diminishes the very people they claim to be representing. One good thing: Li'l Kim is facing 20 years for perjury. Let her uber-foul mouth be sent ot prison, where it'll be at home.
Another thing I hate about rap is the constant attention to material possessions and gain, sometimes at all costs. This sends a horrible message to the kids who are exposed to it.

The OVERALL quality of music in general has decreased so much in recent years. People like Jessica Simpson and her sister, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (who, by the by, likes to act and come off like a street Ho, but is really from Wexford, an upper-middle class suburb of Pittsburgh, PA) have brought it down.
To my thinking, the only real "musicianship" left in the music industry is coming from country music.
Every one of them that I can think of play instruments and many even write their own songs, which I greatly respect. And look at the longevity of country artists....I mean, George Jones has been around for what...50 years? Johnny Cash, though his production slowed, realeased an album the year before he died. He started in the 50s around the same time as Elvis, for God's sake. Dolly Parton started with Porter Wagonner in the 60s.
There are some rock artists with longevity, too, of course....Elton John and David Bowie leap to mind....Billy Joel is still writing and performs occasionally.
Groups, there's AC/DC still together after 30 years and the death of their front man in 1979. The Stones...not what they used to be, but still together and respected; ZZTop is still performing.

Do we really suppose that any of the rap artists will survive (perhaps literally) for that long?
Or even the brilliant Ms. Spears and her clones? I seriously doubt it. Eminem (who I do like, I admit, but who is showing signs of wear these days), Fiddy-sen' and the others will someday soon go the way of the boy bands and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and be a question in the "Music" edition of Trivial Pursuit.
It seems that the "sucessful" older rappers who in fact have run their course have had to diversify into other areas, such as producing or acting, in order to maintain their "cred". You only hear seem to hear them "singing" in the songs of other artists these days, or perhaps their songs playing on the radio when they've been killed in a drive-by.

I used to think a lot of these things of rap. About a year ago, Rolling Stone did a feature on the greatest artists of all time, including Little Richard. Little Richard was describing all the discrimination his music came up against in his time, and then added that these were all the same things that are being said about hip hop and r 'n' b today.

I went back and listened with renewed appreciation to rap/hip hop.

"It's not even music. It's just noise. Music has notes and melodies."

Try convincing a classical musician that rock music has a melody worth speaking of! "Simplistic rubbish", many of them will tell you. Because let's face it, rock singers have incredibly small ranges and they therefore stick to a fairly small amount of notes and rely on rhythm and delivery to make it work. Same deal with rap.

"I bet not one rapper can play a musical instrument worth a damn."

Nor could Sinatra.

"constant attention to material possessions and gain"

I'm not mad keen on some of the really commercialised recordings, that simply indulge in a bit of gangsta chic. But a lot of it is a really candid expression of the frustration being faced by poorer members of our society, just like rock n roll was before white man started playing it.

"The OVERALL quality of music in general has decreased so much in recent years. People like Jessica Simpson and her sister,"

Is say, Oops I did It Again really any less insightful than say, I Saw her Standing There? Is the music really any less valid than say "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"?

"Do we really suppose that any of the rap artists will survive (perhaps literally) for that long? "

I think it's fascinating as a young person to watch the baby boomers turn into their parents at the moment. I think Eminem will be regarded as being as important as Johnny Rotten one day.

I remember a bunch of years back, I was talking with a few other soldiers about music (a really common topic when in the field... third only to food and sex. but anyway), Being the only White guy in the conversation, Rap came up. I shook my head and said, "you know, I just don't get Rap". They looked at me and one said, "That's because it isn't there for you to get. It's for the of us from the 'hood".

In an effort to try to understand, I said, "Oh, so that must be why so few Black people get Country music?"

They got mad and called me racist.

That is when I truly learned to understand Rap.

a lot of it is a really candid expression of the frustration being faced by poorer members of our society,

Songs about the ills of society are nothing new.

And why do they have to have the bass so freakin' loud?