I puzzle often over the source of my enjoyment of rap, especially when the genre is rife with so much vulgarity, posturing, misogyny and probably many more negative things not currently coming to mind. Rap, is perhaps like Darth Vader: mostly bad and terribly fascinating to watch. And, if you believe there is good in it, you may find it. I have come across endearing, touching, noble, and just plain artful poetry in popular rap. It is drowned out by the sheer quantity of the negative and lame stuff, but it is in there. If you want, you can don some scuba gear and go see it.
For a good many people the 'obscene' language presents an obstacle that is insurmountable. I prefer to disregard it when it's boring and try to understand why, sometimes it sounds cool.
At any rate, I'm thrilled at the comments you all left. Ever since I started reading the now-defunct Rocket in high-school, I've fancied the notion of being a music-critic. Now I get to be, whenever I feels like it, and at least four or five people will read it. And with such positive reviews of my reviews, I feel like a huge success.
Even 'Anonymous' with her curiously firm grasp of things I've said in blog-mas past, (i couldn't find what I said, even with Google's Blogsearch, though I remember saying something like that) and the interesting description of the seemingly paradoxical behaviour of Madonna, is piquing and engaging.
This themed-post idea went off well, I think. I'll be checking out Will's old-school faves, and using Pandora.com to broaden my horizons (I've played the crap out of those songs I reviewed).
It's now thirteen minutes past the witching-hour (anyone know where that saying comes from?) so I'm off to bed, but I'll leave you with the sage words of 'the other Jay-Z':
If you're feelin like a pimp, go on brush your shoulders off
Ladies is pimps too, go on brush your shoulders off
18 comments :
What do you mean "even" anonymous? I will brush my shoulders off, hee hee hee.
He is defending the value of your post despite how uppity I got responding to you in the comments.
Also, despite the fact that most, perhaps all, of us know who Anonymous is there is some sort of netiquette for blogs/forums that ranks comments left by someone unwilling or unable to leave a name (even if it is XYZ123) as second rate. Similar, but not as obvious, as ALL CAPS means I am SCREAMING, even without the necessary punctuation. That has to be why it is so hard to be heard as an anonymous whistle-blower (and, pardon the tangent, why confidential sources are SO important to fair and open journalism and so painful for administrations bent on maintaining absolute control).
I may be off base here especially since we all know who you are it shouldn't matter but it does; curious cultural thing about the net I think, despite the freedoms allowed by the nearly true anonymity that the internet affords we must still identify ourselves somehow to be heard. Perhaps it is because there is just too much clatter on the rooftops.
That's right, I was trying to defend the value, because I truly found it interesting even though you questioned my family-friendliness, and my logical consistency. My sense is that you're just trying to rib me, because the extent of my transgressions are so minor. After all, I did censor my own post (which is perhaps paradoxical given the material reviewed) in the name of family-friendliness.
I'd also like to investigate more the concept that youth are being swindled by big-music. What are the ultimate causes of that?
Nice holiday tie in Lief, "clatter on the rooftops". Not sure about the ultimate causes, the ultimate result is that the parents are left with no money!!!!!
Just a suggestion: when you put the word "music" in the title, or include the word "music" in the text, how about discussing the subject of music?
When you do, as you have done, discussing rap while including the term "music" in the text, my search results for "music" as a subject are polluted with discussions of rap.
Oh, by the way, I´ll let y'all know when I´m serious. Most of my stuff is tongue -in- cheek but it doesn´t seem to be taken that way on the other side of the pond. I say old chap, cheeky is far more amusing, don´t you think so?
Maybe I am taking it the wrong way, but how sad that someone would feel rap isn't worthy of being discussed when talking about music.
I know many say they don't like care for it, but like any other genre within music it has a wide and expansive universe. To paint all rap with one brush is doing it a great disservice. You are missing some incredible artists (IMO) who are sprinkled amongst those acts designed to take consumers money.
One of the best social commentaries on life in the inner cities was done years ago by Grandmaster Flash called "The Message", very different from todays sound but it is rap just the same and in fact without GMF rap would be without much of its foundation.
There are still artists who are talking about what is going on but they are overshadowed by those who IMO promote this false image....hey kids, most if not all of that jewelry, cars, fancy homes and boats in the videos IS RENTED.
For the record I personally think Eminem is genius, yes he'll make you cringe but he has a gift that not many have. Well I could go on and on with this topic but I'll leave it at that...
I think that the absence of vocal inflection and body-language has a profoundly detrimental effect on communication. Which is to say, I don't think you have to be across a pond, but just on the other side of a cathode-ray tube, for many nuances of communication to be lost.
And, I think the instantaneous text-based communication technology at our disposal inclines us to be more tongue-in-cheeky than prior generations of writers. And that is much more difficult to pull off in text than in person.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but it is becoming clearer to me that these are real obstacles to text-based conversations.
As a result, I think I've been tending toward more earnestness in my writing. But, I don't think I want to limit it to that either.
Will, Bop-Op is just trying to get my goat. <cheeky>He doesn't have a leg to stand on and he knows it.</cheeky> If he did, he would kindly provide a definition of music and explain why rap doesn't fit.
Then I humbly ask Bop-Op to return my goat please :)
Hey James did the CD work okay?
Subtext/inflection develops in languages to help with the misunderstanding of individual words. That is to say they are modified by visual, auditory, and other contextual cues.
On the surface we don't have the benefit of these inflections in text based discussions.
But, be very aware literary purists, one is rapidly developing to fill the need and it isn't slowing down.
It may be ugly for us newbies to read but it includes heavy use of modifiers primarily (for now) in the form of "smileys", html notation (the stuff in the greter-than and less-than brackets) and perhaps even "leetspeak". WikiPedia.org has a lot on leetspeak if you are interested.
Ask Alida to write an email to you and modify it for sarcasm and cheekyness. I bet it is darn near unreadable if she lets herself loose.
This isn't going to get anything but more complex and ugly in the near future and will perhaps settle into something a little less complicated but extremely rich and powerfully capable of conveying many feelings and inflections with the growth of this medium.
So, Mim-nonymous this will help a lot.
1) What do you mean "even" anonymous? :)
2) <cheeky> What do you mean "even" anonymous? </cheeky>
Those both modify the neutral-serious tone right out of that phrase.
And, yes it is incumbent upon the criticizer to defend why Rap is not music. I will join in shortly, because I think a reasonable argument exists.
Inserted below is a definition of music, copied directly from the Webster online dictionary:
"1 a : the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity b : vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony"
To help you understand my claim, I am saying that rap does not contain an ordering of tones. It does not contain a melody or harmony.
You might stand a better chance of defining rap as poetry, but then where would you buy a rap CD, at the "poetry" store?
Hey, just for the fun of it, I looked up the definition of "rap" in the same dictionary. Here's the 6th definition, as the one that applies most directly:
"1 : TALK, CONVERSATION; also : a line of talk : PATTER
2 a : a rhythmic chanting often in unison of usually rhymed couplets to a musical accompaniment b : a piece so performed"
The first definition is what we used when I was in high school and college. The second definition is obviously attempting to cover the contemporary usage of the term. Notice that they have separated out the "rap" portion from the "music" portion, as if to say that rap is accompanied by music. Well, I have not yet heard any rap performance that was accompanied by anything that could be called music. Maybe one of you guys could name one for me.
Gangsta's Paradise, by Coolio
The definition you found does not require melody or harmony. Rhythm, melody and harmony are like Red, Blue and Yellow in graphic arts. Painting a picture all in Blue doesn't mean it's not a painting. Printing a picture in black and white does not make it any less a photograph.
Even if rap were fairly described as being rhythm only, that does not disqualify it as music. In reality melody exists in pretty much every rap, it's just so deemphasized that it seems insignificant to some ears.
In order for your argument to work you have to completely disregard your definition 1a. Whether or not tones are what you are saying they are, I don't need to argue. The presence of 'sounds' in the definition is all I need for my argument to succeed. Furthermore you would have to read 1b as
"rhythm AND melody, or harmony", instead of "rhythm or melody or harmony", which I consider a dramatically more probable reading.
Thanks for the reference to Gansta Rap by Coolio. I listened to a clip of it and indeed found a musical accompaniment. Unfortunately the musical component did not change the rap component into music.
I have heard poetry accompanied by music, and a sequence of still photographs accompanied by music, and even video and movies accompanied by music. But that doesn't change the poetry, photographs, video or movies into music.
I agree that you could define a monotone blue painting as art, but most people would find it excrutiatingly boring, and some would insist, as I do, that it simply is not art. The same could be said for a canvas that is covered with thousands of shades and colors that are merely splattered at random. Sure you have lots of colors, but if there is no ordering, in succession or combination or temporal relationship, then the composition has no unity or continuity. I would also declare that painting as non-artistic.
The Rap compositions I have heard are analogous to either a monotone or a random-splattered painting. The sounds I hear are not organized (except as words) into any order, succession or combination or temporal relationship. The composition has no unity or continuity, and as such is not music.
What I find outrageously humorous is that rap artists act like they have created something new: a rhythmic and rhyming way to criticize authority or the status quo. The fact is that critical poetry is at least as old as Mother Goose nursery rhymes. They would find their compositions much more interesting and pleasing if they actually set their poetry to music, but that would require a musical talent.
It seems to me that there is some pretty authoritative discussion about rap and hip-hop on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music
While the author is not entitled or allowed to investigate the more subjective and far more interesting discussion about whether rap is music.
Some origins and history of it's evolution and description bear fruit. I am paraphrasing but I think fairly.
1) Rapping is the lyrical component of hip-hop music.
2) It evolved as the MC engaged the crowd by way of introduction to the next musical act.
Now, the broadest description of art can arguably include a fake fingernail on a lilypad but most would agree that the juxtaposition only becomes art once it is framed or postured in a manner that lends additional meaning beyond the facts of the matter. Merely "presenting" it is not sufficient for the moniker of art.
So goes the categorizations of music. And this is not restricted to merely the category of rap. Many may think that simply making a CD, or performing in front of a crowd creates "music". There are easy ones to toss out that for the majority are merely noise; Acid jazz, feedback and smashing of guitars on stage, the noise that Jame and I created when we first got our band instruments.
Rap in it's purest incarnation is not even close to music. It is nothing but alliterative words and in many cases vague and inept attempts to make meaning where there is none.
Hip Hop (Gangstas Paradise, some pieces by Eminem, RunDMC, Bobby Brown, etc) is easier to classify as music because necessary elements are included in various amounts (per the definitions above) as well as giving the intangibles like talented juxtaposition, further meaning. None of those alone are necessary but together they seem sufficient to make a case for music, however distasteful.
The ones that seem to be contested here are tougher because they are performed by talented poets, who lend meaning, include harmonies, musical cuts of other songs etc. It only takes the first four examples from Pandora using the song "Rock Bottom" as reference to prove this point.
The first three are easy, they are no-talent hacks that provide nothing musical, nothing but fingernails and lilypads. The last is harder but not a piece of music.
This is my party by Fabulous
Ladies by Sarai
So Much Trouble by Philly's Most Wanted
Stan by Eminem
I enjoy listening to Stan but it is not music, it has a song going on in the background which is music but the rest of it, which makes it the piece called Stan, does not provide any of the aformentioned necessary parts and only the talented juxtaposition of a musical piece and a great piece of storytelling get it placed in the music stores.
So, there is Hip Hop music and there is Rap. Hip Hop provides the component that gets musicians on the stage and pays credit to singers and lyricists. The details of the categorization of each particular piece isn't easy for authorities and practically speaking it is more profitable to call it music than poetry so all of the rap where there is no singing, no tone, no meaning, no musical qualities in the least gets lumped in with Hip Hop. Unfortunate that this component is called Rap Music because it does a dis-service to Hip Hop.
I still don't see anyone seriously saying that rap/hip-hop is not: "vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm". Bop-op's definition is broad enough to allow that music could be as simple as "mechanical sounds having rhythm", beating a stick on a rock, for instance.
Is anyone saying that there are not 'ordered sounds' or 'mechanical sounds having rhythm' or 'vocal sounds having rhythm' in rap/hip-hop, in Stan?
Whether it is music or isn't probably doesn't really matter, as music is a general term that contains plenty for all of us to like and dislike. What I don't understand is rap or hip-hop should be excluded when they can so easily be accomodated by the definition? Do we have to get the approval, of 'many', 'most' or 'the majority' before something can be dignified as "art" or "music"? Or can we simply say, "This is accomodated by Webster's definition of music, but I sure as heck don't like it."
We could say that but that would defeat the purpose of the argument about whether something "IS" or "IS NOT" something. In the end, I think, what BopOp and I are both arguing is that the definition of music is too loose since it now seems to include things that are so obviously never intended to be considered such.
Don't want to censor it, don't want people to quit liking it, wouldn't mind if rap artists got a little due diligence and cleaned up their overall image simply because of the pervasivness of the art and the really crappy messages it promotes. Just don't call it music because that degrades the spirit of the word and allows them to call themselves musicians which, by and large, they are not. :)
Post a Comment