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Topic: Is rap actually music? |
John Ed Kelly
From:
Victoria, Australia
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 6:18 pm |
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Here's what I wrote in another thread, so I thought it may be food for thought in a new thread.
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Bill McCloskey wrote ''Never understood to need to lock out a complete genre of music.''
I fully agree Bill but you also mentioned rap music.
I feel that although it's fairly clever to a point - it is not really music.
I saw a BBC documentary on TV this week where Louis Theroux visited the deep south and spoke with a number of rappers who demonstrated their offerings.
I don't recall hearing much beyond a disco sort of beat and some lyrics (more pop poetry really) recited in a monotone. That's OK in itself and I believe, according to the BBC programme, that it is very popular and lucrative for some of the more successful performers.
It's not music though - at least the reciter of the verse is not really singing - as the stave is pretty much ignored. |
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Bryan Daste
From:
Portland, Oregon, USA
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 6:38 pm
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| What's your definition of music? Rap (or hip hop) has rhythm, harmony, and melody either sung (usually in choruses) or somewhere else in the instrumentation. Just because the main vocals in the verses usually don't have a melody doesn't mean it's not music. Is Johnny Cash talk-singing "A Boy Named Sue" music? |
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Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 7:26 pm
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Yes, it is music.
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 8:53 pm
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| Bad music |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 11:05 pm
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Why don't you start out by first stating a clear, unambiguous, objective, and generally accepted definition of the term "music"? Then we might have some reasonable basis on which to discuss this.
My personal opinion - it would take a very rigidly Western-Eurocentric-Classical definition to make your conclusion ("Rap is not music.") reasonable. Most music scholars I have known over the years define music as "organized sound". I might go so far as to say that this organization must be performed by humans to be 'real' music, but I'm sure there are many who would disagree with even that restriction. However, rap certainly qualifies under this definition, either way.
As far as 'good' or 'bad' goes, if you can ever get to the point where you can actually define what music is - then when you come up with a clear, unambiguous, objective, and generally accepted metric to measure music 'quality', we can also continue that discussion. Until then, anything anybody says is strictly a matter of individual taste and opinion. I would go even farther to say that wide, over-generalized pronouncements about whole styles of music are therefore really quite arbitrary and capricious. |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 10 Jan 2012 11:32 pm
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| Dave Mudgett wrote: |
I might go so far as to say that this organization must be performed by humans to be 'real' music, but I'm sure there are many who would disagree with even that restriction. However, rap certainly qualifies under this definition, either way.
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But I thought that rap and hip hop are "performed" almost 100% by computers. |
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Dave Boothroyd
From:
Staffordshire Moorlands
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 1:59 am
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I have produced tracks by Rappers, and assessed and critiqued many more while I was working. I've also heard some horrible examples on the radio. In many many other cases, I've heard that rap tracks were playing in my presence but have not listened to a note- because the lack of melody and the incomprehensible vocal delivery of the rapper.(It's also possible that I mentally turned off because of a fundamental disapproval of the 'Gangsta' culture put forward by certain performers)
I have also made up 'Beats' for rappers, using a computer of course, and if anyone thinks that creating music that way is in any way easier than sitting down with a Steel and putting a song together, then you have no idea what it is all about.
The Duke Ellington quote applies equally to Rap as to Country. "There is only good music, and bad music". You want a definition of good? For me good music is one which can produce a positive emotional response in the listener.
I don't hear much recent US rap, but on the UK scene, melody has become much more important in the last ten years, to the extent that there are often mixes of some tracks which are released both with and without the rap. Without the rap they are perfectly acceptable songs in the modern 'Urban/R&B' genre.
Like everything else, you'll never learn to like it if you don't try it.
Cheers
Dave |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 2:06 am
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| Quote: |
| But I thought that rap and hip hop are "performed" almost 100% by computers. |
I said organization, not necessarily real-time performance. Lots of music is sequenced, not just rap, and I don't even think all rap and hip-hop backup music is sequenced. I have seen rappers working with live bands. But either way, the organization - development of the ideas and programming - is generally performed by a human, no? Don't take this analogy too far - but is Switched-On Bach not music because it wasn't performed live in real-time? A modern sequencer can indeed automate a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that a human hasn't organized much or all of it.
I had in mind more strictly computer-generated music - not just the performance but the entire composition and performance. I also believe many would argue that is also music, and I would not really argue too hard against this. It is organized and it is sound. But at least I can understand an intellectual point of view that might not consider it 'human-generated' music. |
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Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 5:20 am
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I would not consider myself to be a rap enthusiast, but I have enjoyed quite a bit of it. These are some rap tunes that I consider extremely musical--all of the ingredients of music are there: rhythm, harmony and melody. Note: all tracks are about 15 years old, so I'm not current on this stuff.
The Brand New Heavies--all instruments are played by real musicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGG9K0WFQ8
Me'shell Ndegeocello
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lx1FNpICro
This last one has great lyrics and very impressive rhythmic content (some curse words):
The Herbaliser feat. Latyrx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWx23SC2ods
It's definitely music; some of it is very good music, in my opinion.
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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CrowBear Schmitt
From:
Ariege, - PairO'knees, - France
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 6:00 am
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Rap is Musik to me - good or bad that's another matter
as some know, rap is black slang fer talk
that term's been around quite a while has'nt it ?
all through the ages, folks always had somethin' to say to denounce the probs at hand
a classic rap tune by the folks that started it all back in 1970
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKCLSVYPUpE&feature=related
later on Grand Master Flash had this hip tune
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjJwXaqrSVI
good post DD 
may i quote Monsieur Herbster
" Everyone in the ghetto knows someone who's been murdered. It's their way of life. If you don't like rap music, fine... be glad you don't live in the environment that produces it. "
Last edited by CrowBear Schmitt on 16 Jan 2012 10:23 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 6:30 am
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| Quote: |
| You want a definition of good? For me good music is one which can produce a positive emotional response in the listener. |
Not sure what you mean by 'positive', but if that is to connote 'uplifting', I'd ask why 'negative' emotions are not just as valid. Some of my favorite music really taps into the dark side of the emotional spectrum. Or perhaps by 'positive' you mean a non-zero emotional response - some emotional response?
To me, the problem with any definition like this is that it is fairly clear that different people are going to react to the same exact performance very differently. Some may feel an uplifting emotional response, others may react very negatively (in that sense), and yet others may not react at all.
To me, this is a purely self-centric view of music 'quality', and doesn't lend itself to any type of objective discussion of what does and doesn't constitute music, or what constitutes 'good' or 'bad' music.
Another point is that, IMO, emotional reaction is really just one dimension. For me personally, emotional reaction is one very important aspect of music. But is music really devoid of any intellectual dimension? If so, then I guess I'd argue that any type of discussion like this is forever doomed to strictly, "I like this." vs. "I don't like this.", which is a pretty thin basis to conclude anything, since it's also clear that different people will have irreconcilable differences about this.
The reason I'm being picky about definitions is that the OP is making a purely technical distinction about what constitutes music and what doesn't, based upon a vaguely implied but not stated definition. I think it's entirely reasonable to say, "I like this." or "I don't like this." But to be able to pronounce, with any authority at all, that something is or is not music or what is good or bad about it, one really must have clear, unambiguous, objective, and generally agreed upon definitions of what music is and what constitutes 'quality' in music. |
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Dave Hopping
From:
Aurora, Colorado
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 5:56 pm
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Most objections to rap seem to characterize it as the music that endlessly asks what your country can do for you.  |
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Jim Robbins
From:
Ontario, Canada
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 9:02 pm
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The thing I like most about rap is that I don't particularly like it-- because it involves a lot of fundamental musical procedures I didn't grow up with, don't understand and don't have any social pressures to try to understand. Just as rock involved structural and microrhythmic conventions that alienated a previous generation of musicians who were familiar with a different set of conventions (and just as swing did the same for the rag-based pop laterally known as jazz; and ragtime did the same for mid-C19 cafe orchestra pop based on international polka and waltz fads) so does rap. Although I like a lot of the contemporary retreads of the 60's-70's rock, soul and country I grew up with, I think it's important and valuable that new generations of musicians come up with stuff that alienates older generations. Music is fundamental in establishing social identities and one creative mechanism for doing that is coming up with stuff that excludes those who aren't hip to it.
Of course, as this thread suggests, rap itself is about a generation or more old, so I'm sure there's something out there bubbling away that within a decade will get picked up and marketed in the same way rap and hip hop were; and it will be heartily disparaged by rap musicians as 'not music'.
The question "is it music" is, in my respectful opinion, a misleading one. Does it really matter? I could go on at tedious length about definitions of "music"; but what I think is being asked is, is rap really a valuable form of expressive culture? I mean, suppose the answer to "is it music" is, "no, gee, you're right, it's not music, it's poetry that involves people doing highly expressive, artistic and skilled things with musical instruments and turntables" -- seems to me that such an answer does not address the intent of the question. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 9:14 pm
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I have seen several rap/hip hop acts that use full bands and the turntable dude. Not computer generated music.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, Recording King Professional Dobro, NV400, NV112,Ibanez Gio guitar, Epiphone SG Special (open D slide guitar) . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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AJ Azure
From:
Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 9:32 pm
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| Another post providing the opportunity for ignorant people to express their judgmental ignorance. Why start a thread where all you really want is someone to make you feel good about your opinion? It's not like you're looking to be convinced of another possibility. This is as big a waste of time as the country is dead new country sucks gripes posts. |
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Dave Hopping
From:
Aurora, Colorado
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Posted 11 Jan 2012 11:56 pm
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| We're musicians here;if it's good,and creative,we'll see it,as shown by the positive comments made by a number of posters in this thread.But it's entirely appropriate to point out that rap is a violent,angry,racist,and misogynistic mode of expression,thoroughly opposite to the politically correct behavior that rap devotees require of other persons. |
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AJ Azure
From:
Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 12:21 am
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| Dave Hopping wrote: |
| We're musicians here;if it's good,and creative,we'll see it,as shown by the positive comments made by a number of posters in this thread.But it's entirely appropriate to point out that rap is a violent,angry,racist,and misogynistic mode of expression,thoroughly opposite to the politically correct behavior that rap devotees require of other persons. |
as are other forms of expression. it's naive and let's be honest racist to single out rap. |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 12:48 am
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| Please post a link to an example of "rap", for example on YouTube, so I can listen and decide for myself. |
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Fred Shannon
From:
Rocking "S" Ranch, Comancheria, Texas, R.I.P.
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 5:06 am
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Here you go folks, someone DESCRIBE Rap music please.
No ambiguity, just plain facts if you have time.
phred
_________________
There are only two defining forces that have offered to die for you; Jesus Christ and the American GI!!
Think about it!! |
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Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 5:07 am
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| Dave Hopping wrote: |
| ....But it's entirely appropriate to point out that rap is a violent,angry,racist,and misogynistic mode of expression,... |
Yes, we all know there is no misogyny and anger and violence in Rock or even Country....
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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Larry Miller
From:
Dothan AL,USA
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 5:15 am
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Earnest Bovine wrote
| Quote: |
| Please post a link to an example of "rap", for example on YouTube, so I can listen and decide for myself. |
Sir Mix-Alot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reTx5sqvVJ4
...kinda matches my sentiments... |
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Rick Barnhart
From:
Arizona, USA
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 5:29 am
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Do you suppose Rap artists are annoyed by your favorite style? 
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Clinesmith consoles D-8/6 5 pedal, D-8 3 pedal & A25 Frypan, Pettingill Teardrop, & P8 Deluxe. |
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Bob Hoffnar
From:
Austin, Tx
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 9:14 am
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Dr. Dre is one of my favorite producers. For a while it seemed like every time I actually liked something I heard on the radio it was by him. Great music on pretty much every level. There is tons to learn from rap music when it comes to phrasing, structure and juxtapositions.
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Bob |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 9:33 am
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While some (maybe a lot) of rap/hip hop is violent etc, there is plenty that is not. It is unfair to place such general classifications on any type of music. Gangsta rap is the kind I think you are referring to, and that is usually violent, but it IS still music.
And no I am not a fan of rap or hip hop.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, Recording King Professional Dobro, NV400, NV112,Ibanez Gio guitar, Epiphone SG Special (open D slide guitar) . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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AJ Azure
From:
Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.
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Posted 12 Jan 2012 10:10 am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8
"Empire State Of Mind"
Yeah, Yeah, I'm ma up at Brooklyn, Now I'm down in Tribe ca, Right next to DeNiro, But I'll be hood forever, I'm the new Sinatra, And since I made it here, I can make it anywhere, Yeah they love me everywhere, I used to cop in Harlem, All of my Dominicans Right there up on Broadway, Brought me back to that McDonald's,
Took it to my stash spot, 5-60 State street, Catch me in the kitchen like a Simmons whipping Pastry, Cruising down 8th street, Off white Lexus, Driving so slow but BK is from Texas, Me I'm up at Bed Study, Home of that boy Biggie, Now I live on billboard, And I brought my boys with me, Say what up to Ty Ty, still sipping Mai-tai Sitting court side Knicks and Nets give me high fives, N-gga I be Spiked out, I can trip a referee, Tell by my attitude that I most definitely from
[Alicia Keys:]In New York, Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There's nothing you can't do, Now you're in New York, These streets will make you feel brand new, The lights will inspire you, Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York
[Jay-Z:]I made you hot nigga, Catch me at the X with OG at a Yankee game, Shit I made the Yankee hat more famous than a yankee can, You should know I bleed Blue, but I ain't a crip tho, But I got a gang of niggas walking with my clique though, Welcome to the melting pot, Corners where we selling rocks, Afrika bambaataa shit, Home of the hip hop, Yellow cap, gypsy cap, dollar cab, holla back, For foreigners it aint fitted they forgot how to act, 8 million stories out there and their naked,
Cities is a pity half of y'all won't make it, Me I gotta plug Special Ed and I got it made, If Jeezy's paying LeBron, I'm paying Dwayne Wade, 3 dice cee-lo 3 card Monte, Labor day parade, rest in peace Bob Marley, Statue of Liberty, long live the World trade, Long live the king yo, I'm from the empire state that's
[Repeat Chorus:]
[Jay-Z:]Lights is blinding, Girls need blinders So they can step out of bounds quick, The side lines is blind with casualties, Who sipping life casually, then gradually become worse, Don't bite the apple Eve, Caught up in the in crowd, Now your in-style, And in the winter gets cold en vogue with your skin out, The city of sin is a pity on a whim, Good girls gone bad, the cities filled with them, Mami took a bus trip and now she got her bust out, Everybody ride her, just like a bus route, Hail Mary to the city your a Virgin, And Jesus CAN save you! life starts when church starts,
Came here for school, graduated to the high life, Ball players, rap stars, addicted to the limelight, MDMA got you feeling like a champion, The city never sleeps better slip you a Ambient
[Repeat Chorus:]
[Alicia Keys:]One hand in the air for the big city, Street lights, big dreams all looking pretty, No place in the World that can compare, Put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeah Come on, come, Yeah,
[Repeat Chorus:] |
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