What do you think of rap?

[6_Qubed]

I like my rap like I like my omen. With bubbles and a W.

It took me a minute to understand what you said there. TIME WELL SPENT.

OT: I like some rap. El-P, Aesop Rock, MF Doom, Das Racist, (older) Eminem, OFWGKTA, MC Chris, MC Frontalot, Lonely Island, and a little of Nikki Minaj for sake of guilty pleasures.

But for the most part I can't do mainstram rap. All the various "Li'l"s and "Yung"s and "-eezy"s just sort of blend together into one overbearing belligerent drunk shithead screaming about bitches and gang violence and conspicuous consumption. It's like they all saw Jay and Puffy as kids and vowed to grow up to become "rap hustlers", but 10-20 years down the road they still haven't learned to actually rap yet.

 

[Ieyke]

Rap is crap until it's almost not rap anymore.
Linkin Park, Gorillaz, Flobots...that's the general area where rap is good.

That rest is almost just all retarded sounding noise.

 

[Offworlder_v1legacy]

That it's fucking awesome. I know I'm going to cop flack for this, but some of the best music ever created is hip-hop or rap.


I know people won't like the content, but everything about it is perfect. The beat, the samples, the flow, the rhythm, is all put together in one masterpiece of hip-hop.

 

[Cheesepower5]

My, I sure am popular in this thread. That there's enough people passionate enough to defend the genre from my words reflects well on it, although I still hold to my position that the genre has done far more harm than good. It's not you, and it's probably not the rap you like. Hell, I probably haven't heard the rap you like. It's just the genre as a whole seems to me to have turned some genuinely nice, clever kids into wannabe thugs. As such, I tend to unfairly brand the whole thing as stupid.

That said, I just don't like the sound of rap. Even the rap music I can tolerate isn't the kind of music I can just listen to over and over again, like other genres. But yeah, if you like some underground rap group preaching a message or just like the sound of rap but aren't into the thug life, more power to you.

 

[Miss G.]

My musical taste is more pop, songs in different languages, movie and video-game scores, classical music, and hard/alternative/rock so I don't see the appeal of rap (and by extension, its culture) and I don't like being expected to know anything about it just because I'm black.

That said, something like the little bits of it in Linkin Park songs or anime themes like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and game themes like P3P's battle songs are fine with me.

 

[DarkSeraphim02]

Speaking only for myself, I don't consider rap to be music. It all sounds the same to me and I don't like it one bit.
Before anybody jumps down my throat for that statement though I'd like to point out that my brother is mainly to blame for me not liking rap.

I don't know if there is a specific name for it, but my brother only ever listened to really vulgar rap, and he often blared his stereo while doing so. Waking up one day to hearing some guy rapping about sucking on some girls tits is not my idea of a wake up call and was pretty much the occasion that cemented my dislike of rap.
That said however, if someone else happens to enjoy it, I won't hold it against them. Everybody has different tastes. I used to dislike metal as well because my sister listened to it and most of what she listened to was the kind where the guy is harshly and often, to me, incoherantly screaming into his microphone, then someone I know introduced me to symphonic metal, specificly nightwish, and I found a style of the genre that I actually liked.
So who knows, maybe some day I'll come across a style of rap that I can actually stomach (though I highly doubt it).

 

[Julius Terrell]

There's very little in the world I utterly fucking detest more than rap music. Ignoring the fact that a large percentage of it is all about killing, abusing women and hating in general, and giving it leeway to allow for other subject matters, it's just awful on the ears IMO.

The general lack of melody and tonality means that it is not only mundane and overly-repetitive, but it also means millions of artists have a very similar sound too (much like scremo metal).

But the most anus-rippingly painful thing about rap is when they take good songs and totally fucking ruin them by doing little more than adding a few tweaks and adding "Ughgghh" & "Yeah" over the entire thing ala "Every Breath You Take", or butchering the lyrics such as "You Spin Me Right Round" to "You spin my head right round, when you go down"

Seriously, I'm all for love and tolerance to your fellow human being, but if I was above the law I would terminate the people who have used rap to ruin such classic songs with extreme prejudice.

"Peace and love to everything and everyone" is a standard I try to adhere to, but when it comes to rap I can't help feeling anything other than a desire to eradicate it and all it's culture from existence.

Peace

Couldn't have said it any better!!

 

[darron13]

Short of dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip, not a whole lot. At least rap that plays on the radio, I can't stand any of it.

 

[Angie7F]

To me it sound like a buddhist monk with his sutras.

However I do love this movie. it always makes me laugh.
(Movie about Japanese country town losers trying to make it as a rapper)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBjjfDvLxR0

 

[Nosirrah]

I personally hate most types of music, with rap probably being my second least favourite, behind dub step, which to me sound like someone out a rock in a blender then put the remains including the blender in to their washing machine.

Maybe I've just had a bad impression, what with the only people I know to to listen too it were from school, and their favourite rap songs being ones about how someone fucked your mum.

If anyone could tell me some that is halfway decent, maybe I'll change. But right now, I don't like it.

 

[Wraith]

It's a little shocking to see such a large prejudice against a musical genre from the majority of the Escapist community like this.

OT: I am okay with rap. It's not my main choice in music, I only have about 10 rap songs on my PC out of over 1,000, but I appreciate what it can bring. I am not a fan of the big name stuff that is out on radios now, mainly because their themes can be extremely redundant, but people like Eminem, who tell stories of personal termoil, anger, drug addiction etc. and make the lyrics meaningful, that is the shit I can groove to.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Not really. I'm not a fan of the attitude.

Captcha: "cop an attitude"

Whoa.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Rap's not really a style of music. Hip hop's good though.

Been a bit shit this year though.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Everyone keeps going on about gangsta rap. As if that's the core of hip hop. I'm not even sure if that movement is still going strong anymore. It's basically just become a cliché that doesn't really represent anything. Also I think people confuse gangsta rap with rap which just has shitty lyrics.

behind dub step, which to me sound like someone out a rock in a blender then put the remains including the blender in to their washing machine.

Wow that's quite an intense hate for 2 step beats there.

There are decent rap songs, but for the most part I can't stand it. Especially the type of people it tends to attract. Not to denounce everyone on this thread, there's people I like who are fond of rap, but for the most part they're wigger trash. I'm not the type to look down on people for how they act, I've seen better sides of wiggers, but it's obvious to me that the gangster rap culture not only affected their personalities for the worse, but also their lives and their relationships with their families. At least similarly disaffecting genres like Rock, Punk and Metal seem to be helmed by genuinely intelligent, progressive or visionary people like Pink Floyd, The Clash and Marilyn Manson. From what I've seen of rap stars, I've found no redeeming qualities.

Jesssssus. There are plenty of intelligent hip hop artists, and plenty of idiotic people in very popular rock bands (that Escape The Fate/Ronnie Radke spat is still going on). "Helmed by"? The rapping used in a lot of pop songs is pretty dumb, but just because they're popular doesn't mean they're at the helm of the genre. There have been many visionaries within the genre, who people conveniently don't know about or forget about.

Also Marilyn Manson has completely lost any vision he once had. Guy's a joke now.

I believe rap actually stands for rhythmic American poetry,

Not sure where you got that from. "Rap" has been a word in the English language for a long time, related to speech.

 

[Dragonclaw]

I like some old school rap...

RUN DMC
Beastie Boys
Doug E Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew
DJ Jazzy Jeff...

but those are looong gone and the current stuff just isn't the same. I find most of it to be irritating, disrespectful...sometimes hate filled...and most of the guys near here that are really into rap and rap culture are, quite frankly, assholes. I don't need to hear how many times your stereo can play the n word in a minute while your bass shakes my shop and you're still a block away, or how you wanna "kill all the white MFckers" as a white guy from suburbia these lyrics just don't speak to me...at least not in a good way...

 

[Cheesepower5]

Everyone keeps going on about gangsta rap. As if that's the core of hip hop. I'm not even sure if that movement is still going strong anymore. It's basically just become a cliché that doesn't really represent anything. Also I think people confuse gangsta rap with rap which just has shitty lyrics.

behind dub step, which to me sound like someone out a rock in a blender then put the remains including the blender in to their washing machine.

Wow that's quite an intense hate for 2 step beats there.

There are decent rap songs, but for the most part I can't stand it. Especially the type of people it tends to attract. Not to denounce everyone on this thread, there's people I like who are fond of rap, but for the most part they're wigger trash. I'm not the type to look down on people for how they act, I've seen better sides of wiggers, but it's obvious to me that the gangster rap culture not only affected their personalities for the worse, but also their lives and their relationships with their families. At least similarly disaffecting genres like Rock, Punk and Metal seem to be helmed by genuinely intelligent, progressive or visionary people like Pink Floyd, The Clash and Marilyn Manson. From what I've seen of rap stars, I've found no redeeming qualities.

Jesssssus. There are plenty of intelligent hip hop artists, and plenty of idiotic people in very popular rock bands (that Escape The Fate/Ronnie Radke spat is still going on). "Helmed by"? The rapping used in a lot of pop songs is pretty dumb, but just because they're popular doesn't mean they're at the helm of the genre. There have been many visionaries within the genre, who people conveniently don't know about or forget about.

Also Marilyn Manson has completely lost any vision he once had. Guy's a joke now.

I believe rap actually stands for rhythmic American poetry,

Not sure where you got that from. "Rap" has been a word in the English language for a long time, related to speech.

I don't listen to Manson, so I don't follow anything he does or says. I just know a bit of his older work and couldn't think of any other extremely famous Metal artists. And again, I'm addressing the most popular people in these genres because I neither know much nor give any fucks about underground rap music. The stuff that gets noticed might as well be poison, in my eyes. The people who give rap a bad name (the wiggers) only listen to the trash of the genre anyway, and even my friend who constantly tries to get me to understand how "deep" his music is just listens to stuff about growing up in the ghetto and dealing drugs (he's a suburban white boy.)

Yeah, I haven't even been impressed by underground rap I've heard.

And I don't see why people keep lauding this Macklemore fellow. I couldn't understand a lyric of Thrift Shop, but it sounded like shitty generic party music to me. Am I wrong and the lyrics are actually really smart/well thought out? I dunno', I just know a bunch of idiots I associate with like it, along with crap like 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne.

So yeah, when the rappers on TV and on the radio are making something that has good lyrics, meaning and doesn't encourage 12 year old dipshits to act "hard as fuck", I'll give ya'll an apology, but I'm not digging around in a genre that just sounds unpleasant to me so that I can tell you your music isn't crap. Not like anybody needs me to validate them, anyway. I'm only 19, I'm from a generation that obsesses over rap, and by all rights I should like it. But I can't. It's terrible, it makes decent people turn into terrible people, and I can't even respect my own age group because of it (and Jersey Shore.) This is probably the only generation where a large group of people are defaulting to their parents' music. Why? Because our music sucks!

 

[Smeatza]

I like some old school rap...

RUN DMC
Beastie Boys
Doug E Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew
DJ Jazzy Jeff...

but those are looong gone and the current stuff just isn't the same. I find most of it to be irritating, disrespectful...sometimes hate filled...and most of the guys near here that are really into rap and rap culture are, quite frankly, assholes. I don't need to hear how many times your stereo can play the n word in a minute while your bass shakes my shop and you're still a block away, or how you wanna "kill all the white MFckers" as a white guy from suburbia these lyrics just don't speak to me...at least not in a good way...

Welcome to the wonderful world of modern, socially conscious hip-hop.

So yeah, when the rappers on TV and on the radio are making something that has good lyrics, meaning and doesn't encourage 12 year old dipshits to act "hard as fuck", I'll give ya'll an apology, but I'm not digging around in a genre that just sounds unpleasant to me so that I can tell you your music isn't crap.

So basically, you blame rap for the evils of advertising and marketing?
You're ignoring Alicia Keys in order to focus on Nicky Minaj.
You ever heard of Hopsin? Because he seems to be pretty damn popular, and is the complete opposite of what you're describing.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Writing off an entire genre of music says nothing about the genre and everything about the short-sightedness of the person doing the writing-off.

 

[Cheesepower5]

I like some old school rap...

RUN DMC
Beastie Boys
Doug E Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew
DJ Jazzy Jeff...

but those are looong gone and the current stuff just isn't the same. I find most of it to be irritating, disrespectful...sometimes hate filled...and most of the guys near here that are really into rap and rap culture are, quite frankly, assholes. I don't need to hear how many times your stereo can play the n word in a minute while your bass shakes my shop and you're still a block away, or how you wanna "kill all the white MFckers" as a white guy from suburbia these lyrics just don't speak to me...at least not in a good way...

Welcome to the wonderful world of modern, socially conscious hip-hop.

So yeah, when the rappers on TV and on the radio are making something that has good lyrics, meaning and doesn't encourage 12 year old dipshits to act "hard as fuck", I'll give ya'll an apology, but I'm not digging around in a genre that just sounds unpleasant to me so that I can tell you your music isn't crap.

So basically, you blame rap for the evils of advertising and marketing?
You're ignoring Alicia Keys in order to focus on Nicky Minaj.
You ever heard of Hopsin? Because he seems to be pretty damn popular, and is the complete opposite of what you're describing.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Writing off an entire genre of music says nothing about the genre and everything about the short-sightedness of the person doing the writing-off.

Well, marketing never found out how to make wiggers before rap music came along. Even if it made that the most prevalent form of rap music, without the genre, none of the damage it's done would have happened. So I think you're trying to blame marketing for doing what it does (make cash) while rap is the one turning kids into obnoxious little failures with no respect for their culture, their family or even life. I'd trade all the good, meaningful rap songs like No Handlebars just to get rid of the wigger fad. Seriously, can I say this enough? Fuck wiggers.

I've never heard of Hopsin. None of my friends who like rap music have ever mentioned Hopsin. I'm sure he's a swell guy, but at least in my are, he ain't popular. And again, I'd gladly sacrifice him to whatever god is willing to erase rap music from the annals of time. I don't think anybody could show me a song to change my mind on that.

And again, I've never said there's no good rap. I've name-dropped like three rap songs or artists I've enjoyed. I just solemnly believe that the genre has done more harm than good, and dreck like Nikki Minaj and 50 Cent are simply that bad. Even if I liked the sound of repetitive drum beats and talking really quickly in an urgent tone, I would still hate everything most modern, popular rap artists stand for. It's a matter of taste and principle, not how many people who I've never heard of you can name.