Like any music genre, there is good rap and bad rap - it might not be your favorite genre, but if you don't like a song simply because it's rap, you're not giving it a fair chance.
My main issue is with "mainstream" rap...or rap that appears in pop music, at any rate. Very rarely are raps in pop songs beneficial in any way to the song itself, either musically or lyrically, and seem tacked on just for the sake of having a rap. There are exceptions, of course: perhaps my favorite rapping occurs in Gym Glass heroes' Stereo Hearts, where the rap (which actually forms the bulk of most stanzas, rather than just popping up for the bridge - the song is built around the rap, not the other way around, but it combines the rapping and the singing very well) is both aesthetically pleasing and lyrically clever ("The last girl that played me left a couple tracks/I used to- used to- used to- Now I'm over that").
As for pure rap songs...I'll admit, it isn't a genre I have explored particularly thoroughly. Whether it's a truly representative sample or not, the majority of pure rap I've heard is excessively lewd and crass for the sake of it (a big turn-off for me) without any of the more expansive wordplay that rap allows for. If anyone could suggest some good rap that doesn't have these faults, I'm all ears, but it's not something I'd actively go out of my way to look for.
And then there's guys like Dan Bull, who I don't know enough about rap to try to define, but are a bit different from the mainstream and can be very enjoyable to listen to because of some of those differences.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's enough variety in rap that ignoring it due to certain stereotypes about it is, well, ignorant. Rap isn't my favorite genre, but I respect the form, there's rap that I enjoy, and I like the potential for lyrical freedom that song can lack at times. I wish I could gather my thoughts a bit better, but it's 3 AM and my mind isn't exactly working at optimum capacity at the moment (whether that has something to do with the unnecessary amount of 'big' words I used or not, I'm not sure).
My main issue is with "mainstream" rap...or rap that appears in pop music, at any rate. Very rarely are raps in pop songs beneficial in any way to the song itself, either musically or lyrically, and seem tacked on just for the sake of having a rap. There are exceptions, of course: perhaps my favorite rapping occurs in Gym Glass heroes' Stereo Hearts, where the rap (which actually forms the bulk of most stanzas, rather than just popping up for the bridge - the song is built around the rap, not the other way around, but it combines the rapping and the singing very well) is both aesthetically pleasing and lyrically clever ("The last girl that played me left a couple tracks/I used to- used to- used to- Now I'm over that").
As for pure rap songs...I'll admit, it isn't a genre I have explored particularly thoroughly. Whether it's a truly representative sample or not, the majority of pure rap I've heard is excessively lewd and crass for the sake of it (a big turn-off for me) without any of the more expansive wordplay that rap allows for. If anyone could suggest some good rap that doesn't have these faults, I'm all ears, but it's not something I'd actively go out of my way to look for.
And then there's guys like Dan Bull, who I don't know enough about rap to try to define, but are a bit different from the mainstream and can be very enjoyable to listen to because of some of those differences.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's enough variety in rap that ignoring it due to certain stereotypes about it is, well, ignorant. Rap isn't my favorite genre, but I respect the form, there's rap that I enjoy, and I like the potential for lyrical freedom that song can lack at times. I wish I could gather my thoughts a bit better, but it's 3 AM and my mind isn't exactly working at optimum capacity at the moment (whether that has something to do with the unnecessary amount of 'big' words I used or not, I'm not sure).