Poll: What's your opinion on Rap and Hip Hop?

[KefkaCultist]

I don't really know how to vote on this one because heres my issue...
I like older rap like: Coolio, 2pac, and NWA. some of it is actually really good music (Gangsters Paradise is one of my favorites)
but all the new crap (lil wayne, eminem, drake, jay z, etc.) just sucks ass

Also, I'm mostly into rock/metal music so I'm kinda biased

 

[Last Bullet]

Eminem and Mike Shinoda are the only ones I really get into. Most of the rest is just the same garbage with a different face.

 

[TehCookie]

I'm extremely picky about my rap/hiphop. First it must have an instruments besides drums, you cannot create a song with just drums. Second it can't be about the thug life, I hate the thug life. I think the world would be a lot better if you didn't need a gun to go to the city. Third I like some pitch when the artist is rapping.

Spoiler: Example

 

[Space Spoons]

Same as my opinion on every other musical genre; some of it's alright, most of it's garbage, and a very, very small amount of it is amazing beyond all reason.

 

[scorptatious]

So as to not present a biased account of rap I also posted one of his other songs called "Fuck Friendz" which is pretty ghetto.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fuck+friendz&aq=f[/quote]

Oh yeah, and for the record, hip hop is commonly misrepresented as a music genre, however this is not the case. It is the culture +associated acts, such as breakdancing, Djing, graffiti, etc.

I like some rap or hip hop. Lonely by Akon was pretty decent. Run Away Love was also good, I also used to like the Black Eyes Peas (before they became shitty) Besides those songs and a few others, I think the genre is absolute shit.

\

Oh yeah, I forgot about 2Pac. Thanks for reminding me. As for the first one, didn't really think much of it.

 

[scorptatious]

(Ignore this post, something glitched up with the quotes.)

 

[Xojins]

I like rap. I don't bother trying to explain to people why it's good anymore because if you think it's a bad genre all together you don't get it, and nothing anyone says will allow you to understand it.

Please don't come and tell me I'm wrong because you "get it but still think it sucks". No, you don't get it. Rappers say and do things with words that no other genre can.

 

[MentalBakura]

Hip-hop music? It's not a preferred genre of mine, and I don't listen to it very often, but my opinion is that it's a genre woefully misrepresented by modern gangster rap. Unfortunately, there are a lot of close-minded idiots who decide to form their final opinion based solely on this. There's plenty of well-made, meaningful hip-hop music / rap out there if you just look for it. Same with any genre really.

 

[ultrachicken]

Like every genre, it has shitty songs and great songs.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Yes there is a lot of shit on the TV and the radio, but hating Hip Hop because you don't like 50 Cent is like hating Rock music because you don't like Nickleback.

That is a very good point that a lot of people miss. It's not that I think everyone should like it, because that's just silly, but the majority of complaints about it I usually see come up pretty much exclusively address the most stereotypical subset of the genre and show a complete lack of awareness of it. You'd think it's nothing but bitches, guns, drugs, and money to hear them gripe about it, and that nothing existed before gangsta rap (and nothing has existed since that hasn't been a derivative of it), because it's not like completely different stuff like Rapper's Delight predated it by years or anything or has continued to exist and evolve ever since...

It's easy to stereotype and dismiss pretty much any genre of music just based on the small subset of it that ends up on the radio or TV or in soundtracks for things, a lot of which is crap in any genre, whether it's hiphop (if I avoided it because of Soulja Boy, I'd miss out on Outkast and Immortal Technique and more stuff that's even farther from mainstream) or rock (Nickelback vs. Muse) or pop (Ke$ha vs. Tullycraft or the Smittens) or country (nearly everything that's ever made it on the radio vs. Drive-By Truckers) or whatever else (trance, metal, blues, Baroque chamber music, etc.). And that's just a handful of things from the past 10-15 years (all of which are completely off the top of my head and my own subjective opinion and may not be the best examples and definitely won't be agreed with by everyone, but I'm lazy, so they'll have to do). With a little more time and effort, I could put together similar examples for the 80s, or the 70s, or whenever, and whatever type of music.

I guess my point is that any genre that's so broad and has been so well-established for so long has a lot of variety in it, and it just bugs me when people lump it all together. I don't have a problem with them not liking it, because that's their opinion, but don't make sweeping statements that make you look silly. It's like the people who hate all video games because they're all nothing but murder simulators where you run around shooting things but are oblivious to (or conveniently ignoring the existence of) Tetris and Katamari and the dozens of other things that come out every year that couldn't possibly be farther from that description.

Edit: For a change, I'm actually rather happy that a ninja beat me to something: in this case, mentioning Rapper's Delight.

 

[Paulrus_Keaton]

I've found myself listening to it at times, but its hard to really get into the culture and themes.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

Quite a fan of some rap. But for every artist I like, theres a Chingy or Lil Wayne there to ruin it for me. Then again, its the same with any genre.

Question though, Is rap music or poetry? because people say different things.

As for hip-hop. Its cool.

 

[Sacman]

I wouldn't say I love rap and hip-hop, but there is definitely a lot of it that I listen to. The real thing is digging through all the muck to find the gold and jewels of the lot, so to speak. Some of the older stuff is also quite good, in my opinion.

Yeah Sugarhill Gang is awesome!!! this is the stuff I listen to as a kid...which might be a perplexing statement since I'm only 18...

 

[Mar451]

Can't spell crap without rap

 

[Apretentiousname]

Quite a fan of some rap. But for every artist I like, theres a Chingy or Lil Wayne there to ruin it for me. Then again, its the same with any genre.

Question though, Is rap music or poetry? because people say different things.

As for hip-hop. Its cool.

An interesting question, one that I actually haven't given much thought. I believe that it focuses on being poetry, but the music is an essential part of it too.

The poetry aspect of it is the story, the vocabulary, and the wordplay which can be quite impressive with the right rappers (Nas for example).

The musical aspect I'm going to denote as a "skill" aspect as well, because truly, rap is a skill, or a talent. First of all, flow. Flow is how the rapper spits his words, when he goes up or down in pitch or volume, how well he hits the syllables, where he puts rest, etc. Some rappers flow with the song using melody, such as Eminem, while others not so much.
Another part of this musical/skill aspect is the rhyming. Rappers use complex and internal rhymes so that the words will sound better with the music, which it does, noticeably.
Again, take for example eminem, in his earlier songs you could hear his words working with the beat, the song, while the new rapper, Drake has horrible multisyllabic rhymes. He only rhymes the ends of his bars, and the difference is VERY noticeable.

However, one aspect that I believe is just talent, or part of the culture, is freestyling. You have to be born with the ability to freestyle, it's not something you can learn. It's just something amazing.

 

[Sacman]

you cannot create a song with just drums.

I think this man would beg to differ...

 

[Darkauthor81]

Some rap, I like. But it's extremely rare. Most of the garbage I hear blaring from cars and people in the dorm rooms down the hall is just "get dem monies get dem hoes shoot dem fuckas" crap that gangster wannabes listen to while they jerk off.

 

[DustyDrB]

I like a lot of it. Just none of the southern rap. I love Kanye West, The Roots, Jay-Z, Mos Def, Gnarls Barkley, A Tribe Called Quest, DOOM, Wale, and lots of other stuff. There's definitely more mainstream rap and hip hop that I like than there is rock. People who hate it because of sampling...a ton of music is recycled. I'm a huge fan of folk music, old school country, and blues. A whole lot of that is done and redone. I see it as a sign of respect, though. Or in other cases, it's a tradition: a song that keeps on being retold in different ways. You're not going to find many rap fans here, though. I'm not going to say the R word. But things are kind of afro-phobic, culturally speaking.