Is Rap Music According to Definition?

[quantum]

Do you think rap is music?

I myself think that rap is the most pathetic form of communication possible, and it is not music, but I want to know if others agree.

 

[damgo]

Watch out, bro, if you going to dis rap in this town
I'll trash you so fast cats be thinkin it's WWF Smackdown
Try listenin' before dissin', else you be lookin' like a clown

Hip-hop is poetry, the poetry of the streets
But a little more, cause you also got to have dope beats
Try some Mos Def, if you want to hear a real treat
Rhymes so tight, blast you straight outta your seat

Or some Wu-Tang, now those cats are phat
Killa Bees get props, whole world knows that
Tracks bein' played from Jamaica to Eilat

But I don't really know why I'm even tryin'
Feelin like Jesus, castin' pearls before swine
You don't like rap -- whatever, fine

Go back home, thinkin you're some kinda James Dean
Pump up the treble, try and rock out to Celine
Dion, but you don't got it goin on
You ain't keen, you're just a Philistine.

 

[spacemanspiff]

yes rap is music. or if you want to get touchy you can call it spoken word over a bass line. either way rap as a form can be quite good.

now rappers on the other hand, often can go straight to hell. many of the popular ones write crappy songs about lose women and gold chains and really just suck.

 

[Dj Sneaky Whiskers]

Originally posted by quantum
Do you think rap is music?

I myself think that rap is the most pathetic form of communication possible,

Dude, even more pathetic than tin cans and string? How about yodelling? Or writing things on your backside and then displaying it to people? I only ask because I want to get to the very root of this complex argument. How about a rapper, yodelling his ill rhymes to you via said tin can + string contraption, with things written on his backside?

and it is not music, but I want to know if others agree.

Ah! You're a musicologist then, sorry, if I'd read further before replying I wouldn't have questioned your professional opinion. There's going to be all hell to pay if the music press find out about this latest development in the study of music!

 

[climbhi]

Originally posted by Dj Sneaky Whiskers
Or writing things on your backside and then displaying it to people?

Now that's a classy way to communicate!

 

[The Grimmus]

I may not like it but i must say it is music it is a callaberation of sounds and vocies (witch are sounds but come on) may be very primetive and have little meaning but music is music. If you as the question is rap good music well then the anwer is no

 

[RuroumiKenshin]

I dislike rap because it is so...I dunno, I just don't like it. It gets on my nerves. I prefer alternative hip hop.

 

[Chemicalsuperfreak]

I think people who don't think rap is music are ignorant philistines who couldn't appreciate art if they were locked inside the Louvre.

But that's just one opinion.

 

[N_Quire]

I'm too old for rap. It passed me by. I am a punk exile. Rap is insufficiently punky. It seems to be about guys who are b**chin at the system, all the chances it doesn't give them and yet they want nothin more that to be part of that system with big record deals, lotsa a b*tch*es and a wallet full of dough. I dunno, that's what it seems like to me.

 

[damgo]

Hmmm, it strikes me that many of the people here who say they hate it just haven't heard much good rap... If my only exposure to the genre had been Nelly, SMG, Puff Daddy, and Jay-Z, I'd probably think it sucked too. :|

 

[RuroumiKenshin]

Damgo, from your first post on this thread, it seems to me that rap is a form of poetry. Very interesting way to look at it. What kind of rap did you listen to?

 

[damgo]

lol, that line was half (but only half) tongue-in-cheek. I listen to pretty much everything, with the exception of the Nelly-Usher brand of club-hip-hop-lite. Unfortunately I end up hearing that crap when I actually go clubbing, but what can you do. Currently on my playlist:

Eminem, Non-Phixion, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Wu Tang, Canibus, Ludacris, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Missy Elliott, Cannibal Ox, KRS One, Common, A Tribe Called Quest, Naughty by Nature (old times' sake).

I also dig old-skool gangster stuff -- N.W.A., Snoop, Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy E, Too Short -- but mainly cause I grew up on it. Ah, the days of cruising the suburbs in dad's Buick, playing "F*** Tha Police" way too loud... to be in junior high again.

 

[kyle_soule]

I love all music, rap being one of my favorite. I don't know how you can say this isn't communication, some of you should watch Welcome to Death Row, it's a good backround on rap. Rap, much like most music, could very easily be considered poetry.

Damgo, snoop and dre are the only good ones on your list, and I HATE eminem, I would say he is for white only, good radio stuff I suppose. I mostly don't like him because I think he is fake, I think he has changed too much since Infinite.

I have never heard an intelligent argument for rap not being music, all I hear is personal bias' as the cause of this so-called debate on whether rap is music or not.

 

[Cartesio]

Music is an attempt at communication - to express one's thoughts, feelings, opinions etc. And one would talk about that which s/he experiences (in most cases)... If you think trash, your attempts at communicating through music will depict trash.
I listen to rap...Tupac, some French artistes...
I suppose music is like everything else on this planet. People with bad intentions will always latch on to what is essentially good and pollute it...the environment, culture etc.

 

[kyle_soule]

Originally posted by Moetasim
Music means that very thing which leaves a plausible effect on mind and also graphically its graph is smooth...do rap have these qualities?

This isn't the criteria for music, Cartesio's post is a more accurate definition, now, does rap have those qualities?

Your definition leaves music wide open for personal dislike, therefore making it "not music" in your opinion, there isn't any opinions involved in what is and isn't music, at least I wouldn't think so.