Rap = poetry?

I suppose that poetry, as it were, is in the ear of the beholder.

Personally, I wouldn't consider rap to be poetry, but only because I don't identify with the sentiments. Other songs with well written lyrics, however, can function as poetry in their own right.

Someone lent me a CD recently which was just a load of well-spoken British theatricals (Joanna Lumley and Geoffrey Palmer, for example), reciting famous poems against a background of well-known bits of classical music. I felt it worked rather well, but on a basic level does it in fact differ from rap music?

Yes, it is poetry. It isn't poetry that I like, necessarily, but it is poetry.

For me its hard to say. I think it comes down to the song itself, but if I had to say any music was closest to it would be Rap ( classic rap, back when before it was lazy ) and Riot Folk.

I do hope rap is one day taken in as a serious art form: it will give me something (more) to laugh at.

I think if it fits these catergories it is probably a poem

-It has an obvious rythem
-It provokes strong emotion
-It may or not rhyme, but it usually does. If it doesn't it makes up for it in rythem.
-It is seperated into obvious stanzas
-It isn't just ordinary speech. It's more theatrical (probably the wrong word?)than that.

I think the emotional feeling is the most important.

So, many rap songs are poems, but not all of them.

-It has an obvious rythem
-It provokes strong emotion
-It may or not rhyme, but it usually does. If it doesn't it makes up for it in rythem.
-It is seperated into obvious stanzas
-It isn't just ordinary speech. It's more theatrical (probably the wrong word?)than that.

I think the emotional feeling is the most important.

I'm not certain that's a good definition of poetry... and as for evoking a strong emotional response... isn't that rather subjective? Hannah Montana evokes a strong emotional response from a sizable audience.

Well, obviously, except for the strong emotion, almost none of Baudelaire's Petit Poems or Blake Marriage of Hell and Heaven will fit in those definition, am I correct?

My take on this is two-fold.
First, I think that rap is poetry, because it rhymes, it has meter and rhythm, and so forth. Rap does have, apart from its content, artistic merit because many times rap artists can be quite inventive and creative in their use of rhythm and rhyme.
However, I also submit that often the content of this poetry is reprobate, if not downright homicidal. Take, for instance, Eminem's rap song (?) in which he talks about stapling his highschool teacher to a desk. Or the plethora of songs that make women into toys for the unbridled pleasures of the rapper. All of this is execrable, which is unfortunate because rap has, IMHO, a lot of artistic potential, especially in its use of rhythm.