Hip Hop Is Not Art

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Originally Posted by ghideon

"despite the myriad of differences what we share is our humanness."

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Originally Posted by genoveva

This thread is filled with lots of passionate opinions, and lots of food for thought. Yes, race is a sensitive issue...

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you know, i am beginning to feel a lot of love in this thread here. :D gimme big hugs you two! :D


VIRGIL: You are a mad genius where did you get this fine article?!?!?! Everyone following this thread should read that article in its entirety - it's just fabulous. the part i found especially interesting is how the hip-hop industry - which is comprised mostly of black rappers...i mean artists, objectifies women with their despicable portrayal of women as B***hes and Hoes and the industry's dumping millions into the making of cheap trashy videos that kids emulate and music award ceremonies worship with P-Diddy coronations circled by female dancers (aka performers) intoxicated with false hopes of launching a "real career" -- relegated to dance in sleazy outfits for back alley go-go's where, sadly, many will wind up hooked on heroin, after the conglomerates fold their tents and P-Diddys and J-Zs and M&Ms and Ludicrous's have long sunk deep into their Sodom and Gomorrah quicksand lives, alongside their money and bling-bling teeth and gaudy jewelry that i wouldn't let my cat wear; with stockpiles of drugs and cars, Cars, CARS and "Cribs" (it's all reported their videos and music, the art! :alien: )

the article's words:
"Black intellectuals, such as Cobb and Dyson, are enforcing that code of silence. They are also defending the sad status quo among poor black people. Added to the recipe is the intellectual defense of hip-hop — with music, videos and films — that excuses failure and even celebrates destructive, criminal "Gangsta" behavior such as violence, stealing to get 'bling-bling' and abusive treatment of women."

:blush:

ps
amen for women like Andrea Dworkin who continue to write fierce criticisms against the hip-hop and porn industries, institutions of domestic violence, etc.

i didn't mean to start a new thread...the posting system is disturbed because i posted this under dramasnot's "internalized racism" thread. but hey we can discuss hip hop if you like.

some questions that come to mind:
Is hip hop art or trash? POETRY OR GIBBERISH? to what extent does the industry have a "public responsibility" and why?

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

VIRGIL: You are a mad genius where did you get this fine article?!?!?! Everyone following this thread should read that article in its entirety - it's just fabulous. the part i found especially interesting is how the hip-hop industry - which is comprised mostly of black rappers...i mean artists, objectifies women with their despicable portrayal of women as B***hes and Hoes and the industry's dumping millions into the making of cheap trashy videos that kids emulate and music award ceremonies worship with P-Diddy coronations circled by female dancers (aka performers) intoxicated with false hopes of launching a "real career" -- relegated to dance in sleazy outfits for back alley go-go's where, sadly, many will wind up hooked on heroin, after the conglomerates fold their tents and P-Diddys and J-Zs and M&Ms and Ludicrous's have long sunk deep into their Sodom and Gomorrah quicksand lives, alongside their money and bling-bling teeth and gaudy jewelry that i wouldn't let my cat wear; with stockpiles of drugs and cars, Cars, CARS and "Cribs" (it's all reported their videos and music, the art! :alien: )

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Just came across it in my morning reading. I have a few web sites that compile commentary articles and editorials like that. I think that one came out of realpolitics.com. Like I said Juan Williams is an African-American. You might have come across him on NPR.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

some questions that come to mind:
Is hip hop art or trash? POETRY OR GIBBERISH? to what extent does the industry have a "public responsibility" and why?

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When rap/hip hop (I'm not sure i know the difference) came out I thought it was inventive and cool. But two things ultimately turned me off. (1) the values it projects are appalling and repulsive. (2) It kind of gets monotous. There doesn't seem to be much variation. But I'm hardly an expert.

There is nothing inherently wrong with rap if it would clean up its values. Now it doesn't have to be spic and span. Certainly rock isn't, but currently it is way out there. I enjoy the word play. I'm not saying it's poetry, but I don't consider many songs poetry. It can be if it were consciousy trying.

As to public responsibility, that's a tough call. Competing values of freedom of exression, freedom of the market place, and public decency. I certainly have leaned on the side of public decency in the past, and I probably would here too. It's not just decency issues; positive images for poor people would probably help them.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

It's not just decency issues; positive images for poor people would probably help them.

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i agree with you entirely. public decency must be a concern. Hip hop has defined a generation of thuggery that celebrates the idea that they don't care about 'nothin.' this is the "Whatever Generation," a swelling attitude among teens that they can slack off, listen to their hip hop, play video games while listening to their ipods, eat McDonalds, and go to colidge on a Pell grant. ugh.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

i agree with you entirely. public decency must be a concern. Hip hop has defined a generation of thuggery that celebrates the idea that they don't care about 'nothin.' this is the "Whatever Generation," a swelling attitude among teens that they can slack off, listen to their hip hop, play video games while listening to their ipods, eat McDonalds, and go to colidge on a Pell grant. ugh.

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You probably understand the young kids better than I. I'm a bit removed from them. My one experience with a person who's into rap is actually positive. I hired this black young man from Newark a few years ago as an engineer out of college. I think he came out of Rutgers. Everytime I happen to sit in his car his radio churns out rap. And loud too. ;) But he's a great young engineer. I'm really proud of him. He might be a extra special though. I occaisionally have classical playing in the background at my desk and he's come by and recognized it and even talked opera. I was shocked. He said he had studied it in school. :)

Who is claiming hip-hop is art ?:idea:

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Originally Posted by IamMissingaLink

Who is claiming hip-hop is art ?:idea:

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the entire hip hop community claims it. they've completely erased "rapper" from their vocabulary because it smacks of old school run DMC, Public Enemy, Grand Master Flash, blah blah. being deemed an artist allows them to draw from the chi-chi and poor. yet the chi-chi culture wants nothing to do with those thugs, just spend a few bucks to watch 8-Mile or buy the latest Jay-Z/Linkin Park mix. ugh.

the court jester of hip hop would have to be Naz: he's a self-proclaimed artist/poet. all thugs i tell ya.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

the entire hip hop community claims it. they've completely erased "rapper" from their vocabulary because it smacks of old school run DMC, Public Enemy, Grand Master Flash, blah blah. being deemed an artist allows them to draw from the chi-chi and poor. yet the chi-chi culture wants nothing to do with those thugs, just spend a few bucks to watch 8-Mile or buy the latest Jay-Z/Linkin Park mix. ugh.

the court jester of hip hop would have to be Naz: he's a self-proclaimed artist/poet. all thugs i tell ya.

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Kanye's aight :thumbs_up

I think Hip-Hop describes a body of work of great differences in quality. Now the question: Is Hip-Hop art? Before we look at the worst examples of this music genre it would be helpful to look at the best as well. I am certainly no expert about this but I have listened to DMX, Tupac, Snoop and liked much of their work.

Yes, almost all of the junk out there now...is junk. No argument. But that does not mean that it is not art. First, can we define hip-hop solely in terms of certain formal principles. In what ways is "H-H" distinct from all other forms of song/music?

The Dada movement certainly sent a punch to the art world when found objects were used as art pieces and displayed in galleries and some museums. There is the legendary example of the toilet in France, I believe. Also I doubt there would ever have been an Andy Warholl if the dada artists had not taken the risks of challenging the formal definniton of what is trash and what is art.

There is a difference between saying that a particular category of work is not art or is poor art or pop culture art or any of a dozen different labels. Nobody would argue, I assume, that literature is not an art form. However, when Stephen King was given the Pulitzer(?) there was a huge argument within the awards committee about whether or not he should even have been considered. This question came up again when Charles Johnson was given the National Book Award for Middle Passage.

My own personal deal is this...I am sick of the same bs other people have already mentioned. But on the other side of this coin there was a time in my life when all I listened to was Me Against The World one of Tupacs most important albums. Tupac is considred to be one of the greats of HH and I have to say that his music has had a definite and positive impact on me. He is well worth listening to for those who have not heard him before;for those who have not heard the best Hip Hop; or for those who love powerful music.:thumbs_up

Hip Hop grew out of Rap which actually has a goes back to the late 50s and 60s/70s music/poems of The Last Poets, Amira Braka and Gill Scott Harron (sp?) among others and can really be traced to black cultural uses of words/language/poetry in the cities long before MTV.

After looking again at the above decrying of hip-hop music and culture I just stopped and thought "Uh...this is sounding so much like what one generation was telling another generation back when Elvis started his pelvic thrusts" Cries about cultural degredation and cries that we need to stand firm about certain values.

I can just picture folks sitting in front of the tv watching Mr Ed or Leave It To Beaver as their sons and daughters were rocking to You Aint Nothing But A Hound Dog.

Gee...some think Tupac and Elvis are both alive and living in the tropics some where.:idea:

I made my stance on rap music clear in this thread. Hip hop is fine music - if it wasn't for the degrading lyrics, misogynism, hateful themes and base, shallow ways of thinking, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

"Hip hop" certainly can be "art," but the way it is commonly presented and created prevents it from being so.

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Originally Posted by Tupac Shakur

It's like I tell my niggaz, keep your eyes on these *****es
They love to G a nigga young dumb and gettin riches
What the **** you think a trick is nigga
Nigga done stick and wet his d**k
and then get tricked out all his riches by a -- *****!
I'm here to school you to the rules of the game, it'll cost ya
Think you alla that just cause she let a nigga toss her
It's like a mother****in priveledge
So don't give up your conversation, give that ***** your 7 digits
When she call ya, ask that tramp whassup
And if she hesitate, nigga hang up, worrrd up
And let that ***** meditate to the dial tone
And call me when you're ready to bone, and it's on
A mother****ing mack tonight
Stay that stay strapped cause my raps is tight
You ****in punks, I hate you snitches
Went against the grain and the game to be fake *** *****es

(God, damn! You can't just hit them niggaz with that game
and expect them to accept it; girl your heard me it gets skanless.
But we gonna kick this **** like this here)


I can't stand it, hoes talkin bout they got a man
**** all I wanted her to do is suck my D**K
So how about hittin a mother****er on my pager
Busy now ***** but you can give me the pussy later
Fly how I fade her, played her like a game of Sega
****in with the player that done made her, huh
And I ain't sleepin caught you creepin for my money
Got the d**k and now you get the pistol honey (*****)
So get the bozack, knockin hoes back, keep my dough stacked
So where the mother****in hoes at?
Punk niggaz can't fade the mack, livin fat
Gettin paid to rap, it's like that, you mother****in *****es

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I am posting these lyrics of another song by Tupac. I do not have any argument that condemns the blatant, offensive sexism in rap or hip-hop. It is a very serious issue.

But Tupac, in particular, really struggled in many ways as regards his art and its message. He claimed a Thug identity but also really is still seen as having made tremendous contributions to the black community. I know that Eric Michael Dyson is regarded as a hot-headed Lefty and so on and in some ways I agree. But folks may be suprised by some of his work where he really does take the black community to task. He wrote a book about Malcom X in which he points out critical errors in Malcom's theory and practice...one of which was homophobia.

Tupac grew up in a black revolutionary family that was deeply connected to the Black Panther movement. His mother was a member but also, later on, became a serious addict and wound up in prison. Tupac's relation to black power/revolutionary-radical politics and its theory/practice was complicated by the rise of Gangsta culture. One point that Dyson makes, and I think he is on solid ground here, is that there is a real confusion in the US in general between criminal activity and rebels/militancy. It was easy for Shakur, growing up during the era that he did (the crack epidemic, the enormous increase in inner city gang violence...) to take on a Thug identity and confuse it with a well thought out, reasoned political stand. I offer no excuses for his decisons, songs...Each one is accountable for their lives. I am simply trying to offer some information that may provide a useful context for the discussion.

The song below is actually a very good example of the tension between criminality and community. It certainly reveals Tupac as more then just another typical rapper. There is some real cultural crticism being expressed below...as well as a powerful defense of how young black women are used, abused within his own culture and people.


"Brenda's Got A Baby"

Brenda's got a Baby
Brenda's got a Baby

I hear Brenda's got a baby
But, Brenda's barely got a brain
A damn shame
Tha girl can hardly spell her name
(That's not our problem, that's up ta Brenda's family)
Well let me show ya how it affects tha whole community
Now Brenda never really knew her moms and her dad was a
junky
Went in death to his arms, it's sad
Cause I bet Brenda doesn't even know
Just cause your in tha ghetto doesn't mean ya can't grow
But oh, that's a thought, my own revelation
Do whatever it takes ta resist tha temptation
Brenda got herself a boyfriend
Her boyfriend was her cousin, now lets watch tha joy end
She tried to hide her pregnancy, from her family
Who didn't really care to see, or give a damn if she
Went out and had a church of kids
As long as when tha check came they got first dibs
Now Brendas belly is gettin bigger
But no one seems ta notice any change in her figure
She's 12 years old and she's having a baby
In love with tha molester, whos sexin her crazy
And yet she thinks that he'll be with her forever
And dreams of a world with tha two of them are together,
whatever
He left her and she had tha baby solo, she had it on tha
bathroom floor
And didn't know so, she didn't know, what ta throw away and
what ta keep
She wrapped tha baby up and threw him in tha trash heep
I guess she thought she'd get away
Wouldn't hear tha cries
She didn't realize
How much tha tha little baby had her eyes
Now tha babys in tha trash heep balling
Momma can't help her, but it hurts ta hear her calling
Brenda wants ta run away
Momma say, you makin' me lose pay, tha social workers here
everyday
Now Brenda's gotta make her own way
Can't go to her family, they won't let her stay
No money no babysitter, she couldn't keep a job
She tried ta sell crack, but end up getting robbed
So now what's next, there ain't nothin left ta sell
So she sees sex as a way of leavin hell
It's payin tha rent, so she really can't complain
Prostitute, found slain, and Brenda's her name, she's got a baby

Baaaaaaaaby

(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)

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Originally Posted by ghideon

After looking again at the above decrying of hip-hop music and culture I just stopped and thought "Uh...this is sounding so much like what one generation was telling another generation back when Elvis started his pelvic thrusts" Cries about cultural degredation and cries that we need to stand firm about certain values.

I can just picture folks sitting in front of the tv watching Mr Ed or Leave It To Beaver as their sons and daughters were rocking to You Aint Nothing But A Hound Dog.

Gee...some think Tupac and Elvis are both alive and living in the tropics some where.:idea:

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ah, there you are, its my dear friend, ghideon! how are ya, pal? i thought you'd gone given your last post sounded so final, dreary even. your whole rant about whether civic dialogue really mattered in the end. do you know that Socrates would be very furious with you if he heard you say that?! i take the opposite position, actually. i think all people who participate in a dialogue are very open to changing their opinions. it's just that our personal belief system resists. so perspectives must evolve, and dialogue facilitates that. or it's at least a nice idea. :lol:

the fundamental difference between the music of Elvis and Tupac is how it affected people. it's true parents were shaken listening to this strange man who stood on his toes with those boppy hip-swinging moves and leg gesticulations to "Jailhouse Rock"! (Did he just say, "Jail", dear?) yeah, parents of that era freaked. but people danced to Elvis and often they smiled. they had a real interest in learning dance moves, enthralled by the sound of this wild Memphis cat!

when i hear tupac, i hear rage; i see hate, i see a snarl, a sneer, a smugness, a human being who spits in the face of the world, who basks in hate and debauchery. i see guns and the glory in murder - a rage against the machine; a disdain for all authority, including parents. sure, kids of the 1950s snuck out at night to spend a few hours at the local dance with boys, have a few drinks, but they weren't thinking about guns and 'doing a drive-by. no, the children of Elvis were by and large good kids. it was still an age of innocence, despite the shifting times. there's a difference, a big one.

I found an interesting article it's called the Metaphorical Conceptions of Hip Hop Music by Scott Crossley:

"Many hip-hop critics are rightly concerned, however, with what they see as the hyper-commercialization of rap music by the corporate record industry. (6) They also malign the influence of dominant commercial concerns on the aesthetic and political values of rap music. Many also find fault with commercialized rap's neglect of political, social, and racial consciousness, African American linguistic traditions, and its development as a viable art (Gladney 294, 304, Powell 2002). But even Ice Cube, who glorifies violence, materialism, and misogyny in his lyrics, insists that his music is fundamentally socially responsible and that his use of vulgarities helps to communicate this responsibility to communities that would otherwise be disinterested (Ogbar 170). Other critics say that gangster rap, the major offender in the commercialization of rap music, is a self-styled product of "the ghetto." As such, it purposefully reproduces the exaggerated "Blackness" of African American ghettoes and the destruction there and should therefore be seen as an accurate and symbolic replica of the urban African American experience (De Genova 106). The commercialization of rap music and the ownership of many large record labels by African Americans and the distribution of money to African American artists, producers, executives, and business managers have increased the success of many African Americans, but have contributed little to the improvement of the social reality of substandard housing, medical care, and education that affects half of African American children and accounts for a quarter of African Americans under the control of the justice system (Tate 11-12).

In essence, for better or for worse, rap music is one modern response to the social and economic ailments of the collective African American community, which include joblessness, disempowerment, and poverty (Smitherman 1997: 5) Young members of the hip-hop generation find themselves essentially in an antagonistic relationship with the institutions that attempt to structure and control their lives. Law enforcement, school systems, and popular media all identify them as internally dangerous elements of urban America, and this identification leads to the social construction of rap as also fundamentally unsafe (Rose 1991: 279). As a result, hip-hop culture is often viewed by mainstream society as impoverished, and the evidence used to support this claim is rap. In the minds of many within and outside hip-hop, this culture is affiliated with unemployment, violent crime (including the high incarceration rates that accompany it), drug abuse, fierce materialism, and the objectification of both men and women (Powell 2002). It is my contention that these topics, being both intensely emotional and problematic to hip-hop culture (and consequently corresponding favorably to Sperber's Law), have become centers of metaphoric attention within the community.

More importantly, I believe that an evaluation of the relative metaphors found in gangsta' rap can be used to better explain and understand the social history of the hip-hop generation and to reveal the underlying conceptual system formulated by the same. (7) This conceptual system was generated to structure hip-hop reality and give it meaning. The identification and classification of this conceptual system can also give both the dominant culture and the subculture a better understanding of the hip-hop generation. Using this understanding, activists, community leaders, politicians, and civil servants might more efficiently meet the challenges that the hip-hop generation faces. At a minimum, this knowledge may help them approach the problems faced by contemporary, urban African Americans with a clearer awareness of the experiences faced by the same.

Perhaps the most immediate experience that members of the hip-hop generation encounter is their neighborhood. As stated earlier, the hip-hop generation has created numerous metaphorical references for the areas in which they live or about which they produce art, virtually none of them positive. Critic Nick De Genova brands the ghetto of rap music as a "space of death" and also as a space of "survival and transcendence." It is the "heart of Blackness" (119). In this sense, Black urban neighborhoods are mythically emblematic of the distance American society has not covered in its effort to end segregation. African Americans as constructed in gangsta' rap lyrics remain strongly segregated from their White counterparts In neighborhoods that are ripe with criminal gangs, drug abuse, violent crime, inferior schools, and poverty. Those mythical African American neighborhoods are glaring contradictions to the idea that progress has been made from the civil rights movement and that there has been great growth in the desegregation of America. At least a part of hip-hop's "immoral" philosophy finds its origin in the fact that the civil rights movement did not fulfill its promise to Black America (Evelyn par. 18, online). The rap/hip hop community realizes these inconsistencies, and constructs metaphorical concepts of their neighborhoods that are portrayed in the rap music that comes out of the hip-hop culture."

It seems the general consesus on this thread is that hip-hop could be art, if it were differently motivated. I've learned in my various experiences that art is a very plastic term. It will be interesting to see if in a hundred years hip-hop will be called art. It very well may be, after all most of the great artists of the Roccoco school were unashamed to freely admit that the body of their work was nothing more than expensive pornography for the walls of the nobility, and they were content with that, yet today we call men such as Boucher and Fragonard geniuses.

The problem with hip-hop is not nesecarily about it being degrading and essentially low-brow, but that it expresses, unself-consciously, essentially universal human ideas that must be understood before they are dismissed, and not everyone is willing to either understand or dismiss them. In each of us here in our history there lurked the possibility that we could become misogynistic, violent debauchers or 'booty' shaking 'ho'es. Something, however, caused us to evaluate our own personal circumstances and navigated us away from that path, be it parents, school, education, whatever. We may have never even been exposed to that side of life and think it could never have happened to us, but as I said, it was only the insulation of family or maybe religion or something else, that kept you from it.

Humanity at its base is essentially the same; a dark, unrestrained, violent being with unlimited potentional (and potential, in the words of my father, just means you aren't working hard enough. You could be better). How do you restrain such impulses in people that are unwilling to change, or were given no alternative in their early lives? You can't. In fact, in a free society there is nothing you can do aside from education in the various sciences, and if education in the intellectual process fails to convey a better social stance then there is nothing left. After all, untill they have actually committed a crime they have every right to be as crass as you may be noble, and while that could be the ultimate undoing of free society, changing it would be its death just the same.

I just finished a course in African-American literature, and hip-hop art was very much included in the Norton Anthology that the course required. A lot of members are saying that they are tired of hearing "the same themes" over and over again in hip-hop, but how is that any different than the blues or rock and roll? Many genres focus on certain themes, sometimes they are even defined by those themes! Hip-hop, at least good hip-hop, will focus on themes that concern black people of the time...

Now, I am by no means a hip-hop fan (though my sister most definitely is), but while I do agree that there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called music (just as there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called poetry or literature) we can't denounce an entire genre of music just because what we, non hip-hop enthusiats, focus on the negative effects of the music and music videos and not the positive effects of the artists providing a sense of identity and companionship for young black people just as other musical artists undoubtedly did for us while we were growing up (I don't know how I would have survived without my alternative music growing up...)

There is good hip-hop out there...once you look past the stereotyped rhythms and baselines...

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Originally Posted by Shannanigan

I just finished a course in African-American literature, and hip-hop art was very much included in the Norton Anthology that the course required. A lot of members are saying that they are tired of hearing "the same themes" over and over again in hip-hop, but how is that any different than the blues or rock and roll? Many genres focus on certain themes, sometimes they are even defined by those themes! Hip-hop, at least good hip-hop, will focus on themes that concern black people of the time...

Now, I am by no means a hip-hop fan (though my sister most definitely is), but while I do agree that there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called music (just as there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called poetry or literature) we can't denounce an entire genre of music just because what we, non hip-hop enthusiats, focus on the negative effects of the music and music videos and not the positive effects of the artists providing a sense of identity and companionship for young black people just as other musical artists undoubtedly did for us while we were growing up (I don't know how I would have survived without my alternative music growing up...)

There is good hip-hop out there...once you look past the stereotyped rhythms and baselines...

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it's sad that hip hop would be included in a Norton Anthology for a college course next to the great minds of the heritage. i also don't understand how hip hop can be classified under "literature." i know of several high school teachers in the suburbs who spend mindless time in class interpreting hip hop music presumably because they can't get enough students jazzed up to read Robert Frost. forget about Shelley.

ghideon states that hip hop provides a thoughtful "social criticism" to ghetto life. it's just superficial observation "girl from compton got knocked up pop's picked up for grand larceny, yo yo, kid limp and cold in da' g'bage pail..." ugh. and the only time they inject a criticism is when it pertains to law enforcement.

has anyone heard the fairly new hip hop song, "Riding Dirty"? need i say what the song's about? i happen to see the video on MTV, which embellishes the drug dealer being "too slick" for the cops. i don't hear rock and roll doing that or even the disposable pop music out there. the days of dylan, simon and garfunkel, neil young, harry chapin, were social critics of their age and often kernels of poetry were discovered in their music along the way. not always. nor was it always fair and even-handed toward those it waged its disagreements. much of it was wrapped in hyperbole and crudeness. but the music pushed boundaries and provoked policy change, and generated an awareness of and discontent with democracy, not against it.

Define art please....


And why am I getting an impression that non hip hop rap genres are not guilty from giving bad influence?

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Originally Posted by subterranean

Define art please....

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Art is not smut.

Virgil, etc...

This question of whether rap/hip-hop is art really doubles back on our previous discussions of l'art pour l'art. Having previously stated that I am quite uncomfortable with the notion of using non-art measures (morality, politics, etc...) as a means of judging art, I must agree that rap is art, if I am to maintain any semblance of continuity. On the other hand, whether I like or dislike it (usually the latter) or whether it is good or bad art is another matter. I find that most of this "music" is rather simplistic (if not mindless) as poetry... laden with ridiculous bravado and swagger which mostly lacks any wit or inventiveness. And then there is the repetitive... monotonous nature of the music itself. Of course similar criticisms could be leveled at many other musical styles: certainly much of heavy metal (which is almost equally [unintentionally?] comic in its posturing to rap) and much of pop music in general. Of course there are always exceptions and I have long maintained that 90% of all art is mediocre at best. As to the issue of art... music, film, TV etc... having a potentially negative impact upon an audience, this is another question altogether. While I fully support the right of artists to create works laden with blatant sex, violence, anti-social behavior etc... I don't immediately assume that the rights of the artists to create such should be interpretted as negating the rights of parents and society from censoring... or restricting access to such from children. I should also note that the defense used by the music/film/tv industries suggesting that exposure to such "entertainment" has no impact upon society is complete BS. You only have to ask yourself why would corporate America spend billions advertizing on TV, magazines, etc... if such investments did not impact consumer behaviors (spending). But then excessive violence and sex on TV has no impact?:eek: They can't have it both ways.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

Art is not smut.

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I would just like to reiterate my comment about Boucher and Fragonard, two of the greatest artists of the Rococco movement, who painted unabashed pornography which is now hung in nearly every major, and many minor, museums from the National Gallery in DC to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

As far as older music styles not having empty violence and senseless death, I might refer you to Mississippi John Hurt's "First Shot Missed Him" which says, among other things, "First shot missed 'im a mile away; First shot missed 'im a mile a way; But the second shot got 'im, so they say, But the second shot got 'im so they say" or many of the songs in the Stago Lee sagas. Also there are bluegrass classics like "Willow Garden" with lines like "I drew the saber through her which was a bloody knife; I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight," and goes on to explain how he hoped to bribe his way out of jail. Also one can reference "Long Black Veil," which is about an adulterer. All these are important songs in the development of the American music tradition, and each of them were recorded originally before 1950.

Granted the violence in at least the first song is not so terrible, but when taken from the cultural context in which it was recorded it can be said to be no less extreme than that present in rap music.

Gratuitous violence is also extremely common in political songs. One can reference "Dunagon '57" which has lines like "And the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabluary, the pro-British militia in Ireland) went right back in again when he found he was lookin' down the barrel of a sten (machine gun)!" and "And if the British soldiers came, he said he'd blow 'em all to hell!" Additionally, "British Army" has lines like "When I was young I had a twist for punchin' babies with me fist." Of course, one can say that these songs are socially degenerative, revolutionary, and therefore not art, but they are political action songs not unlike The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or poems like The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Of course these examples only address the violence inherit in rap and not the misogyny, which is admittedly pretty unprecedented.

I am not excusing the content of Rap songs, or even saying that I listen to them, nor am I saying that they are art. Art is far too maleable a term to be applied in a rational discussion of things, but to dismiss the music out of hand simply for having disagreeable elements is certainly not an enlightened approach to understanding the nature of the phenomenon, which exists by popular demand, and thus is not an enlightened approach to understanding our society, which endorses, at least on a public stage, this form of music and elects it by patronage as modern, maybe I should say post-modern, dance standards.

As to the shame of it being included an an anthology next to the 'great-minds' of our literary heritage, I have to disagree. The fact is rap is as popular, if not more, today than Byron ever was in his own time, and popularity is more often than not what dictates endurance and legitimacy (there are obviously some exceptions to the rule). Perhaps Rap may be less intellectually challenging than Shelley (whom I have heard accused of being a driveller by several critics), less involved, less allegorical, but such possibly malicious simplicity may be the common sentiment of our time.

Undoubtedly many things can be said of rap to discredit it as a trend worthy of note, but then again, many things can also be said of 'artistic' works of the past. After all, what, fundamentally, is the difference between Animal Farm and propganda? Andy Warhol and the glorification of Commercialism? Uncle Tom's Cabin and a common pamphlet intended to incite what could be a seditious view of the state fo affairs? Trajan's column is little more than the self-glorification of an emporer, and who can really see Napoleon standing amidst plague victims as in the painting by Gros? Despite the rather unflattering origins of these pieces of 'art' no one hesitates to call them such, and many of our great pieces come from similiarly disgraceful origins, yet we do not hesitate to label them as great, and why? Because of popular sentiment. You may doubt my words, but if I were to proclaim Shakespeare here as a hack what would people say? There would be universal uproar and clamor decrying my sense of literary quality, but if I said I thought so because his stories were outdated, uninteresting and lacking the clear, straightforward, glorifingly simplistic guise of modernism, my opinion would still be repudiated as uninformed by the argument that the whole world loves him, that he is the earth's second greatest selling author, and as such I am in disagreement with the enlightened opinions of the greater part, again overwhelmingly greater part, of the educated world, and that therefore my opinions must be wrong, based on an artist's popularity, dare I say his percieved intellectual cachet.

The fact of the matter is that whether we like it or not rap and things just as intellectually challenged in my mind (Conceptualist pieces such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone living, which is a shark suspended in a tub of formaldehyde), are popularly, therefore highly, regarded today. Part of the price of democracy is admitting that the power of the people to make desicions about art is just as legitimate as the power of the people to decide their own government, and the price that must be paid is the swallowing of certain uncomfortable compromises thus implied. Rap seems to be one of them. As someone who considers himself a gentleman I find it as offensive as the next person, but the cruel, carnal fascination it posesses for the rest of us demands it be recognized, explored and if not wholly legitimized, at least accepted for what it is precieved by society as a whole. People will only be able leave it and its ideas behind, or accept them as wholly legitimate and normalized, once that has been done, once its basic concepts have been brought out and shown for what they are and people forced to choose whether it is what they truly like and agree with or whether it is really smut. If there is any power to destroy it that power is certainly not scorn, force, or disownment. Those only give it cachet as being the 'the music of the people,' 'the Truth,' or even the 'unart,' whose very nature begs at what it pretends to oppose.

Critic Nick De Genova brands the ghetto of rap music as a "space of death" and also as a space of "survival and transcendence."

As someone who teaches in the public schools in the very neighborhoods that spawn rap music I am well aware of the pain and horror and injustice that still exists in America. I guess that where I am having a problem with a good deal of rap is that I fail to see any "transcendence". Certainly a great many of the jazz musicians came out of circumstances that were no better (and in some aspects, worse) and yet there is the magic of the pain transcended... turned into art. This is not to say that the reality... the pain is ignored. It is certainly there. But there is no wallowing in juvenile embrace of the very worst. Transcendence certainly exists in Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington... and in other times and places and art forms it certainly existed in Sholom Aleichem, S. Y. Agnon, the Book of Lamentations, Goya, Breughel, etc...

This is a place where minds of reason can, one hopes, meet. With that said I will examine your words,language and arugments. I do this with the hope that in website focused on literature and language we will all own the words we use. I have no problem owning up to each word I write. I hope the same can be said for all others.


"to the great minds of the heritage."

Heritage usually referrs to aspects of a tradition that have been passed down from one generation to the next. If you were using the word with that meaning then which tradition do you mean when you write "the heritage"? Do you believe there is one tradition that needs to be taught in the nation's schools? Now before you go and just lump me into one of the Lefty, multi-cultural, relativistic boxes let me remind you I have no interest in diversity for diversity sake. As if we need to stop and pay attention to non-white, non-Western literature out of some sense of duty or obligation. No. The simple fact, and I am more then willing to back this up with as much objective evidene that you may need, the fact is that if there is a single heritage in this society it most certainly would include an enormous diversity of cultural influences. That is just the simple truth not some Michael Moore whine.

Or have you forgotten that there would have been no Rock and Roll if there had not been the jazz/blues musical genre first. Are you unaware of Elvis's debt to the black musicians that preceded him? He was certainly aware of it.

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i know of several high school teachers in the suburbs who spend mindless time in class interpreting hip hop music presumably because they can't get enough students jazzed up to read Robert Frost. forget about Shelley.

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One film that I dare say could be considered part of this nation's cinematic "heritage" is Blackboard Jungle. It depicts a high school in the late 50s. It's a tough school in a tough part of town and the students, almost all of them white, with the exception of just a few blacks and hispanic students (one of whom is played by that actor you may have heard of Sidney Poiter). Anyway, a new teacher is hired and he keeps on failing to get the attention of the class. They pass notes, giggle, throw gum at each other, and so on...anyway, at wits end he gets a movie projector and plays a Tom and Jerry cartoon (I think it is Tom and Jerry) and the kids shut up and just watch. He then asks them questions. Good questions. Questions about motivation? Questions about plot? And the students begin to actually grasp the pleasure of critical thinking.

You glibly dismiss the efforts of some school teachers. Do you have any idea what most teachers are up against every hour of the day? If I was a teacher I would use anything I could to engage the students. What would you do?

Oh, by the way, those whites in the suburbs buy tons of rap and hip-hop. In fact, if memory serves me, they purchase at least as much of the music as the folks living in the hood. Are those students the innocent victims of some ghetto/black/Lefty conspiracy? Just what is going on in that dynamic there? Are they innocent victims of some dark menacing force (maybe born from the jungles of Conrad) that yearns to take over the clean, pure minds of our "good" youth?

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ghideon states that hip hop provides a thoughtful "social criticism" to ghetto life. it's just superficial observation "girl from compton got knocked up pop's picked up for grand larceny, yo yo, kid limp and cold in da' g'bage pail..." ugh. and the only time they inject a criticism is when it pertains to law enforcement.

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There are several differences between some of the thoughtful criticism and writings that are on this thread and your above assessment of hip hop lyrics. One is that most of the posts actually contain from actual songs. Yours does not and again the glibness gets in the way of reason.

You may ask yourself if those who are producing the clothes, music, parties, magazines, websites, of the Hip Hop culture care that you find it "superficial"? Or better, I am fairly confident that many of them would actually appreciate your attitude because it would offer them more evidence, as if more was needed, that many of their critics know nothing about their world but think they do.

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has anyone heard the fairly new hip hop song, "Riding Dirty"? need i say what the song's about?

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I don't know. Has anybody heard a major song out now(found it on Yahoos home page) called "Hip Hop Is Dead". A major artist expresses his anger with the community and the music he cares deeply about. Yes there is even "meta" hip hop out there and it is critical as well.


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i don't hear rock and roll doing that or even the disposable pop music out there. the days of dylan, simon and garfunkel, neil young, harry chapin, were social critics of their age and often kernels of poetry were discovered in their music along the way.

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You "don't hear" cause you don't listen. Lets see...how much chicken blood is going to drip from the Satanic tribe? Or then there is the Hard Core Punk music. You know, that wonderful, classicaly trained musician Sid Vicious. I am down for all of it. I don't like like all of it but I do not base my values on my personal take. I do not let my individual likes/dislikes get in the way of being able to appreciate important cultural representations. Yea, maybe I don't want to listen to The Sex Pistols more then twice a month but their importance to the working class culture of England can not be ignored. Nor would it be wise to forget that Punk opened doors for many other types of music and bands from XTC to The Clash.


And finally, I could list about 500 songs from white Rock and Roll groups that glorify everything from murder, rape, drug use and so on. You're willing to defend everything from the the Door's glorification of LSD to Clapton (who I think of as a music deity) wrote singing "Cocaine".

But I forgot...coke is the uptown drug these days that rich folk use. The hood is still doing that ghetto fix crack. And thus, songs about snow are fine but songs about rock...no, no.

I would just like to reiterate my comment about Boucher and Fragonard, two of the greatest artists of the Rococco movement, who painted unabashed pornography which is now hung in nearly every major, and many minor, museums from the National Gallery in DC to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

SLG- As an artist I would be very interested in seeing all of these "pornographic" paintings. Certainly Boucher and Fragonard painted a great deal of art that might be termed "erotic" in nature...:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...urphysmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...uchersmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...erDogsmall.jpg

... and there are the rare paintings and drawings (not uncommon to most artists) that verge upon "pornography"... or at least those that qualify as more blatantly erotic. But unabashed pornographic paintings hanging in every major museum? Only if your definition of pornography matches that of mark Twain who imagine nothing but lewdness and crudity in Titian's great Venus D'Urbino.

As far as older music styles not having empty violence and senseless death, I might refer you to Mississippi John Hurt's "First Shot Missed Him" which says, among other things, "First shot missed 'im a mile away; First shot missed 'im a mile a way; But the second shot got 'im, so they say, But the second shot got 'im so they say" or many of the songs in the Stago Lee sagas. Also there are bluegrass classics like "Willow Garden" with lines like "I drew the saber through her which was a bloody knife; I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight," and goes on to explain how he hoped to bribe his way out of jail.

SLG- Again, I have no qualms with death, violence, sex etc... portrayed in art. Art should be able to address all aspects of the world. On the other hand... the "meaningless" or "emptiness" needs to be trascended through the art. Goya, for example, presents images of horror and ugliness that he certainly lived through during the dark days of the Napoleonic wars. However, he attempts to transcend these... to give them some "meaning" if you will by giving them the beauty an artist can lend. The bravado and sexism and racism and anti-social behavior presented in a great deal of rap music is not the expression of an invented character... it is rather the rather mindless ranting of an angry and simple minded "performer". It has about as much artistic worth as the rambling and self-centered agrandizing affected in most teenager's diaries, the "stories" of familial dysfuctionality explored on Jerry Springer or even the hate-filled racism and sexism spouted forth by the unemployed drunk in the local bar.

Gratuitous violence is also extremely common in political songs. One can reference "Dunagon '57" which has lines like "And the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabluary, the pro-British militia in Ireland) went right back in again when he found he was lookin' down the barrel of a sten (machine gun)!" and "And if the British soldiers came, he said he'd blow 'em all to hell!" Additionally, "British Army" has lines like "When I was young I had a twist for punchin' babies with me fist." Of course, one can say that these songs are socially degenerative, revolutionary, and therefore not art, but they are political action songs not unlike The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or poems like The Charge of the Light Brigade.

SLG- Again, the gratuitous violence alone does not negate our taking a work seriously as art. Certainly, Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel, Blood Meridian is disturbing in the extreme... and it is easy to understand why many balk at Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Nabokov's Lolita, or Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge. In all of these instances, however, there is an undoubtable artistic brilliance. There certainly may be many precedents in other forms of music and art for the violence inherent in Rap/Hip Hop. In most cases, however, these were not afforded the commercial support that establishes Rappers as role-models among society. As for the suggestion that there is no difference between violent hip-hop and violent close-minded calls to murder and torture a political solution and The Charge of the Light Brigade... I guess that such an analogy is only possible to one unable to discern the difference between Boucher's rather harmless (even... dare I say it?... cute) eroticism and pornography. The next step would seem to be to suggest that there is no actual difference between the real act of murder and Shakespeare's portrayal of such in his plays.

... to dismiss the music out of hand simply for having disagreeable elements is certainly not an enlightened approach to understanding the nature of the phenomenon, which exists by popular demand, and thus is not an enlightened approach to understanding our society, which endorses, at least on a public stage, this form of music and elects it by patronage as modern, maybe I should say post-modern, dance standards...

SLG- Certainly, I would not think to dismiss all such music out of hand... and certainly not upon grounds that it tackles themes which make me uncomfortable. On the other hand... I can dismiss a good deal of it as juvenile and rather uncreative... using violence merely for shock value... or because the "artist" himself is is simply a rather hateful person. As for the notion that the music represents what the audience wants... this has long been claimed by the music and etertainment industry. This may indeed say something about our culture. It may say more about the whoremongering industry that will provide whatever is desired for a price. Do we, however, allow for the lowest common denominator to direct our culture? Because there are many teenage boys who can think of nothing more to which to aspire to than becoming a pimp does that justify not merely providing images and soundtracks for this market, but the backing of a great commercial industry to publicize such work?

continued...

As to the shame of it being included an an anthology next to the 'great-minds' of our literary heritage, I have to disagree. The fact is rap is as popular, if not more, today than Byron ever was in his own time, and popularity is more often than not what dictates endurance and legitimacy (there are obviously some exceptions to the rule). Perhaps Rap may be less intellectually challenging than Shelley (whom I have heard accused of being a driveller by several critics), less involved, less allegorical, but such possibly malicious simplicity may be the common sentiment of our time.

SLG- Now this is pure BS. First of all, popularity with the masses of the time has never been the element by which great art survives. Works of art survive because they continue to inspire the art experts (critics, scholars, historians, and other artists... in other words, those who have invested time and effort into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art) and they survive because they continue to speak to the public of art lovers (in whatever art form) over time. Most works of popular art quickly fade into embarrassing "period pieces". The Monkees sold more records than anybody in 1967... however I greatly doubt that they will still be idolized by 2067. Indeed, most would find them rather embarassing now. Harry Potter... well I'll leave that one alone. There certainly were artists who have survived who were grossly popular during their own lifetime... however there may be just as many, if not more, whose achievements were not recognized... whose work was too challenging or out of sync with the time. As for the notion that rap may well last because it is the best expression of the time... I should note that every time in history has had its simplistic entertainments. These rarely survive as the great art of the time. Art is more than entertainment and more than merely a mirror of a given time and place. We merely live in a time in which the money exists in the mass marketing of entertainment/art due to the ability to mass produce reproduction of art forms (books, cds,dvds). Pandering to the market of the moment is far more lucrative than marketing to a more discerning market.

Undoubtedly many things can be said of rap to discredit it as a trend worthy of note, but then again, many things can also be said of 'artistic' works of the past. After all, what, fundamentally, is the difference between Animal Farm and propganda? Andy Warhol and the glorification of Commercialism? Uncle Tom's Cabin and a common pamphlet intended to incite what could be a seditious view of the state fo affairs? Trajan's column is little more than the self-glorification of an emporer, and who can really see Napoleon standing amidst plague victims as in the painting by Gros? Despite the rather unflattering origins of these pieces of 'art' no one hesitates to call them such, and many of our great pieces come from similiarly disgraceful origins, yet we do not hesitate to label them as great, and why? Because of popular sentiment.

SLG- Popular sentiment has nothing to do with it. Neither George Orwell nor even Shakespeare are enamored of the mass public. The reason they survive and continue to do so... even in spite of presenting elements at times which disturb... is because they are acknowledged for their artistic worth by those who have invested the time and effort and even (perhaps) money into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art. Certainly I may question Gros' idolizing of Napoleon no less than Leni Reifenstahl's agrandizing of Adolph Hitler and Nazism. However, I do not question their ability to give brilliant artistic form to their perceptions.

You may doubt my words, but if I were to proclaim Shakespeare here as a hack what would people say? There would be universal uproar and clamor decrying my sense of literary quality, but if I said I thought so because his stories were outdated, uninteresting and lacking the clear, straightforward, glorifingly simplistic guise of modernism, my opinion would still be repudiated as uninformed by the argument that the whole world loves him, that he is the earth's second greatest selling author, and as such I am in disagreement with the enlightened opinions of the greater part, again overwhelmingly greater part, of the educated world, and that therefore my opinions must be wrong, based on an artist's popularity, dare I say his percieved intellectual cachet.

SLG- Again, popularity has nothing to do with it. What does matter is that your arguments would be refuted by many who have the experience and have invested much into the field of literature who would not merely counter with an argument as lame as that of suggesting that he's a best seller but rather they would answer each of the charges with reasons as to why they disagree with your assertions. As for the notion that you might critique Shakespeare (and undoubtedly Mozart and Leonardo) as failing to meet the simplistic standards of modern entertainment I suppose that this is done so everyday by the public that prefers Brittany Spears to Mozart, Yugi-o to Leonardo, and Tupac to Shakespeare. Personally, I don't buy the notion of artistic "relativity"... the concept that there is no "good" nor "bad" in art... that its all relative. To have such standards is often dismissed as elitist and snobbish, but the snobbism that I find far more offensive is that anti-intellectualism which sneers at anything which requires intellect, demands effort and discipline or achieves a high standard.

The fact of the matter is that whether we like it or not rap and things just as intellectually challenged in my mind (Conceptualist pieces such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone living, which is a shark suspended in a tub of formaldehyde), are popularly, therefore highly, regarded today. Part of the price of democracy is admitting that the power of the people to make desicions about art is just as legitimate as the power of the people to decide their own government, and the price that must be paid is the swallowing of certain uncomfortable compromises thus implied. Rap seems to be one of them. As someone who considers himself a gentleman I find it as offensive as the next person, but the cruel, carnal fascination it posesses for the rest of us demands it be recognized, explored and if not wholly legitimized, at least accepted for what it is precieved by society as a whole. People will only be able leave it and its ideas behind, or accept them as wholly legitimate and normalized, once that has been done, once its basic concepts have been brought out and shown for what they are and people forced to choose whether it is what they truly like and agree with or whether it is really smut. If there is any power to destroy it that power is certainly not scorn, force, or disownment. Those only give it cachet as being the 'the music of the people,' 'the Truth,' or even the 'unart,' whose very nature begs at what it pretends to oppose.


SLG- Certainly art and democracy do make strange bedfellows. Art is inherently an elitist activity. It is about "bad" and "good" and "better" and "best" and the masses certainly lack the ability (or the interest) to make such choices. Plato warned of the problems of art in a democracy as did DeToqueville. I agree that in the visual arts we find many questionable works of art that are praised and collected by an increasingly "democratic" public. This public has the wealth to buy art, but has invested little effort into looking at art and learning about art. As such, they are prime dupes for underhanded dealers. As a working artist I completely reject the notion that the public in any way should be seen as the legitimate measure of artistic worth. I would also suggest that I find it quite intriguing that the notion of "elitism" is such a problem in art... and yet we have no problem in admitting that elitism... that measures of "good", "better" and "best" exist in other fields. Certainly, we would not think to take a poll of public opinion with regard to questions of quantum physics, biology, the law, history, etc... As Plato suggested centuries ago, you go to the doctor when you are sick. You don't poll the man in the street. Why then should I care the least for the opinion of the public who has invested no real time or effort into exploring and learning about art beyond that which is spoon-fed them by the entertainment industry?

Dittos STLUKESGUILD! Well said!

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Originally Posted by ghideon

You may ask yourself if those who are producing the clothes, music, parties, magazines, websites, of the Hip Hop culture care that you find it "superficial"? Or better, I am fairly confident that many of them would actually appreciate your attitude because it would offer them more evidence, as if more was needed, that many of their critics know nothing about their world but think they do.

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of course they appreciate my attitude because they live under the illusion that my criticism is an acknowledgement of their innovation and also that people like me can't grasp its sophistication, such thinking which is a function of their own self-aggrandizment and nothing more. there's no sophistication in bubble gum; people chew it and spit it out.

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Originally Posted by ghideon

You "don't hear" cause you don't listen. Lets see...how much chicken blood is going to drip from the Satanic tribe? Or then there is the Hard Core Punk music. You know, that wonderful, classicaly trained musician Sid Vicious. I am down for all of it. I don't like like all of it but I do not base my values on my personal take. I do not let my individual likes/dislikes get in the way of being able to appreciate important cultural representations.
Yea, maybe I don't want to listen to The Sex Pistols more then twice a month but their importance to the working class culture of England can not be ignored.

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history makes the music sometimes and unfortunately trash is deified in the process. but these are blips in history, for only years later does posterity reclaim it's soul as it comes to terms with its old absurdity.

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Originally Posted by ghideon

Nor would it be wise to forget that Punk opened doors for many other types of music and bands from XTC to The Clash.

And finally, I could list about 500 songs from white Rock and Roll groups that glorify everything from murder, rape, drug use and so on. You're willing to defend everything from the the Door's glorification of LSD to Clapton (who I think of as a music deity) wrote singing "Cocaine".

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i'm happy you didn't mention pink floyd because i like them! and there's complexity in that music uncomparable to that hip hop horray ho! :D

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Originally Posted by ghideon

But I forgot...coke is the uptown drug these days that rich folk use. The hood is still doing that ghetto fix crack. And thus, songs about snow are fine but songs about rock...no, no.

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i don't dispute drug choice as being most tied to class. but i'm still trying to figure out who you mean when you talk about contemporary rock music full of drug (snow) references (lenny kravitz?, (new) aerosmith?, bob seger?...i don't think so) and grunge is dead, don't you know? are you talking about classic rock, perhaps? that was over thirty years ago! the 1980s was all about walking on sunshine. :D (hey i like that cheesy katrina and the waves song! :D ) well, there was ol' scruffy george michael getting dirty with wanting everyone's sex! :lol:

you keep bringing up music as being an evolutionary creation rather than the sheer genius of great lyricists and musicians who followed their own impulses. did you happen to get that evolution theory from one of those "Rap and Rock: Cultural Phenomena" courses offered as a multicultural elective in college? just a hunch. maybe you've even read that there book called "The Death of Rhythm & Blues" by Elson George that claim "white" rock is just an offshoot of "black" blues. yeah i'm familiar with all that drivel too.

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Originally Posted by ghideon

You glibly dismiss the efforts of some school teachers. Do you have any idea what most teachers are up against every hour of the day? If I was a teacher I would use anything I could to engage the students. What would you do?

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no, you're right, i wouldn't know anything about that. what would i do?
i would quit.

To put it briefly, I find those hip hop and rap music videos revolting. They seem to appeal to every form of sexism out there, and promote stereotypes about many different races. So many of my peers idolize hip hop stars, using shockingly limited and crude vocabulary and objectifying themselves(particulary girls). Some of the older hip hop wasnt so bad, but today i can never turn on MTV in fear of gagging from images of skimpily dressed women with breast implants hanging off of violent men using lyrics far from poetic or soulful. Music is the language of the heart and soul,not the loins.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- As an artist I would be very interested in seeing all of these "pornographic" paintings. Certainly Boucher and Fragonard painted a great deal of art that might be termed "erotic" in nature...:

[... and there are the rare paintings and drawings (not uncommon to most artists) that verge upon "pornography"... or at least those that qualify as more blatantly erotic. But unabashed pornographic paintings hanging in every major museum? Only if your definition of pornography matches that of mark Twain who imagine nothing but lewdness and crudity in Titian's great [I]Venus D'Urbino

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.

Boucher and Fragonard did paint pornography, it just is not at the same level of pornography that we acknowledge today. Their paintings were boudoir paintings intended to glorify the sexuality of a mistress or of woman with the thin verneer of occasional classical acceptability. Titian's Venus D'Urbino served the same purpose.

Just because something is not x (pornography for example) as we recognize it today does not mean it is y (what we call it today). The fact that their paintings were mostly made for pornographic purposes may or may not affect how you view them as art, and it may not dismiss them automatically as art, but everything must be looked at in its proper historical context in order to understand why it exists and what purpose it ultimately serves, in other words to get to the heart of the matter, and that means understanding why it was made. Boucher and Fragonard painted their greatest works to titilate their viewer, and such an action recieves the definition of pornography.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Again, I have no qualms with death, violence, sex etc... portrayed in art. Art should be able to address all aspects of the world. On the other hand... the "meaningless" or "emptiness" needs to be trascended through the art. Goya, for example, presents images of horror and ugliness that he certainly lived through during the dark days of the Napoleonic wars. However, he attempts to transcend these... to give them some "meaning" if you will by giving them the beauty an artist can lend. The bravado and sexism and racism and anti-social behavior presented in a great deal of rap music is not the expression of an invented character... it is rather the rather mindless ranting of an angry and simple minded "performer". It has about as much artistic worth as the rambling and self-centered agrandizing affected in most teenager's diaries, the "stories" of familial dysfuctionality explored on Jerry Springer or even the hate-filled racism and sexism spouted forth by the unemployed drunk in the local bar.

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Art, as I said before, is too meaningless a word to argue about its meaning. If we used the Webster's definition of the word art, which is

"The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principals, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance"

Then rap is art. It is a production according to aesthetic principals (granted a dark aethetic, but aesthetic is not necesarily beautiful as commonly precieved), which has for some people more than ordinary significance.

If we are going to get into a metaphysical debate about art, then I supose that would depend on your definition. I've never met two peole who had the same definition of art, strange as it may sound, which is why I stopped caring long ago about what is art and am more concerned about what is significant, because almost everything is, in fact, art in one way or another, depending on your perspective.

As for the empty violsence and pointless sexism I agree. I'm not arguing about that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Again, the gratuitous violence alone does not negate our taking a work seriously as art. Certainly, Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel, Blood Meridian is disturbing in the extreme... and it is easy to understand why many balk at Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Nabokov's Lolita, or Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge. In all of these instances, however, there is an undoubtable artistic brilliance. There certainly may be many precedents in other forms of music and art for the violence inherent in Rap/Hip Hop. In most cases, however, these were not afforded the commercial support that establishes Rappers as role-models among society. As for the suggestion that there is no difference between violent hip-hop and violent close-minded calls to murder and torture a political solution and The Charge of the Light Brigade... I guess that such an analogy is only possible to one unable to discern the difference between Boucher's rather harmless (even... dare I say it?... cute) eroticism and pornography. The next step would seem to be to suggest that there is no actual difference between the real act of murder and Shakespeare's portrayal of such in his plays.

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What is brilliance?

There is no functional difference between Boucher and pornography, the only difference is the value we currently assign to each. Boucher's paintings were intended to titilate in the boudoir, to illicit a sexual feeling, and pronography is intended to do the same. I'm not calling into question that value either, to tell you the truth I don't care much for Boucher or pornography, though I like Boucher more. We must look to what something is intended to accomplish before we can judge what it really is.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Certainly, I would not think to dismiss all such music out of hand... and certainly not upon grounds that it tackles themes which make me uncomfortable. On the other hand... I can dismiss a good deal of it as juvenile and rather uncreative... using violence merely for shock value... or because the "artist" himself is is simply a rather hateful person. As for the notion that the music represents what the audience wants... this has long been claimed by the music and etertainment industry. This may indeed say something about our culture. It may say more about the whoremongering industry that will provide whatever is desired for a price. Do we, however, allow for the lowest common denominator to direct our culture? Because there are many teenage boys who can think of nothing more to which to aspire to than becoming a pimp does that justify not merely providing images and soundtracks for this market, but the backing of a great commercial industry to publicize such work?

continued...

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If the music were not what the audience wants wouldn't it stop selling? I realize there is a market that manufactures ideas and brands and markets 'cool,' but the fact of the matter is one way or the other people buy ever increasing volumes of this freely. What would you do about it?

We do not have to allow for 'the lowest common denominator' to govern society, I never said we did. I said that the status of music is determined by its popularity. I would ask you, if most of America listens to rap, or at least a significant percentage of the youth population, a plurality I would imagine, are they then the 'lowest common denominator'? I believe that we may find ourselves soon in the 'lowest common denominator' if rap keep growing the way it does, and then what will we have to say for ourselves? That what we value is superior to the many? That the majority of society is trash? Society has no values, only individuals have values and the values respected by society reflect the values held by the majority of its members, in a democracy at least. The important thing to do is to understand rap, study it, so that you can understand what the phenomenon is as opposed to dismissing it off the cuff because its importance is measured in the quantity of its adherents.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Now this is pure BS. First of all, popularity with the masses of the time has never been the element by which great art survives. Works of art survive because they continue to inspire the art experts (critics, scholars, historians, and other artists... in other words, those who have invested time and effort into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art) and they survive because they continue to speak to the public of art lovers (in whatever art form) over time. Most works of popular art quickly fade into embarrassing "period pieces". The Monkees sold more records than anybody in 1967... however I greatly doubt that they will still be idolized by 2067. Indeed, most would find them rather embarassing now. Harry Potter... well I'll leave that one alone. There certainly were artists who have survived who were grossly popular during their own lifetime... however there may be just as many, if not more, whose achievements were not recognized... whose work was too challenging or out of sync with the time. As for the notion that rap may well last because it is the best expression of the time... I should note that every time in history has had its simplistic entertainments. These rarely survive as the great art of the time. Art is more than entertainment and more than merely a mirror of a given time and place. We merely live in a time in which the money exists in the mass marketing of entertainment/art due to the ability to mass produce reproduction of art forms (books, cds,dvds). Pandering to the market of the moment is far more lucrative than marketing to a more discerning market.

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I don't know whether I would say popularity of the masses has never been the route to survival by great art. There are many art styles that have survived due to poularity despite having little real contribution to the history of art itself. I might point out styles such as Art Nouveau which continues to be popular, but gave us little in the way of new techniques or vision. The Pre-Raphaelites are another popular movement for their time that have little of great worth to communicate to use. Sometimes popular movements do die, and then sometimes they last. There is no explanation and no way to predict what lasts. It's just whatever catches people's fancy.

Art, the great art to which you refer, is anything. Anything that deserves a label as such. You are right in saying that great art can do more than just reflect the mores of a time and place, or be more than just an entertainment. Art can be almost anything. It can be an experiment, a farce, a commentary, an entertainment or an infinite number of other things. It is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Popular sentiment has nothing to do with it. Neither George Orwell nor even Shakespeare are enamored of the mass public. The reason they survive and continue to do so... even in spite of presenting elements at times which disturb... is because they are acknowledged for their artistic worth by those who have invested the time and effort and even (perhaps) money into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art. Certainly I may question Gros' idolizing of Napoleon no less than Leni Reifenstahl's agrandizing of Adolph Hitler and Nazism. However, I do not question their ability to give brilliant artistic form to their perceptions.

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I would argue about Shakespeare being enamoured by the mass public. Everyone wants to like Shakespeare because of its percieved intellectual cachet. I have met plenty of 'rappers' from the ghetto, people I served along with, cheek to cheek, who liked Shakespeare and Tupac in equal quantities, even if they didn't necesarily always understand the first.

Popularity does not necesarily restrict itself to the mass population. Fame is dictated by the popularity not just of the public, but the popularity a certain work has with the intellectuals. If a work were not popular with them it would not be handed down as genius. It would become lost to time, rotting away on a shelf. Perhaps there are a hundred better (in either my oinion or yours) Shakespeares in such a state who were relegated to molder because the professors, academics, intellectuals, theologians and scientists of the time considered them to be terrible, base and uninteresting.

Again, what makes brilliant artistic form? Quantify that term. It is wishy-washy and easily bent into anything the speaker wants. Is brilliance allegory? Aethetics? Treatment? Color comprehension? Structuralism? Tonality? Pleasant manipulation of the scales? Intended disharmony?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Again, popularity has nothing to do with it. What does matter is that your arguments would be refuted by many who have the experience and have invested much into the field of literature who would not merely counter with an argument as lame as that of suggesting that he's a best seller but rather they would answer each of the charges with reasons as to why they disagree with your assertions. As for the notion that you might critique Shakespeare (and undoubtedly Mozart and Leonardo) as failing to meet the simplistic standards of modern entertainment I suppose that this is done so everyday by the public that prefers Brittany Spears to Mozart, Yugi-o to Leonardo, and Tupac to Shakespeare. Personally, I don't buy the notion of artistic "relativity"... the concept that there is no "good" nor "bad" in art... that its all relative. To have such standards is often dismissed as elitist and snobbish, but the snobbism that I find far more offensive is that anti-intellectualism which sneers at anything which requires intellect, demands effort and discipline or achieves a high standard.

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The literati would undoubtedly have a better argument, but I would bet you the vast majority of the reading public would cite such a reason in refuting my taste in literature if I said such a thing.

You fail to understand what I said, I did not mean that I dislike Shakespeare
because he is not simplistic, perhaps I mischose my words. I dislike Shakespeare because (and I don't really dislike Shakespeare, but I don't really like him, this is for argument's sake a bit of an exaggeration of my actual opinion) he is not a minimalist and I like minimalists. I like authors who are, in the words of Sabatini;

"...the modern realistic school, by which I mean a synthetic author, an uninspired university product, a chronicler of unimportant and mainly sordid trifles, whose unimaginative and uninventive art lies somewhere between the arts of photography and journalism, whilst expressing, with that presumption which is the chief asset of his class, his contempt of the modern historical romance"

Which is a little unfair because while I revere those he derides I don't hate historical romance. In any case, Shakespeare is not one of those uninspired university products that chronicle unimportant and sordid trifles. It is the glory and scale of Shakespeare I object to and for that reason I say that Greene's The Heart of the Matter is infinitely better for its simplicity of both expression and theme. In accordance I will freely admit I prefer Charlie Parker to Mozart and Edward Hopper to Leonardo.

Art must be relative, else who are we to judge it? Who defines what 'art' is? How can that defnition be made when there are a thousand conflicting opinions even among the educated? If I were to make a definition of art, and I am educated on the subject, well-read, versed and spend a lot of time in the study of both literature and painting, I would say that almost every famous painter since and including Rothko with the exception of Botero, whom I do not like either, is the farthest thing from an artist and are instead mere opportunists, rogues, self-delluded or egoists striving for a piece of Modernism's greatness, but what would be the point in me saying something like that? Would it change how their art is percieved? Would it change what they did? I have studied Pollock, Rothko and Warhol despite the fact I find them no more interesting the the ingredients on the actual soup can one of them painted, but they need to be understood within their context and with their own unique ideas in the same way rap does.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

SLG- Certainly art and democracy do make strange bedfellows. Art is inherently an elitist activity. It is about "bad" and "good" and "better" and "best" and the masses certainly lack the ability (or the interest) to make such choices. Plato warned of the problems of art in a democracy as did DeToqueville. I agree that in the visual arts we find many questionable works of art that are praised and collected by an increasingly "democratic" public. This public has the wealth to buy art, but has invested little effort into looking at art and learning about art. As such, they are prime dupes for underhanded dealers. As a working artist I completely reject the notion that the public in any way should be seen as the legitimate measure of artistic worth. I would also suggest that I find it quite intriguing that the notion of "elitism" is such a problem in art... and yet we have no problem in admitting that elitism... that measures of "good", "better" and "best" exist in other fields. Certainly, we would not think to take a poll of public opinion with regard to questions of quantum physics, biology, the law, history, etc... As Plato suggested centuries ago, you go to the doctor when you are sick. You don't poll the man in the street. Why then should I care the least for the opinion of the public who has invested no real time or effort into exploring and learning about art beyond that which is spoon-fed them by the entertainment industry?

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Art and science are not even comparable. I do not want to get into an argument about Truth here, and while I uphold that the sciences and mathematics are arbitrary, the fact is that they have testable, independantly verifiable values. Art does not. If a painting is mispainted it does not blow up a rocket, does not send a bridge crashing to the ground. The sciences are a non-zero sum game. If you screw up, you've lost, and you are therefore varifiably wrong. Art is not even close. Art isn't even a game. There is no result. And as far as there being no public opinion poll on law, I would refer you to the concept of a referendum which is exercised every two years in most places in the US. Sometimes you might go an election without one, but it's rare.

Plato also suggested we have a philospher king. Would you agree to such a tyranny? I never would. Even a philosopher king of art. After all, didn't the entire scope of modern art evolve from the necesity of breaking the dictatorship of artistic elitism? What was the cry of the Salon des Refuses in 1863? Didn't Manet, Cezanne, Whistler and Pisarro decry the dictation of the elite, the Academy, in marking the quality and veracity of art in accepting any who would submit? What would art be today if no one stood up to challenge the authority of 'legitimate' taste? What did Modigliani's entire life stand for if not an empahtic statement of the unacceptability of the dictation of taste? His empty eyes, his long necks? We have never had an academy in this country, not for language, art or les belles lettres, and we do not need it because we are a country where the aesthetic is not dictated to us, and nor should it be, because such dication necesarily means certain important movements and ideas will be left in the cold and progress prohibited. Art, as it exists as an idea, must necesarily be unfettered. Movements must be allowed to run their course without intervention, and if that is done, if rap is accepted for what it is we may find it passes faster than we expect. After all, it draws its very greatness from its illegitimacy, when, in fact, it is not. If it is the ideas of rap that we find distasteful it is those ideas that must be fought and not rap, which I gather you would agree with. Art is nothing more than ordered expression, a vessel within which almost anything can be contained.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

Art is not smut.

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And you don't burn the whole burn just to kill the few mice. And I believe, when you're talking about filth in entertaiment, hip hop is not alone.

Hip Hop is art just as rock is, just as metal is, just as punk is (or anti-art, whatever), just as jazz is, just as the blues is, etc. I don't even see why it's an issue.

Because mainstream rap tends to do with capitalist/materialistic issues such as money? And sexist issues? There's a lot of stuff that is diluted to get to the mainstream, though not everything is.

If you don't like mainstream rap- though there are good rappers in the mainstream, and to name a couple: Eminem and Nas- then dig deeper. You want variety? Rap has it.
Edit: Not that I enjoy the mainstream vs underground argument. I don't really agree with the idea of pitting them against each other instead of evaluating the entire genre as a whole, but like genres, it's easier for most people to understand if you do it.

cLOUDDEAD, basically ambient rap.
Sage Francis
Atmosphere, very much the opposite of what's in the mainstream in terms of subject matter.
Why?
Immortal Technique.

And so many more.

Those are just three but rap is very much art, also known as street poetry. It has a history, it has reason, it has passion, and it has a future... just because some people want to capitalize on it doesn't mean it isn't art.

There's also the Rap vs Hip Hop debate but I'd just rather not get involved with THAT.

OK.

Hip-Hop music exists. Yes?

If Yes, then is it art?

Excerpts from a Wikipedia article entitled Hip Hop.

'It consists of two main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (audio mixing and scratching)."


"It is, typically,: intensely rhythmic lyrical form making abundant use of techniques like:assonance, alliteration, and rhyme." (emphasis added)

"The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually referred to as a "beat", performed by a DJ, created by a producer, or one or more instrumentalists. This beat is often created using a sample of the percussion break of another song, usually a funk or soul recording. In addition to the beat other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes a track can be instrumental, as a showcase of the skills of the DJ or producer."

"In the 1990s, a form of hip hop called gangsta rap (emphasis added) became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, terrorism [2], promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world." )emphasis added)

We are now, I believe, in a better position to discuss the merits, value, impact of hip-hop. And we are most certainly in a better position to determine which disagreements concern facts and which are rooted in perspectives/opinions.

G;)

:eek: interesting articles today on http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/29/D8MAMLF00.html and Washingtonpost.com about " 'Ghost-riding the whip,' as it's known, has swept from its origins in San Francisco's East Bay to much of the rest of the country, propelled by a pair of hip-hop songs that celebrate this exceptionally dangerous regional tradition."

I've never heard of this before :lol:

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Originally Posted by Logos

:eek: interesting articles today on http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/29/D8MAMLF00.html and Washingtonpost.com about " 'Ghost-riding the whip,' as it's known, has swept from its origins in San Francisco's East Bay to much of the rest of the country, propelled by a pair of hip-hop songs that celebrate this exceptionally dangerous regional tradition."

I've never heard of this before :lol:

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great article logos thanks! it demonstrates how vulnerable teens emulate the music videos and some get killed while hip hoppers sit in plush studios (many doing drugs) and cooking up more filthy ways to sell records. i read an article that said that the music per se is besides the point. what drives hip hop is "image." the music sounds all the same, all presented as a catchy beat line and saturated in images of fast cars, money, and the objectification of women. the superficial references (lyrics?) and stereotyping make it easy for kids to grab onto.

today's hip hop is such a far cry from Grand Master Flash's "The Message" --- done in the 1980s, an example of early "rap" which has structure and for all its generalization (i.e. smut) a simple plotline. art, no. but at least the bulk of the song centers around a definable rhyme scheme, which spoke of black folks having trouble obtaining employment in go-go Wall Street times.

hip hop, with its manufactured beats and rhymes, basks in sexist remarks and the glory of drug dealers and unheeded materialism. while music doesn't owe us a book of virtues, if hip hop dares to be great and rise to art form, it will give the listener something to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident, which at present it is not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

hip hop, with its manufactured beats and rhymes, basks in sexist remarks and the glory of drug dealers and unheeded materialism. while music doesn't owe us a book of virtues, if hip hop dares to be great and rise to art form, it will give the listener something to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident, which at present it is not.

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:nod: Very much agreed. It disgusts me how these horribly sexist and prejudice messages are being delivered to young people. Teenagers already embody a strong id, no need to exacerbate it with graphic and crude popular culture.

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There is nothing inherently wrong with rap if it would clean up its values. Now it doesn't have to be spic and span. Certainly rock isn't, but currently it is way out there.

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I think the biggest problem that rap seems to have is people generelising it to its extremities. Yes, there are some rappers who go about preeching about how great sexism is, for example I'm sure most of us know the whole '*****es and ho's' steriotype and all. But how about you compair that the following lyrics:

WARNING - The following lyrics are REALLY NOT NICE.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Mentors

I´m a prevert in the nation
Teaching yer children all about the sex education
In the school system
I´m a mentor
I´ll make yer daughters ****
Red and sore

She´s just 13
With torpedo t**s
Hey Dennis Ruley
Ain´t that the ****

She´s into sex education
And I am the biggest pervert teacher in the nation
Your daughter she´s mine
So fresh off the vine

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The Mentors were a metal band that formed in 1976, long before Hip Hop gained the social stronghold it has today.

Now, another example: Violence

This is one of the most extreme examples I have come across.

Once again, these lyrics arn't nice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Immortal Technique

they kicked her until they cracked her ribs and she stopped moving
blood leaking through the cloth, she cried silently
and then they all proceeded to rape her violently
Billy was meant to go first, but each of them took a turn
ripping her up, and choking her until her throat burned
a broken jaw mumbled for god but they weren't concerned
when they were done and she was lying bloody, broken and broos
one of them ni**az pulled out a brand new twenty-two
they told him that she was a witness of what she'd gone through
and if he killed her he was guaranteed a spot in the crew
he thought about it for a minute, she was practicly dead
and so he leaned over and put the gun right to her head

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Now obviously, that is really bad. But compair it with the Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse:

WARNING - THESE ARE REALLY REALLY NOT NICE

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cannibal Corpse

Through my anatomy, dwells another being
Rooted in my cortex, a servant to its bidding
Brutality now becomes my appetite
Violence is now a way of life
The sledge my tool to torture
As it pounds down on your forehead

Eyes bulging from their sockets
With every swing of my mallet
I smash your ****ing head in, until brains seep in
through the cracks, blood does leak
distorted beauty, catastrophe
Steaming slop, splattered all over me

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I was once a man before I transformed
into this molester, freshly deceased children
You have born, torn by my rape
The dead are not safe, the lifeless child corpse
I will violate

Pleasure from the dead, complete satisfaction
I open the coffin
Sick thoughts run through my head as I stare
At the dead, over and over, I can't escape
I begin the dead sex, licking her young, rotted orifice
I c** in her cold ****, shivering with ecstasy
for nine days straight I do the same
She becomes by dead, decayed child sex slave
her neck I hack, cutting through the back
I use her mouth to eject

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I'm really sorry to quote such lyrics on here, but for comparisons sake I have. I'm also really sorry if I've offended anyone too.

Now, next set of lyrics. These are rap:

Quote:

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Excuse me Miss, can we chat for a second
I'd ask how you doin', but you fine I reckon
Wait, do you have a man, cause I aint' into home-wreckin
No?. .Aiight cool just checkin
Look, from a hundred yards you caught my eye
An all my boys said I didn't have the heart to say hi
I'd like to have your number you don't have ta give it now
But if you diss me while they lookin I'm a never live it down
Y'know what I mean, Aww damn, my name's Will
Maxine. Pleasure to meet you, look here's the deal
Can I sit? Thanks, now I don't mean to objectify
But this the metaphore that crossed my mind
You sweet, good enough to eat
Make a brother wanna TLC--Creep
A brother can't sleep
It's like a kid fallin for you
So here's my own private nickname, I'm a call you

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Hang on a second...those lyrics aren't violent or evil...Something must be wrong here!

Or maybe steriotypes are a bad thing.


Erm, now I've got that out of my system, the topic question.

To quote the definition of art on Wikipedia (I'm sure someone has already done this)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Art is an application of a creativity that has some form of appreciative value, usually on the basis of aesthetic value or emotional impact. Much about art is controversial, including what specific cases can be considered such.

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Well, that about sums it up for me. I know it takes a lot of tallent and creativity to MC and DJ. I know several rap songs appreciate and enjoy, and I know several rap songs that touch me emotionally.

Rap has as much claim to be art as does any other form of music.

I did the best job I could to censor the lyrics, including several words the filter didn't pick up on. Once again, I'm really sorry if you take offence to them.

This has actually turned into an important and quite learned thread. I take my hat off to all.

I agree with a great deal of what has already been written. I think that some issues can be further clarified.

When I think of hip-hop I think of both the sexist,violent,bs that we all have acknowledged exists in large bounty. But I also think of the pure hip-hop, what the music could be if one simply applied it's principles(particular forms of beat, use of DJ turntable collaboration, particular linguistic forms) in an ideal sense. And yes I think of quite a few artists and raps that come close to expressing the true essence of this music.

I have been deeply moved by quite a few hip-hop songs but I have done time, been on the street, was poor, am poor and have lived within the African American community my entire life. I have looked out a window in a yellow walled cell and watched the cars and trucks and people all going and coming. I have seen my mother sleep on the streets because she was too far gone to take care of herself. I have heard too many stories from people I love that are nothing but tales of rage and despair. I do not know one black man in my life right now who has not done time or known a close relative who has done hard time. And so what a song about "the trash in the street and the punk cop on the beat" means to you may be so different then what it means to me.

One of my deepest concern is that each one of us admits that all they have to base their opinions on is what they have learned, read, heard, saw, been taught and what they have lived through. Given that reality it is, imho, close to impossible to make absolute statements when it comes to subjective issues. And the determination of the value or worth of a particular form of music is by its very nature a subjective not absolute determination. It is not like "the sun rises" or even "Picasso is one of the most important artists of the 20th century." The statements are is supported by tons of objective evidence.

But the debate about hip-hop that is going on here seems to me to be much more about our own personal consciousness and how we now, at this moment in time, see and conceptualize the world we live in.

I feel confident about the above proposition because it seems to be easily verified.

If someone writes, that at this point in time hip-hop does not give the listener something "to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident."

How can that be an absolute? How confident are we that when Joe, Suzy or Paul listen to a particular beat that nothing important, deep, is going on? I can certainly listen to a song and find nothing there. However, how can I verify that nobody else is finding depth?

The popularity of video games, text messages, the whole sum of this society's pop culture...by definition we are looking at trends that have vast appeal. But something can have both breadth and depth. The two, although certainly not always evident, are not mutually exclusive.

I would even suggest that when something becomes important to millions of people there must be depth going on.

Isn't that the real problem? Like it, love it, hate it the truth is that everything from Jerry Springers TV antics (which I find literally impossible to watch) to the popularity of World Wrestling is an objective fact in the USA. Now I can not simply accept that millions of human beings are stupid, lazy, or really fundamentally different then I am. And if that is true then whatever the reason is that so many watch such "junk" is worthy of a great deal of reasoned, dare I say compassionate, discussion, analysis and debate.

If it were simply the case of a whole nation of idiots then wouldn't that make everything pretty cut and dry. The truth is that the only realy valid method of determining the reason for the popularity of, for example, violent hip-hop is to ask those who are listening. And I mean really ask with respect and attention. Not the kind of rhetorical game where somebody might ask James "So why do you like this violent, superficial music? Huh?" No. I mean asking because you, we, do not need to know and we want to know. In fact, we need to know.

And we do not.
Anybody reading this post or any of my other posts where I have discussed some of my background is free to ask me questions. There is nothing stopping anybody from asking me, or others, why they do find this music important. Either there are no questions being asked because we are not in the habit of asking each other such questions. Or we believe that we already have enough information or experience that asking is besides the point.
Well, I say that the value of hip-hop is not determined by how much information one has, so no matter how many books you have read it is not enough. It is determined by experience and in this case I believe it is imperative that we ask those with profoundly different backgrounds what the music means to them.

Otherwise, we may think we know and yet in truth be lost.

"One of my deepest concern is that each one of us admits that all they have to base their opinions on is what they have learned, read, heard, saw, been taught and what they have lived through. Given that reality it is, imho, close to impossible to make absolute statements when it comes to subjective issues. And the determination of the value or worth of a particular form of music is by its very nature a subjective not absolute determination. It is not like "the sun rises" or even "Picasso is one of the most important artists of the 20th century." The statements are is supported by tons of objective evidence.

But the debate about hip-hop that is going on here seems to me to be much more about our own personal consciousness and how we now, at this moment in time, see and conceptualize the world we live in.

I feel confident about the above proposition because it seems to be easily verified."

If your meaning was that we only interpret hip hop this way because of our own context, i completely agree. I have not "lived on the street" before, I have spoken to people who have in my volunteer work though. But jsut because people do not have a first hand experience in poverty and , for lack of a better term, "ghetto life" does not make them blind to the issues in the world and the horrific nature of the content of many hip hop songs. I personally am a big fan of songs of rebellion and revolution. But there is a very thick line between social revolution(sticking it to the man :p) and just plain inappropriate and disgusting material. Look at the lyrics shadow posted. I could never believe the act of rape to have any positive connotations ever. Yet in hip hop it is sung by singers who are portrayed as "cool", giving it positive connotations and youth very wrong imnpressions. I think, no matter what context you have, rape and sexism to that extreme should be looked at as an immoral and wrong act.