Why does Rap music have such a bad reputation?

Post Reply New Topic

As somebody who actually like some older rap music, I think today's rap deserves a bad reputation. Generic repetitive beat, constant use of the word n***r (sometimes the most used word in a song), badly written lyrics, no talent on the part of the "artists", and so on. It all sounds the same and it all sounds bad. It does not seem like they even try. Put on a generic beat supplemented with other people's music, say the N word and some profanity a lot, say "yeah" a lot, talk about how bad you are/ho's wanna **ck you, and you got a modern rap song. Intelligent lyrics (often with social commentary), complex instrumentation, good voices, and any value are things of the past.

Prudes and scolds who don't understand the genre, mostly. Profanity, materialism, derivativeness, etc, are hardly unique to rap and hip hop, but to hear critics of the genres say it, those styles practically invented them. I resist the racial angle to the criticism for the most part, but when people claim it isn't even music at all, I really have to wonder.

Not particularly keen on the knocks on "modern" or "mainstream" rap tbh. Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar are two of the best musicians around right now, and they're both mainstream - I'd argue they're also amongst the most talented rappers, period.

I'm not a big fan of Drake but he's another who mostly defies the negative image of rap.

Other excellent artists worth checking out: Chance The Rapper, Run The Jewels, Death Grips, Young Fathers, Kid Cudi, MF Doom. And it should go without saying, but Jay Z and OutKast are fantastic.

Returning from that minor derailment, I think "guns, b****s and bling" is a big part of it. Obviously that isn't even a fair representation of gangsta rap, but that sort of materialism is a bigger meme in rap than other genres. Biggie and Pac had a big impact on people's perceptions of the genre (actually, it might be fairer to say Biggie impacted people's perception of Pac...), and then that was reinforced by the unprecedented commercial success of Eminem and 50 Cent in the early 00s. Kanye's personality puts a lot of people off him, and theoretically he should be a gateway to the likes of Cudi... alas.

There's definitely a racial factor. I really can't think of another explanation for denying that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is "real music".

Even for the worst offenders I can kind of understand the appeal of it in terms of pure style and attitude. It expresses SOMETHING most people who live comfortably don't really want to acknowledge. I'd say most "gangster rap" is really about the deepest darkest underbelly of what is essentially one of the major historical mythos of America. Europeans came to the US with dreams of material success. Americans have always been materialistic. Think of the gold rush. The wild west. The land speculators. Even violence has always been part of America. Settlers largely took property from the indigenous population by force.

The dog eat dog mentality and crass materialism is an ugly part of American culture that's always existed to some degree. America has always been somewhat of an experiment in loosely controlled anarchy. Therefore hip hop isn't a "black" art form. It's an American art form. It didn't come from Africa. Maybe the musical style did. The attitude that a lot of people find repulsive certainly didn't though. Therefore I don't think it's necessarily racist to criticize it.

The "gangster rap" thing took off in the early 90s. I'd say back then it was something fresh - something significant. It was a voice that had to be heard. Since then I don't know what happened. These days a lot of it comes off as a kind of self parody. The narcissistic bravado and "life is just dope, b**** and money" is kind of tongue-in-cheek. It's become one of the staples of the genre - sort of like mashed potatoes. The more intelligent artists who want to say something more figure out a way to tow the line. They can mix bravado with equal parts honest introspection.

Yea, a lot of the commercially successful mainstream rap artists are narcissistic jerks, but they aren't that much more so than a lot of commercially successful rock icons. They're just expected to play it up a bit more.

Rap music has a bad reputation because of it's origins. It evolved from poetry jams and quickly became a medium for expressing social frustration. When it became popular about 20 or so years ago, it was condemned largely by racists because it was a mostly black movement.

usually, i prefer songs with a nice melody.

When I had to live in a home for people with chronic mental illness I shared a bedroom with another girl who listened to rap all day long. It just sounded like a bunch of angry guys swearing constantly. She was surprised when one day I was playing some "cool" music such as techno on my stereo, although the lyrics weren't obscene. I used to play and listen to soundtracks from Disney movies a lot back then.

My dislike of rap is that it is not musical, also the content appear to revolve around mindless violence, drug abuse and mistreatment of women. It is similar to the problem that most heavy metal is about horrible subjects such as "the devil is coming to get you".

I have never heard of a heavy metal song about some nice subject such as "the sun is shining, I am going to go for a picnic in the park with my girlfriend".

It is more likely to be something along the lines of "the devil has taken control of my girlfriend's dog, he has just eaten her and I am unable to escape the jaws of the devil dog"

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Personally I can't handle most rap or any music coming out in recent years because of sensory issues I have, but I wouldn't knock anyone's music. AutoTune is torture for me, though, and people use it so much that it's an immediate channel flipper for me. It literally makes me physically sick. It has nothing to do with race, just that I have synesthesia and it makes my insides crawl.

As far as why rap has a bad reputation, sadly, the rap music someone would hear on the radio or out of people's cars or whatever is the stereotypical crap about drugs and sex and all that jazz. Of course there is rap with intelligent lyrics, but if someone is not a fan of the music, they are going to hear the bad stuff and think it's all like that. The same thing happens with country music, which I love. People who don't like it think it's just a bunch of inbred hicks singing about drinking beer and riding in their pickup trucks. There is a lot more to it than that, but if someone doesn't like it, they aren't going to bother researching it and finding out exactly what it is. I would think it would be the same way with rap.

Another thing I notice is that if someone doesn't like a type of music, they say that it all sounds alike. Of course if it's being played on the radio, then that is pretty much true, but it bugs me when people generalize that much.