I have a feeling I’m going to make a few enemies with this article, but I’m OK with that. However, I won’t be saying anything that others before me haven’t said. What constitutes music? More specifically, and to the point, why is Rap considered music?
Firstly, I would like to provide why I think Rap isn’t music. It’s not convoluted; it’s pretty straight forward (in fact, this article isn’t going to be very long as it’s more of “here’s my opinion, what’s yours?”). When you are in a coffee house and there’s a guy on stage playing the bongos and another guy standing at the microphone reading poetry, is that considered music just because there are musical sounds accompanying it? No, of course not. So, at it’s best, my argument is that Rap is a crude, very crude, version of poetry. After all, the words, even if some of them are made-up, rhyme. And as a side note, yes, poetry should rhyme. If it doesn’t rhyme, it’s just story-telling. I digress.
So there it is. I just laid it all on the line right there. So someone could argue, if they wanted to, that Cake doesn’t make music, or at least, some of their songs aren’t music. For that matter, even Bloodhound Gang’s music shouldn’t be considered music since it’s simply talking accompanied by musical sounds. But still, I maintain that Rap is as much music as a chicken-fingers are actual fingers of chickens.
And as if calling Rap “music” wasn’t enough, they actually give out awards to Rappers. I heard last year they were going to have a new award to give out and it was going to be called “Most Incoherent, Vulgar, Mono-Toned, and Unoriginal Rambling Accompanied by a Video with Half-Naked Women Award”. The only problem was that they were having a hard time figuring out who to give the award to since it pretty much encompassed the entire field of Rap “music”.
You’ve got my opinion. Let me know what you think. Is Rap music? Don’t care? Leave a comment, argue amongst yourselves.
