David Crosby Slams Kanye West: ‘He Can Neither Sing, nor Write, nor Play’

There is a little bit of "get off my lawn" there.

BUT there is a lot of fact too. Even rap and hip hop have changed. It's horrendous. Driving into work this morning I noticed an AUTOTUNED rap song on the radio?

Why!!!??

Is there a rapper or hip hop artist who can sing? Not R&B. Don't give me an R&B guy who may have done a rap style song?

Dr. Dre can't sing for shite either, but probably has never professed to sing. And I bet he never used Autotune.

He's right but Kanye has probably made more bank than Crosby has ever thought about. I don't like Kanye either but the brother knows how to make money.

So much "get off my lawn".

The problem with these guys is they think to create music you have to do it one way (which of course happens to be their way).

Anything that makes sound can be used as an instrument. A guitar, voice, keyboard, laptop, sampler.

There are electronic musicians in the early 20th century manipulating sounds to create music. There are artists today that use computers and synthesizers to creative ambient music. There is noise music. There is Musique concrète. There is hip-hop. All of these things are music. And it takes a creative person to do it well.

Spot on? Really? Look, I can't stand Kanye as much as the next person, but in the rap community, he's done some pretty substantial things. And since when do most rappers "sing"? Crosby is so damn out of touch, that he's trying to compare Stevie Wonder's and Ray Charles's music to Kanye's rap. He might as well have said "he should go listen to Miles Davis to learn how to play the trumpet." It doesn't make any sense and is a dumb argument to make.

If he doesn't like rap in general and doesn't like Kanye's music, that's fine. But he, and many people on this board and posting in this thread, need to realize that you can still be a "musician" and not play a traditional musical instrument, like guitar, piano, bass, drums. If you are too closed minded to realize this, then you shouldn't be taken seriously. Some instruments are easier to learn than others, but knowing how to play an instrument isn't everything there is to making music.