Help me understand the attraction to rap music (serious questions)

Face it--youre getting old.

Different strokes for you

Music is all a matter of opinion , especially at a basic level like genre.

I dont like Country music, but i dont search for reasons why or care that other people do. I just dont like it

quote:

---

Face it--youre getting old.

---

I faced it. I am old. I'm 56. I have been into rap (along with many genres of music) since The Sugarhill Gang and Rapper's Delight in 1979. I was instantly hooked and have been "delighted" by rap, hip-hop, Old School, gangsta, Crunk, Dirty South, West Coast, East Coast, and Bay Area rap ever since. I am a baseball umpire, and I used to be known as "MC Blue" by several HS teams, who were entertained by my renditions of Ice Ice Baby and Humpty Dance in the early 90s. I've never been much of a free-styler, but I can rap along with all my favorites! I guess I'll never grow up.

Aside from Skee-Lo, I never got it either. Then again my parents made me play instruments when I was a kid and I didn't grow up knowing what a baller was until I came to this site and understood what I'm all about.

quote:

---

Someone should start a thread just like this one, but for country music. Shits awful and usually depressing

---

This

I'm not the biggest rap fan in the world, but I do have my share on my iPod. What I like about it:

-- Wordplay. The best rappers are great lyricists. Talib Kweli, Chuck D, De La Soul, the Beasties... those guys could write.

-- Flow. I actually really like interesting phrasing and playing with the meter. Eminem is a master at this.

-- Beats. Hey, some times you just gotta dance. Rap has a good beat and you can dance to it.

-- Activism. This is a really personal one, but I actually really like the radical Kill Whitey kind of rap, so long as it feels from some place honest. NWA, Public Enemy, KRS-One... I like the in your face nature of it.

quote:

---

go back about a decade and there is some great rap music.

---

I'd go back about 25 years, personally. I'm far more partial to 80s hip hop, maybe the first half of the 90s. That 1985-94 window is the creative peak of the genre, for me.

quote:

---

go back about a decade and there is some great rap music.

I'd go back about 25 years, personally. I'm far more partial to 80s hip hop, maybe the first half of the 90s. That 1985-94 window is the creative peak of the genre, for me.

---

The only rap I've ever liked has been recently discovered by my 14 y/o son. It's 90's stuff, usually put to more jazzy rhythms. Stuff like
Digable Planets
De La Soul
A Tribe Called Quest