re: Hip-Hop's Shelf Life Atop American Music Culture

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When a new form of music appears that is highly repetitive, takes very little talent so most acts are easily disposable, has simple, easily danceable beats that can be spread to every possible genre and fits the current model of "diversity"...then hip-hop will be replaced.

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I disagree... in a way. In theory, the next big musical wave to come along will be something that kids identify with as rebellious, dangerous, exotic, etc. That's what made both rock and rap big in the first place. Eventually, though, every genre exhausts its rebellious nature and becomes itself the thing that new generations seek to rebel against. It has already happened to rock. It will happen to rap/hip hop.

However, the reason I say "in theory" is because music in general has already pushed just about every boundary it can conceivably push to its limits. I have listened to an album created from the screams of mental patients. It's tough to imagine what kind of music my kids could find that would offend me the same way grunge rock, with its loud guitars and screamed lyrics, offended my parents. I mean, I don't like most rap, at all, but it doesn't offend me. I just don't care for it. So with that in mind, I'll actually offer the theory that music as the main vehicle for popular youthful rebellion is dead. Kids today who would have been punks or metalheads when I was their age instead get involved in ultra-progressive politics and the LBGTXYZ movement, because that's how to offend your parents these days.

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I have listened to an album created from the screams of mental patients.

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Really??

If a true source, that's that's demonic. The only thing worse might be the screams of pain / torture (which probably is already out there in the "music / entertainment" genre.)

If music doesn't enrich, inspire, make one happy, light the dopamine center, then what good is it?

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Actually if it makes you feel any better, the mental patients in question agreed to participate in the recording, and most of them apparently said they found the experience therapeutic. Which admittedly kind of takes away from the metal-ness of it all.

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HA! Nice twist.

Respectfully, I’ve never understood the grudge some folks carry for a catchy, melodic song.

Listening to music shouldn’t feel like doing math homework.

Broadly speaking, rap (which is what hip-hop evolved into) isn't a true musical expression at all. It is slam poetry set to (in most case's, other folks' music or stock musical riffs) music.

It has endured because it was simple for the suits to classify, commodify and market. After that was complete, it was insanely easy to repeat the formula.

Now, this has happened before with rock genres - grunge, "hair metal", AOR, NWOBHM, psychedelia, etc. It is the rule not the exception with pop music since WWII going back to the crooner and big band eras.

What has changed (even with pop, although there was always an element of "style over substance" in pop music) is that now, at least commercially promoted music, style is everything, regardless of talent. Combine that with "too many choices" and people revert to mean. I listen to what I've always listened to, going back 30 or 40 years.

Most other people do, too, because we're lazy and it is easy.

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Respectfully, I’ve never understood the grudge some folks carry for a catchy, melodic song.

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I never said I had a grudge against catchy, melodic songs. I like catchy, melodic songs. I must not have done a good job of explaining my point, but I'm not going to derail the thread any further by trying again. Maybe some other time.

There are no financial margins in music in the modern era. Rap is cheap cheap cheap to produce. Thus it’s prevalence. Meanwhile aging artists of bygone eras are selling their catalogs of great songs for crazy money.

as far as the white female spending demographic goes, that rap shite is not just for the single white welfare mothers anymore

now you've got 50-plus and 60-plus corporate women who love to "Wow" people with their love for rap music when you're lured into their car on the way to lunch

its cringe multiplied by a fricking million and it's real

it's a full chapter in the book on virtue signaling fakeness

if "good art" conveys a shite message then it's not good art

as I will continue to say until the cows come home, William Faulkner decried the rise of nihilism in literature more than 70 years ago

I actually believe that the Red Hot Chili Peppers touched on this in a way in their song Californication



as for gangster rap, my opinion is that young people of all races in the 80's were getting along way too well, and the powers that be who want to divide and conquer didn't like it, so in came the divide and conquer scheme known as gangster rap


none of this can be separated from politics

peace and love is unacceptable to the powers that be - only war and hate is acceptable to them