[Raion]

Rap is poetry, not music. It has no harmonics or melody, little instrumentation, little to no singing (spoken word, rather) and has little regard for musical scales or established rules of music. 

The fact that it's poetry, albeit often encompassing subjects that are often disgusting and materialistic (e.g. drugs, misogyny, homophobia, material money and riches, polygamy/player lifestyle) is overlooked by the media. Yes, I'm biased. I dislike it, think it's garbage most of the time and a bad influence to the youths moreso than rock or metal ever were. But it's poetry, just not very good in that it relies on borrowed samples, repetitiveness, and spoken word. This applies to basically all rap, fwiw. Not just NWA, not just Eminem. 

So back to music, music has at least a rhythm and singing, whether it's an ancient Hurrian prayers, Muslim chants, African tribal chants, Gregorian chants, classical, rock, punk, ska, reggae etc. It sometimes has instruments (something that's absent in Islam for instance) or sometimes has percussion. It always has rhythm and singing. Rap does sometimes include singing, either chorus or samples, but if the majority of the song isn't, it's not music. If the majority of the song is borrowed samples, alongside spoken word, it's not music.

What do you think people?

[commodorejohn]

I'm comfortable categorizing it as music (if it's set to a beat, it's not merely poetry,) and in the abstract I find the technical prowess on display kind of neat, but I don't really enjoy listening to it, like, at all. Primarily because, whatever the lyrical content, the musical content is just too sparse. I'm very much a guy who enjoys the compositional/instrumental side of music as much as or more than the lyrical, and most everything in the broader rap arena deliberately downplays that so that it's easier to foreground the rapper. Which is an understandable production choice, but...well, it just doesn't do much for me. (The compression is also just too aggressive for my ears.) It's like getting served a whole bowl of ground pepper with no steak or fries under it.

(I'd be curious to hear someone make a serious attempt at doing it differently, but I'm not really sure how you would. Maybe something like George Thorogood's version of "House Rent Boogie," or "La Grange" by ZZ Top, where subtler heavy-rhythmic work underscoring the lyrics is interspersed with explosions of good old-fashioned hard-rockin'.)

[Raion]

What you're talking about with regards to the noise of the music is a phenomenon across the industry called clipping.

[commodorejohn]

Oh, it's definitely endemic, and other genres are worse in terms of overall noise - but rap/etc. producers do a more specific thing with it where they use it to make the vocals "punch" more (emphasizing, y'know, the whole rhythm thing) and it's just kinda uncomfortable to listen to even before the loudness-war fatigue sets in.

[Nichosen]

This seems like a thread destined to become more of an argument.
I will go easy though.

As you might already guessed from that first sentence I’m one of those who think rap is great.
In my head this is a more pure form of rhythm. Something that you could shake your a** to.
I don’t usually care about the lyrics but I think that modern rap has gone to aggressive and is not something I listen to. I don’t like when it’s all about drugs and violence.
But back to the discussion about organized waveforms.

Extremely hard to discuss and a battle that can’t be won.
One could argue that classical is music but croumata is not… but it’s basically the same.
Rock is cool but country is just a bunch of hillbilly’s trying to look like rockstars.

I can argue that samplers and other artists records are instruments as good as any guitar or trumpet in the same way that my belly is a perfectly fine drum when the mood is right

String based music however, in my opinion, is often just unnecessary sounds that you can not move to.

With this said… everything can be music for someone.

And just for the record…. I’m probably older than most of you


Holy cow… my first personal reply ever… it wasn’t meant to be when I started.
And much to long… sorry

Cheers.

Edit: too many big smiles.

[Raion]

Hi Nichosen,

Don't worry about it I am not interested in having an argument but rather discussing this like adults and I think that we are all capable of doing that because in particular I've had to grow up a hell of a lot. I'll admit that any day.

> In my head this is a more pure form of rhythm. Something that you could shake your a** to.

To be fair I'm a lot nicer than a lot of people who consider themselves commentators, especially a short one with a mild stutter everyone likes to hate on.

I acknowledge that rap won't magically go poof tomorrow, but I think it's distinct enough that calling most examples of it "music" is a stretch.

> I don’t like when it’s all about drugs and violence.

I wouldn't care about lyrical content as much if there weren't large swaths of young people in all countries in the West thinking that is the way to live. I was allowed to listen to bands like Sublime when I was 7, for instance. And he talks about date rape, being in prison etc. But the difference is that my parents were capable of contextualizing this to me that this is art that is not meant to be idolized.

If parents are there to contextualize it and determine that it's okay for their kids to listen that's one thing but it's very very common that parents just don't care or aren't around. And this has had disastrous results for young men and women especially in the United States.

> One could argue that classical is music but croumata is not… but it’s basically the same.

I have no idea what the second one is as it's not coming up on search engines. Are you sure that you translated that correctly?

As far as you talking about country western, I agree that it's not very good but it is in fact music because it has percussion, instruments melodies and rhythms. And as much as I don't like it because of the lyrical content tending to idolize the South, be racist and strongly Christian (see "If I die young", a popular song ) that's entirely to do with the lyrical content. I also don't really care for R&B or rockabilly but I absolutely am capable of understanding why it's popular and analyzing it from a musical standpoint because it has things like musical scales and instrumentation that I can actually relate to. I cannot do so for rap. And yes, I can't rap myself, so some could just see my statement as "fragile white man can't rap" but I would like to think that the majority of us are better than that and I already said it so those of you thinking it's funny are now robbed of that.

> And just for the record…. I’m probably older than most of you

TBF, not even 30!

[Nichosen]

Hi again Raion

You were right… I messed up the spelling. It should be Kroumata.
A Swedish, I wouldn’t stretch it to say a band…. More of a constellation.
I cannot recommend it…. Super wierd. It might be educational as a reference though.

[Raion]

Seems similar to Stomp in some ways. Percussion by itself would not be music in my opinion. The most stripped down you can get and still be called music in my opinion would be something like Trio's famous hit "Da Da Da" which has both singing and spoken word, but also features a minimal backing beat and many aspects that would stretch the definition of music in some ways but because it does have some instrumentation and such I would call it music on the such I would call it music on the fringe. Do I like Trio? Not especially. But it's not bad. I think it's definitely creative.

[vishnu]

When it comes to the subject of rap, I am forever put in mind of the dialog from the Bruce Willis movie "The Last Boy Scout:"

Milo: You think you're so fuckin' cool, don't you? You think you're so fuckin' cool. Well just once, I would like to hear you scream, in pain.

Joe Hallenbeck: Play some rap music.

[micrex22]

What you're talking about with regards to the noise of the music is a phenomenon across the industry called clipping.

Actually compression is used to both:

1. Increase the loudness without clipping (abusing the limited headroom)
   
2. Enhance 'pleasant' frequencies
   

Although what ends up happening is everything becomes way to muddled as a result of equalizing the volume of everything.

A coworker had me listen to various rap albums and I actually quite liked a lot of it (melodically), here's an example of one track that has a discreet melody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0vlRpBh...L&index=10

Of course not everyone is going to like it, but I'm obligated to appreciate everything.