Don't worry, I'm adding it to the list of things I need to change about you... er, whooops, sorry, I mean, things I need to find common ground with you on!
Ishtar wrote:I should have guessed you'd be into rap, WA.
Don't worry, I'm adding it to the list of things I need to change about you... er, whooops, sorry, I mean, things I need to find common ground with you on!
I know I will never convince most of you, but good RAP is an amazing art, far beyond the skills of most people. (now let me make a clear distinction between rap/hip hop and pop hop - the garbage heard on top 40 radios).
I would venture to say most of you have never really heard hip hop in its purest, non-commercial form. It is mastery of expression in which the voice becomes the instrument which carries the message. It is usually raw, violent, emotional, braggadocio, over top of a certain street sensibility which also expresses, fear, remorse, love and bitter hopelessness. It is a reflection of the lives of the ones who express it. It is often offensive to middle class society, but take a drive through certain parts of the Bronx and experience the same offense.
I can't stand listening to top 40 radio, and the blinged-out, rich, former thugs, bleating about the dance clubs, tricked out cars, and all the babes that money can buy. Thank goodness it is still possible to hear the real message, often casting derision on the same pop-hop trash; white, middle class school kids are buying which no longer represents the values of the streets from which it came but has been replaced by a different lifestyle, of mansions, bling, and Escalades, molded by the hit-makers whose one and only goal is to relieve kids of their allowances as quickly as possible.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."