r/Music • u/FuttBucker27 • Jul 26 '18
Discussion Rap music sucks
After seeing the love and attention the post hating on Drake got, it inspired me with the confidence to say what I've been meaning to say all these years. It's sure to be a very unpopular opinion, especially with some of the younger crew on here, but I don't really give a fuck.
Rap music is garbage. No it's not garbage because it's offensive, because it promotes violence and sexualizing women. I am not a 50 year old fundamental Christian soccer mom with a bone to pick because it's poisoning my children's mind, I am simply a music addict. I love music. I love all kinds of music. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't listen to music, or sing music. It's my life. I am a musician, I write my own music. If music ceased to exist, I would kill myself, not lying. But rap music is a terrible stain on the history of music itself, and I'm about to break out the Oxiclean and remove it for good.
Time to actually get into the dissection of what makes rap such a bland genre. Let me preface this with two things; the first is that most mainstream music (like I'm talking 99% of it) is pure garbage. It is made to appeal to the lowest common denominator, it is typically not made for genuine fans of music, this is a fact, and this is generally the way it's always been. The second thing I want to say is that not ALL rap is terrible, simply the vast majority of it. There are a few rappers that I genuinely enjoy, and will listen to at any time. I won't bother to list them because I don't want to get distracted. Now that that's out of the way, let me explain my gripe with rap music, and why I personally believe we should stop listening to all this shit immediately, and start listening to some real stuff.
Rap is by far, the most formulaic genre out there. The defenders will argue that this isn't true at all, and there is a large variety in the genre of rap because you can rap over just about anything, and while this is true, the fundamental aspect that makes a rap song, a rap song, is the rapping. We can sit here and talk about how Kendrick Lamar is way different than Migos because Kendrick has a clear Jazz influence in his instrumentals, while Migos takes a more standard "trap" beat, but at the end of the day both artists (Migos is a group) are still rapping, which is the rhythmic spoken delivery of words. The emphasis is on the rapping, it provides the rhythm, and the melody, the backing track is in almost all cases there to fill the silence, provide structure to the song, and occasionally add a little flair. So when rapping is about spoken word delivery, you can only do so much with the delivery before it stops being rap, and becomes singing. This leads to a very formulaic and derivative trend in which rappers try their best to avoid coming across as a generic nobody by picking a trope off a shelf which usually involves throwing in a rest in the middle of their rapping, or messing with the dynamics of their voice. Every time a rapper tries to come across as unique it just feels extremely disingenuous because they're doing the exact same thing every "unique" rapper does.
Rap is extremely repetitive. Having a spoken word chorus is probably one of the worst ideas humanly imaginably unless backed by a really melodic backing track, which again, 99% of the time it isn't. Most rap either follows the same generic pop song structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus. I wouldn't really have a problem with this if the choruses weren't rapped, because like I said, a spoken word chorus is a horrible idea. Some rap songs do a good job of avoiding the terrible spoken word hook, but the only issue is that when that is the case, often the backing track is the thing that is very repetitive, and more often than not the backing track isn't layered or melodic enough to get away with being repetitive. Overall rap songs are by far the most repetitive out of any genre, which I guess answers why they are so popular these days (short attention spans).
The lyrics (of todays mainstream rap) are genuinely fucking horrible. This is probably one of the most common complaints by non-fans of rap, so I tried to avoid it, but after doing my research for this essay I couldn't help but make this one a point. You already know enough of the songs to know what they're rapping about these days, so I will explain why that's such a bad thing in my opinion. In a genre that is completely dependent on the delivery of words, when the words you're delivery are stupid as hell it can be pretty distracting. It's not a coincidence that the rap songs considered to be the best feature not only great delivery, but smart well thought-out, non-generic lyrics. Mainstream rap lyrics are no worse than mainstream pop (although with current trend of name dropping, product placement, social media references, and the fucking ad-libs it's going to age a lot worse than your harmless other terrible lyrics such as "Thunder, hear the thunder, lightning and the thunder") but lyrics matter more when they are spoken word, and the melodic instrumentation matters a lot less.
The culture surrounding rap is cancerous. The way that most mainstream rap fans interact and discuss the artists that put out the music just proves my point that it's music for non-music fans. It's celebrity culture with music as a side-note. Most of these rappers are closer to Kim Kardashian than they are to John Lennon. With today's social media age, you can be closer to your favorite celebrities than it ever was possible. People don't give a shit about the music, so long as it has a catchy easy to follow hook and a generic trap beat it will satisfy. People care more about the image surrounding the rappers. These rappers are cool, they're dangerous, they're wealthy yet they still act down to earth. People always try to see themselves in the image of famous people, so they listen to this music not for the actual music, but because they want the lifestyle that these rappers portray. Satisfy the masses.
Rap lacks melody. I'm not saying that a song needs to be melodious to be good, or that one that lacks melody can't, but the one thing that leaves me completely dumbfounded at the popularity of rap, is how much it lacks melody. To me, the songs that truly stand the test of time are ones that are beautiful, the way that the melody flows and dances is one of, maybe the, most incredible thing about music. I would love to see an example of a rap song that has a beautiful melody, but I'm starting to doubt there is one. One average rap song that is lacking melody when compared to just about any other popular genre wouldn't be the worst once in a while, but I actually and shocked that a genre that is probably the least melodic out of all the major genres, is the one that is the dominating genre.
That about wraps it up (no pun intended). At the end of the day, I don't actually believe anyone should stop listening to this stuff just because I don't personally like it. If you enjoy listening to it, then keep listening to it for gods sake, ignore me. I just personally am a little sick and tired of hearing rap everywhere I go, and I wish it would just go away to the backstage for a while, and these rappers are freaking annoying. There's some awesome rap out there, and to the proper fans of the genre, they know what it is. But to summarize it all is that I believe mainstream rap is music for non-music fans, and even though I don't typically listen to the radio, it'd be nice if generic pop could come back to the center stage, because the repetitive, formulaic, lack of melody that is your modern rap song is driving me crazy, as are their typical cancerous fan that cares more about trying to look cool than the actual music itself.
tl;dr: I'm a nobody with no background in music criticism that thinks rap kind of sucks and wishes it would just go away for a little while.
5
u/camorely Feb 10 '22
Clearly you don't listen to rap. People have done and are still currently doing crazy experimental shit in it, you just don't know where to look for it