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IS RAP MUSIC A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?

Today, we wrestle with a particularly nettlesome conjunction.

We appreciate the undeniable fact that rap provides young, and particularly disadvantaged, blacks, along with one white rapper who has recently retired undeservedly wealthy, the opportunity to vent what has been widely excused as the inner angst of youths from the ghetto.  We accept the justification.

What we find troubling is that the spiky rhythm tracks that accompany their juvenile rantings, variously swiped and reworked, constitute music.

The question becomes particularly relevant because passing bare, raucous rhythm off as music allows for it to enter the realm of the hitherto distinguished art of black American music, in all its thumping but instrumentally decorous styles.

It is, in fact, likely that many musically talented youths who might have won fame as accomplished black musicians have been subordinated by the record industry’s financially lucrative obsession with rap or have redefined themselves as rappers who actually have no need for such niceties as pitch and harmony.

Our preference is to call these riotous shenanigans rap, but to reserve the word music for the entire delicious compliment of meter and rhythm, melody, and accompaniment. 

We also note that we, as youngsters whose volubility might betray an execrable degree of ignorance, were advised to remain relatively quiet, rather than, in Mark Twain’s words, “to speak out and remove all doubt.”

We conclude by saying let rap be rap but never let it be conjunct with the wonderfully various sonorities known as music.

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