What thoughts come to mind when you think of rap? Good, wholesome, family friendly songs? I don't think so, at least I definitely don't. When I think about rap, my mind immediately zooms to clubbing scenes, sex and drugs. I think about how senseless rap is and how it's possible for a genre of music to be so pointless.
Where in the world did I get such a bad opinion of rap? Obviously, I have a very narrow vision of rap and this comes from what little I see and hear of it because that little sample that I get isn't a good sample. If we step back from the popular rap songs, we would be able to notice how different artists have used rap as a more meaningful medium than others.
The meaning of rap by definition is
but through what we might see of it through media, the meaning has been twisted into "a type of rhythmic talking about sex, drugs, and violence, often with accompanying rhythm instruments"
In this music video, the club scene is depicted as a sort of dance floor where everyone is getting so hot, they start talking all their clothes off at the prompt of Nelly. As we watch the video, we notice how it's mainly girls who are undressing themselves. I think that might have something to do with the reputation that rap has.
If you think about it, this is kind of unfair towards the more meaningful side of rap. The name of rap has been tarnished by the grittier songs and leaves less room for people to consider other sides of rap.
Above is a music video for Common's song called Testify which is about an alleged killer and his wife and how his wife deals with this problem.
This is a song called "Mockingbird" by Eminem and it in, he seems to be talking to his daughter about their experiences together.
These are two songs that do not have much similarities of meanings as the first two but the thing is, they are both tossed into the same categories because of society's misinterpretation of popular rap. The popular version of something does not necessarily define it as a whole and because of this miscommunication, many people miss out on the opportunity to observe a really great way of expressing music.
1 comments:
According to Wikipedia, Rapping (also known as emceeing, MCing, spitting (bars), or rhyming) refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” (rhythm and rhyme), and “delivery”. Rapping is distinct from spoken word poetry in that it is performed in time to a beat.
Rap music is one of the most popular music these days, it is heard by almost everyone even those who are not very big fan of it (people like myself and I think Nancy too). I agree with Nancy upto a lot of extend regarding misconceptions of rap music. Their are so many songs who depict and show like of a rap star as a gangster surrounded by smoke, drugs, booze, guns and almost naked women which according to me is quite unrealistic and a little bit sexist. But not all songs are the same, some rap songs do have a positive meaning behind it too like Not Afraid by Eminem. The song clearly depicts how Eminem overcame his drug addiction and now is clean.
So to conclude, like its said there are two sides to every coin same goes with rap music .
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