Why is rap so popular?

Because while differences over who does it best and who sucks will always exist, it's so entertaining. And accessible. *shrug* I mean, to me this seems like a no-brainer.

Another theory could be that white people caught on quite early and got control over 'the game'. It was MTV who broke Run DMC. NWA were managed by a white guy. Tommy Boy Records is white owned. The Beasties, well, just look at 'em and Rawkus is even owned and operated by French white guys.

Either way it kinda made sense to target the music to middle class white kids who watched MTV and could afford the CD's. Sad, but true.

Reggae and Ska didnt because it is easier to get America-wide attention and hence world-wide attention if your records are being made in the media capital of the world rather than in Kingston, JA.

Go-Go didn't because it was rubbish. OK no, I have no idea why go-go didn't - too little possible variation?

But nobody's yet challenged the question itself. Hip-hop is THE dominant music in the USA today, yes. It isn't in Europe, and how well do we know if it is or isn't in the rest of the world? Cheesy dance is massively popular worldwide, and the top 40 pop which hits big globally is a melange of hip-hop, dance and bubblegum pop borrowings.

I believe Rupert Murdoch's son would be Australian.

Hmm. I don't know whether I should just slug you or laugh at you.

Stuff derived primarily from disco.

Who decides that?

The record-buying public.

There was I think a big homophobic component in the failure of house music to catch on widely in America. Some of it was explicit and even musician-led - Chuck D's dislike of hip-house because of its links with the gay scene, for instance. Some of it was implicit in the legacy of disco or in the distaste the public had for the flamboyance and hysteria of house vocals.

Ethan hasn't got the whole point about the rise of hip-hop compared to other rhythmic musics, but he has got *a* point. Also - ease of access. Not everyone has the equipment to make dance music but pretty much everyone has records and a voice. And the fact that a break- based music makes for better walking music than a steady pulsebeat- based music, i.e. you can do everyday stuff to hip-hop more easily than to other kinds of dance music.

That said, I do think that white appreciation does have a whole lot to do with the attractiveness of ideas of the "other" - but I think the economic context and the tendency to present it as the sole motivation for appreciation a bit limiting. Or maybe I just feel uncomfortable being told *why* I like something.

This is not very well thought out & I'm busy...my hope is that Nitsuh can jump in and turn my thoughts into a compelling argument.

Suburban kid [x] is open-minded enuff to look into art based on experiences difft from his/her own narrow background: hurrah!!

Tom's on point. My whole issue here is with ownership, control and shifting priorities. All to Ethan's new thread:-)

Wow, I thought it was just me who wasn't! Life's not so bad after all.

Melatonin is the chief thing that prevents he and I from being identical twins. Sad, really.

(a) It could be argued that rap music still represents (or is still seen to represent) a particular "urban" or "street" experience that very few people actually have, in the grand scale of things -- but an experience which is also branded into our cultural conscious, through all sorts of sources, musical and non-musical alike. The further you get into hip-hop, the more you find a very clearly- defined archetype, one just about every Westerner under the age of 40 is familiar with. It's an archetype far enough from the reality of the suburban middle class that it seems as unrealistically fascinating as the idea of being an astronaut or the CEO of GE; the closest parallel I can think of is the way comfortably urban east- coasters during the late 1800s might have imagined western cowboys. (And it's worth noting what a huge industry revolved around touring cowboy shows in the east.)

You're probably thinking the archetype I'm talking about revolves around the thug aesthetic, but it doesn't -- the quality I'm referring to is simply the urban archetype, the idea of the savvy, streetwise city dweller, the guy who knows what's going down and knows exactly where the party's at. Hip-hop sets whole new records in terms of the level of confidence poured into it -- rapping as a form has its very roots in self-aggrandizement. So I don't think we should be surprised that it now offers people what rock used to -- a sense of confidence, dangerousness, savoir-faire, and all the rest. It's not about being "tough" any more than listening to Led Zeppelin in the late 70s was about being tough (i.e., it's a little about being tough, but not exclusively) -- it's about the vitality of a particular confidence and a particular lifestyle that many would like to feel capable of leading, but few actually do.

(b) I think there's a big place here for the discussion of black culture, because hip-hop is, at root, a verbal extension of it. Here's an impossible-to-substantiate claim: black culture is pretty cool. Especially verbally -- the way black Americans talk has been leaching across American culture for decades now, because, well ... it's just cool, in the sense that it's always cool to have vibrant alternatives to the mainstream culture of a region. (For support of this statement, look over three or four threads here and think about how many little linguistic turns people -- starting with my "cool," even -- that have their roots in black American slang: you'll see that a lot of the most fun, expressive things we say, and some of the best types of humor we have, come from that culture.)

And hip-hop is currently the biggest conduit of that culture to the rest of the world. This is heartening, really -- the more I think about it, the popularity of hip-hop, at base level, is a sign of people at large discovering that black people have ways of speaking and joking and behaving that they connect with. Obviously we could go into exactly how much of the culture of hip-hop is stuff that's worth being proud of, but I'm speaking on a more superficial level, the top down view of America discovering that black people do this really cool thing called "rapping," and deciding that it's pretty neat and entertaining. Because that really is what it comes down to, right?

Pretty much. Otherwise why would we listen? ;-)

-- Ned Raggett (ne...)

fixed

Most white people don't know this, but Merzbow is actually a leftist rap group that figured out how to do this. To white listeners, it just sounds like noise.

It is actually a good comment of yours, in long retrospect, but I must have felt it too abrupt at the time. *shrug* Live and learn.

That seems pretty close to dead on right, but I think this hits it more I don't see the mystery about why hiphop is popular: it's populist, for a start, it throws up big characters, it's funky, it's entertaining. I don't think it's a mystery that Nelly is a star, in the same why I'm not confused (only annoyed) that Limp Bizkit are hug.

When you listen to it, how can it surprise you that it's anything but the biggest music around? It's catchy, flashy, NEW sounding, its artists are characters, its perceived as dangerous or silly or futuristic or intellectual (depending on which character you're listening to at the time) so why shouldn't it be popular?

Mind you, hip-hop is already considerably less dominant than it was when the original post was written. Particularly in Europe.

Just how shit the genre is right now vexs me something monotonous, back in 2001 everything seemed so much more exciting, but the huge focus on materialism puts a lot of people off these days.

*I don't even believe this, but I just want to say that it isn't linear or simple*

If you put 1988 instead of 2001, the above may make sense.

I'd just like to point out (5 years after the fact) that this does actually happen, or at least it happened to me a lot when I wore my musical loves on my sleeve (so to speak).

While that statement certainly has some truth, I think the issue is a bit more complex than just the generation gap.

It can be argued that blues, jazz, rock n roll, etc., were some of the first types of black music to influence the popular music scene of white folks. Grandma was not just unhappy with the sound of the music, but also the overt sexuality of the lyrics, rhythms and dance moves. The sexual revolution in the '60s (probably due in some part to these genre's of music from the '50s) allowed a much larger per centage of white folks to be proud of their sexuality rather than ashamed. Any of these folks that didn't suffer from "the change" (the bizarre belief of so many people that you must become conservative as you reach middle age) are certainly not bothered by the sexual nature of the lyrics of today's rap (at least not to the same degree as their own parents), but they still may not like the music.

Additionally, it was the post-war boom that afforded teenagers and young adults of the late 1940s and into the '50s the ability to purchase this new type of music that seemed to be built for them. It didn't take the marketing machine long to realize how much easier it was to manipulate the spending habits and cool factor of teens compared to adults, and I think that this created a larger generation gap than had existed prior to the '50s. Now that those same people are of the grandparent stage, I think that generation gap is getting smaller.

Oh definitely not. I do that instead.

Couple of thoughts about rap's lonegvity. It seems of all the popular music's it's the most juvenille (and I'm not using this in a negative context) in it's world view and attitudes. Whereas rock and roll (and to a lesser extent jazz and country) got old, middle class, smoothed out, and most importantly insecure. Rap went on it's merry way drinking, cussing, fucking, angry. Little self doubt or self loathing, forever young. Maybe that's why there's so few acts who've maintained a long successful career.

The other important factor is that it's like heavy metal, music's other perpetual teenager (and it should be no surpise that they ended up in bed together), in that it's a magpie genre, stealing ideas from everywhere whether it was Trans-Europe Express in 82' or Panjabi MC in 03'. Never growing stale, always adapting.

but there's always a strain of rock that's still focussed on hedonism and aggression, and there's always been 'conscious/political' rap.

Yes, I agree. But that's what they are, subsets of a much greater whole.

-- unoriginal argument (boring @ hotmail.com), October 12th, 2006 7:42 AM. (generic poster)

fixed

Ethan's original statement extremely OTM, although the "fix" on Ned's statement was mean and fatuous. Eth, can you find something else to do when you're in a bad mood besides pillage through ILX?

I shouldn't talk though since my last 5246 posts were pointless, some of which were mean too.

Let the first person who never sucked from the ilx crackstraw cast the first rock, etc.

And the aggressive strain of rock is consitantly the most popular while the polital strain of rap is typically the least.

most OTM thing ever in the history of ILM.

This is how you remind me of how I really am.

Also, at the height of it's popularity, hip-hop's themes spoke to core American values in a way rock n' roll didn't and couldn't. That and basic aesthetic reasons are why hip-hop was so popular. It's not anymore, but that's another thread.

xpost. saying hip-hop is about hedonism and greed is like saying that scorcesse movies are about guns and bitches.

"the polital strain of rap is typically the least."
tell that to tupac, eminem, kanye, chamillionaire, etc...just because rappers are more complex doesn't mean that they're less political.

it's a myth that hip-hop's audience is overwhelming white. Bakari Kitwana laid out a pretty solid argument in his book why white kids love rap that rap's 80% white figure that is tossed around is based on faulty survey of predominantly suburban record chains. The assumption is unfair to white people because it questions there authenticity, and it's unfair to black people because it strips them of power.

While you broke niggas reach drunk much quicker
You don't make enough bread to soak up all your liquor

That was in the 60s, times do change. Or not.

I don't know what that has to do with the race relations thing but stevem sez he wants to hear about "The Real Phil" so THERE YOU ARE.

But yeah. I'm probably not the person who were turned-off by hip hop by white kids in the suburbs. Whose older brothers listened to Pink Floyd. No, really.