Rap & emotional depth

You should ignore this thread for a couple of weeks. Or don't, but I'm busy with school and about to leave for it, but too impulsive not to post. I've teared up to a few rap songs, and I won't say which ones because I don't want to embarrass myself, but I've been meaning to start a thread like this for a few months. You can link to other threads where this discussion or others like it have taken place, but I still want to hear your own comments.

I want to know what you think about the cumulative effect of rap (and of pop music in general, because a lot of comments will apply to both). Certain of its effects build by accretion, I mean.

Really, pardon me, but I also want to know what you think about materialism and sexism in rap lyrics, as well as lyrics about selling drugs, empire building, and being really great. It's very passe to talk in terms of a genre's psychological function, but I wonder all the same what you think this one's is. Or think of westerns, French Arthurian romances, or other genres whose boundaries are as strict as rap's seems sometimes.

What do you think are the limitations of rap? Do you think its limitations are overcome by the cumulative effect, or by breakout artists, or both?

When I say "cumulative effect," I refer to allusions made through samples, lyrics, personnel; I also refer to shifts and trends in technology, production techniques, PR, the business, and different permutations of all of the above.

Is the business and marketing of rap too closely attached to the art of it? A related question: what do you think about the line between rapper's persona and his personality?

I've also thought about what it means that several major artists have done away with their notebooks. It's very homeric and puts me in McLuhan mode, thinking of these guys retrieving the acoustic space of their society. Are there longer narratives to be picked out that are comparable to an Iliad? This isn't unrelated to the hypnagogic pop issue: is the oral tradition in our culture fractured by mass culture? How does that part of our brain and social functioning manifest itself?

I had other questions but I'm late for class and I can't really recall them right now anyway.

This is mostly directed to fruity swag, et al. What do you think about the ephemerality of a lot of what you listen to? Or is it not ephemeral? I think it must be, to some degree, for there to be such a great volume. Is it just a music nerd thing, to make note of all the names and styles and substyles and to have an itch to hear everything and to be completely immersed in something, or are there other processes and conversations taking place?

Respectfully yrs, &c.

That "Best modern" thread moved right along. I see that "Limitations of hip hop" thread. I don't need examples of exceptional rap, or rap with "emotional depth," although it's not out of place. I'm not dismissive of rap. I like it, I collect it, and I listen to it. I'm talking about broader tendencies in rap.

Also, what do you think about coolness and black culture? As in, blacks don't have quite the same privileges to be uncool, cerebral, &c. This is definitely related.