How far can dislike of Hip-Hop and/or R&B go before you start levelling accusations of racism?

You cussin' my mum?

*k'uh! k'uh!*

(a lot of people on there would say that ... some damn racist fools on those newsgroups who show their colours whenever music of any kind is mentioned, I'm afraid)

i miss my man biggie.

bdp were sellouts. who needs "teachers" if their beats ain't hard?

anyway i was listening to chicago today and those dudes could play!

haha, no.

same here... it was the way, back in 99 or 2000 or something, some NME poll of popstars in the xmas issue on their favourite albums that year, and Kelly jones and a bunch of similarly indie-rock no marks all went on record saying what a great story-teller 'nem is. and i just thought, there's plenty of black MCs who are great story tellers too - arguably better, tho it is of course always a question of taste - but they would never have sought out those artists because they perceived them as not *for* them... whereas an artists like Eminem is less threatenting, culturally (if not lyrically), because he is white. and also, it opens up the can of worms about how eminem has been embraced by the media, whereas if a black artist had made 'the slim shady LP', it woulda never crossed over the way it has. the elvis of rap is probably a course and unwieldy analogy, but, fuckit, its breakfast.

I realise this isn't exactly what you're talking about but I think the Kelly Jones attitude is tokenism not racism, i.e. the Kelly Jones equiv of 1993 would have been all over Arrested Development and I'm sure in 1989 there were plenty of people listing De La Soul as a year-end highlight next to the Wonder Stuff.

I've only seen it a couple of times. and on one of those that person was accused of racism.

before eminem the only white rapper (in the eyes of the media anyway) was vanilla ice. eminem can rap obv so that's why there is a lot of focus on him but also he has 'credibility', what with Dre, etc.

ppl who make these comments must be very sure of what they are saying before dismissing an entire genre. they should know their stuff (the person on that discussion group appeared not to).

More likely than not they're not being racist, but rather trying to tart up what is a basic aesthetic dislike for beats and rhymes (or specific variations of such); on the other hand, I'm sure that a fair few people list such objections in the secret-but-firm belief that it is only or primarily black musicians who share them.

The issue of how certain critical discourses privilege "white" variations of "black" music is interesting but should be kept separate - it's hysterically hyperbolic to claim that a person who listens to DJ Shadow but no rap is racist. Foolish and misguided I'll allow.

Person who dislikes rap (and, by extension, RnB, blues, soul, reggae, Motown etc) based on skin colour of musicians = racist.

Person who dislike rap (while not necessarily RnB, blues, soul, reggae, Motown etc) based on musical preferences = not racist.

Piece of piss.

Likewise, its the way in which a rap-hata expresses his dislike of rap that makes the difference. In many ways, any misunderstanding could be cleared up simply by looking at the person's record collection. But I suspect that, being non-white, I *do* look at this in a different way, as it seems blindly obvious to me most of the time whether a remark has racist connotations or not.

A further question, which is more complex, would be 'is it possible to not like ANY of the main "black music" genres without being labelled racist?'

Oh, musically, yeah. But why do you assume it's not to do with lyrics and general.. persona.

But is "relating" enough of a reason to justify liking something to the exclusion of everything else in the genre? I'm not sure.

Goa Trance.

At (Old) Skool:

Me: "Yeah, I've been working on this list of the top30 Hip-Hop albums of all time with some colleagues (yes, I use the word 'colleagues', because most of my friends are guillible enough to think that writing for an internet website means something, and I'm not about to dispell that myth)"

Friend: "You're gonna include Eminem, right???"

Me: "GRRRRRRR"

I mean, I love Eminem and all, but I loathe the fact that so many guys at my school see him as some sort of idol (some type of entity, and they all probably wanna mention me..), while the only thing black rappers are good for at best is providing comic relief. Dunno how this relates to places where there actually is a sizeable black Hip-Hop community (the black communities here are mainly from Angola, Mozambique and Cap Verde, and despite "Africa Raps" none of them seem the least bit interested in Hip-Hop)

That's not in evidence from the sound of the first 2 albums, which didn't sound anything like a band was playing on them. I know they started as a punk rock band, and I know they've since played plenty on their records and live, but when I saw them touring LICENSE TO ILL, they played...not at all. They got known for their rapping, period.

Yeah I'm a racist because I like motown and not the current incarnation of RnB. It has nothing to do with the fact that musically, 60's soul/rnb has very little to do with what is considered soul/rnb today. And everything to do with the fact that I preferred the way black people behaved back then. Irregardless of the fact that I was either not yet born or a very small child at the time, and probably had no notion of the unfortunate concept of "race".

There are plenty of valid musical and lyrical reasons for disliking rap or rnb (i guess we have substituted rap for hip-hop which i'm sure isn't the same thing if you are a genre formalist). Musically, i often find the beats in rap uninspiring and the lack of melody/hooks makes me lose interest. In rnb (or whatever) I think there is too much focus on vocal gymnastics today and not enough focus on emotion. Also, the lack of actual acoustic instruments turns me off a bit. Lyrically, let's be honest, a lot of rap is pure braggadocio. Just doesn't appeal to me. "...it's violent, it's nihilistic, it's socially destructive, it's overly capitalistic, it's sexist etc..." is a shallow criticism, but sometimes valid, and can be applied to many genres, and not to mention it is easy to use as flamebait on a forum such as this. I'm sure people still write a good RnB lyric no and then, but because of my aversion to the stuff I probably am unlikely to discover it (and anyway, lyrics cannot make a song on their own for me).

Now I am not saying I hate all Rap and rnb and whatever, if you say that than maybe you do have issues or at least aren't too open minded about music. There are some things i like, LLCoolJ had a voice. So did Chuck D (and didn't most every white college boy love PE in the early 90s?) And I seem to recall some Snoop Dog tracks that had really good grooves. Of course I can appreciate stuff like De La Soul which sounds more like the kind of music i am typically into.

Bear in mind I really don't like any mainstream or chart genres for the most part, but seriously this has nothing to do with skin tone.

Jeez, it's like the counterpart of black people who think everything happens because of racism: white people who get all defensive about racial accusations that were never even close to made.

What is it with white people anyway? They always think everything has to do with race.

made me actually laugh

I also get annoyed when people tell me that act X is genre Y for white boys, and I feel as if I am supposed to justify having Eminem/De La/Beasties/Shadow or even Public Enemy albums by whatever the hell albums won't be looked at that way.

What have white people ever done for ME?

Avril Lavringe!

(I am loathe to draw parallels between Eminem and UB40 here!).
So mention Vanilla Ice or Snow instead.

I also get annoyed when people tell me that act X is genre Y for white boys, and I feel as if I am supposed to justify having Eminem/De La/Beasties/Shadow or even Public Enemy albums...
Well, thats when you tell them that the Geto Boys is just GG Allin for Black Folks.

I think old fogey-dom is more of a factor here than race.

What, like Charley Pryde? He's pretty good, yeah...

Huh, the album I have is spelled "Pride". He sings white music very well for a black guy. I had no idea he was black for some time. You've got to kiss an angel morning... when the new wears off your crystal chandalier... good stuff in a dorky kind of way.

I don't like much rap, but I do have a soft spot for some of it. What seems really STRANGE to me these days is the radio stations that say, "All the hits AND NO RAP". Are rap songs not hits? At this point, rap has been around so long that to make a specific point of denouncing it as part of the radio station's call letter announcement seems really wrong.