Commentary: The Heart Of The Issue
A man much smarter than I am once told me that Rap minus lies equals hip-hop. I think I liked hearing that.
The purpose of this essay isn’t to convert you to being a fan of hip-hop. Considering this is being published on a website whose readers are entrenched in it already it would make doing so pointless. I’m not trying to preach, I’m not looking to get self-righteous and begin to call out all the wrong I see in the industry – I do that enough. The real purpose of this essay is to explain why I love rap music and why it should be treated as legitimate as any other genre of music. No caveats, no Roger Maris asterisks, no footnotes.
The first thing I want to clarify is the misuse of “rap” and “hip-hop.” Hip-hop denotes a culture that serves as an umbrella in which the musical genre of rap resides under. Break dancing, graffiti, gold rope chains, DJing, and parachute pants are all “hip-hop” because they’ve been assimilated into what’s considered hip-hop culture. Concepts can even be claimed. The concept of “the Hustle” in hip-hop is common to every other culture, but the way that the Hustle is framed, the diction associated with the concept and the generally associated contexts that are used are unique to hip-hop. Rap, however, is a genre of music; you don’t make hip-hop music. Listeners, labels, even bloggers – most people who aren’t intimately involved with rap music and hip-hop culture have made and will continue to make this mistake. If you’re going to be critical of rap or hip-hop culture do yourself a favor and make sure to get this part of your argument right. You only hurt your legitimacy when you confuse the two and prove that your ignorance outweighs your intelligence.
At a basic level, rap is poetry. Rephrase: At a basic level, quality rap is poetry. It is the telling of stories to an audience. Truth be told, any genre of music is poetic – lyrics are penned in order to communicate a message to the listener. Logically, if all lyrics have this “common ancestor” then the argument that modern rap lyrics have less content, complexity or weight to them may be completely true but that’s an observation on the amount of talent in the genre, not on the genre itself. You cannot classify rock, rap or country music as bad because you think the people who are in the genre put out distasteful music; you don’t like the band but you have to respect the form.
The genre’s newfound grand-stage – the radio airwaves, the Billboard charts, the night club circuit and the desire of artists to flourish through these avenues create a barrier for considerable lyrical substance. It’s not that all rappers lack substance, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s that in order to achieve the prominence they’re looking for its virtually impossible for new acts to do without sculpting their image and their music into a form that’s as easy as possible to swallow. The basic tenet stands; the artist had a choice and made it – for better or worse for the genre.
Rap’s bad rap has come from factors like profanity, violence, drug use/association, racial stereotyping, misogyny and a whole host of others over the years. I am not here to disagree – rap is full of these issues and saying so is a matter of fact, not opinion. Media have portrayed rap music as the catalyst for such vices as drugs, alcohol, materialism and more and blames hip-hop culture for spreading its plague-like symptoms to the malleable minds of mainstream American youth. Hip-hop’s divisiveness has created a rift in the mind of America’s collective unconscious where people are treated like polarizing issues instead of individuals. A white kid who listens to rap may be as strange as a black kid who doesn’t. Rappers are black, not white – which explains how artists like Asher Roth can parlay America’s fascination with the “odd” into a career. A white blogger is less legitimate than a black one. And somehow we’ve been able to split hip-hop into two negating parts: the part that bolstered the hope and faith of a people who looked towards who would represent them and run their country and the part that tells young black youth to do whatever it takes to get that Rolls Royce. It’s in the small things that we really see the face of the societal implications of one genre of music. And all of this is true.
It would be naïve and ignorant to think that each genre did not have its own set of negative consequences. Rock in the sixties and seventies portrayed an image of free love and drug use to fans. Women were raped backstage and at after-parties by the very band members they bought a ticket to see. Jazz held a very heavy image of drug use – Serge Chaloff, Charlie Parker and Art Pepper all were exquisite jazz musicians who died due to long-standing issues rooted in substance abuse. Miles Davis himself was victim of a wicked cocaine habit and by the time 1975 rolled around, Davis needed copious amounts of cocaine just to appear to function. The pressures of country music forced Elvis Presley into a dependence on sleeping pills, uppers and other pharmaceuticals that led to his death. One lab report filed after The King’s death listed 14 separate drugs in his system, 10 of which in significant quantity. The pressure of the music machine sometimes leads and sometimes forces artists down a path of self destruction to achieve what is viewed as never enough. Rap is not above this. But what should happen is that we should all acknowledge the negative sides of our respective genres and not focus on whose is worse. Doing so only constructs a continuum of relative goodness in which to size up whose genre is “better” than the other in some attempt to quantify the unquantifiable and smugly hold that over others. Music is power; some individuals tap into that power through a beat; others through a guitar.
By tapping into that power we cut through the fat and getting past the spotlight-hogging, media-obsessed, attention whore face that is mainstream music we find the heart of the genre. It’s with this heart in mind that any discussion of the art of the music should be discussed. Not what is plastered on headlines or what current spin the machinations of the music or public relations industries give it – but what it does to the heart of the art form. This is where true discussion lies. Underground fans, some bloggers and a small contingent of listeners make it their rule to eye their music in such a fashion and discuss issues pertaining to their respective culture accordingly because doing so allows for the discussion of the music to be focused on the artists merits and credits quality work because it uplifts the genre.
Looking at music, or rap for this example’s sake, from this perspective allows us to do a few things. It disallows justifying flaws, omissions, mistakes or weak points due to reasons that we deem fit because we look at music holistically beginning with music having to have a purpose – whether that purpose is simply to make your head bounce in a club or to highlight a social evil it needs to be constructed in such a manner that the song achieves its goal in the most effective way it can. The totem pole lining classifications of music up can and is debated constantly but the general rules are clear – the more thought that goes into a production, the better. This logic allows us to pinpoint strong suits and weaknesses of any song put out for public consumption. Lyrically, Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001 album is nothing more than entertaining but the album’s real magic comes from the blood, sweat and tears Dre put into the beats he created. The album is historical – there’s no debate and examples from Nas or The Roots or Mos Def show that the flip-side is true as well. Is there an album that’s a perfect 10 lyrically as well as musically? The debate begins.
But as long as there is debate, hip-hop culture and rap music, will never be dead. Let’s not lie and get to the heart of the issue. 
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