Well, it has been noted that hip-hop/rap is fifty years in existence. No need to celebrate, just to acknowledge. It has rhythm, it has beat, maybe cadence, it has too much volume, and it is very percussive. Forget the lyrics, tune into the sound. It is not music, it is anti-music. It vexes the ears, an aural assault. It is an attack on sonority. Alcohol hangovers are unpleasant, supposedly the Danes (and maybe other former vikings) say "carpenters in the forehead" — an unrelenting, hammering on the brain. At least it doesn't make you barf, usually. It has physical posturing and gesturing in performance that is aggressive, confrontational, and often absurd, but ugly.
Music theory is taught, and studied. Music theory is not applicable to this genre. A song is a poem with music. Hip-hop has lyrics, and can be looked at as spoken poetry. The black community engages in a version of spoken word poetry that has much similarity to hip-hop. Music has a trajectory of progression, so does poetry. The words and the music have a relationship. None of this applies to hip-hop/rap. This essay has no musical notation, and neither does hip-hop/rap. Elements in recorded tracks can offer samplings from music, but they are independent and unnecessary for the lyrics. There are also sound effects that have the same role.
The ear does hear. Machines can produce a drum beat, and bass; but the speaker's words do not need to align in these performances. There is an analysis that has the beat as cyclical, because it is not linear. It is alien from folk music, and art music. Jazz and rock does not apply either. It is pop, because it is charted there in sales; and it is popular to a segment of the population.
A while back, an accomplished musician from a family of musicians critiqued hip-hop/rap. Wynton Marsalis said, it is “more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee”. He was right, but he was only talking about the ugliness of the words. The pornographic words, and the "minstrel show ghetto routines" degrade people. He and me know this exists, and people have a right to have it; but rap is crap, and not music.
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