Rap music on high-end speakers

You know, I was talking to my former college advisor a few months ago about noticing how scared the majority of white people live...

I say hello to my building manager from my balcony and she jumps! Neighbors have called the police because my sister forgot to bring back in the house the empty trash cans...when I was in senior in college I was living in 'the flats' and some white married couple moved below us. They immediately freaked and became the organizers of "Neighborhood Watch". The neighborhood was fine (blue collar), just that a lot of the residents were black. What the f***?

I was in the U.S. military, too. But that's another story...

BTW, I am white--and my Spanish grandfather was very fond of Franco and the Germans, if you know what I'm talking about.

Tru - I thought this thread was dead, too. I see a few listed objections to rap: glorifies violence and misogyny (unlike, say. the blues, right?), rappers don't sing, music is simply played off records, listeners listen to the music too loud. I can't help but think these are stereotypically ignorant statements. Take a band like, say, The Roots. I had the opportunity to see them perform a few times last summer and immensely enjoyed the sound. All music came from instruments (drummer was as solid as any I've seen this side of a 'big name' jazz performance) that were played well. Their performance was no louder than any of the other performers on the marque (another rap group, two rock & roll groups, and a not so unfamous electronica musician). While the words weren't recited in the melodic tradition, they were certainly sung, that is they showed rhythm, tempo, dynamics, and phrasing (When the poet writes, 'I *sing* of a man and of arms', what melody do you think he had in mind?). And finally, the lyrics were for the most part positive and well written. It's OK not to like rap. It's OK not to like Mozart. You just shouldn't go around criticizing an art form that ultimately you know very little about using arguments that are intellectually dishonest and easily dismissed by a single counter example.

Nilthepill, you continue to speak volumes about yourself by bragging about how an engineer at Boeing runs about in his car blasting rap music into his neighborhoods and proud of it. Frankly, none of your abusive comments deserve any attention, and will get no more in the future.

The lack of any substance to Psychicanimal's babblings in response to my thread are only further reinforced by his next thread which fails to address any of the valid points made by Rlwainwright. As far as his baseless comment that "You call yourself a professional musician but you don't know much about music," what are your credentials, Psychicanimal? Do you read music, do you play numerous instruments, do you thoroughly understand the structures of harmony, chord structure, polyphony, harmonic progression, orchestration? Have you sung and played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus?

Your diatribe about "Scared White People", this has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.

Rap is not music -- it is polluting noise. It doesn't have melody, it doesn't have harmony. To elevate this trash to an artform or to deign this to be music only exposes the ignorance and lack of sophistication of the writers in this thread.

Obviously some people have a serious problem with rap/hip-hop. More than just not liking the music, they seem to dislike what rap represents. I suspect that rap artists wouldn't have it any other way. As a form of expression rap music is created by a cultural underclass. They are a group of people who have little or no place in the dominant society. Is it surprising that this underclass strives to offend all the values of the larger society? It makes some people uncomfortable that young black men have figured out a way to make large sums of money telling America, in effect, to go fuck itself.

Nahhh, I'm from a barrio, unsophisticated...only sing in the shower and inside my car...but got a scholarship to an Ivy League university and took a class in musicology (Sound, sense and idea). I was taught in that class what you cannot comprehend with all that classical Western upbringing: WHAT IS MUSIC EXACTLY?

As for my musical talents, I'm no professional. Took a year and a half of piano and three of accordion. Before leaving the Caribbean I was undergoing an apprenticeship in steel drum building, tuning and playing with master Jack Warren of Antigua. Bet you probably think that's not a musical instrument either...it's made from scrap--right?

About music and fear: it's related, not 'babbling'. If you'd been at the Vicente Fernández concert in Allstate arena you would have seen DOZENS of scared Rosemont police officers. Just because the Mexicans were having a good time. The cops would encircle themselves like cows in a corner...outside some six or seven jumped on a kid because he was smoking pot. I couldn't stand it anymore and I yelled at them if that's how many of them it took to arrest a kid. My Mexican friend panicked, but having been a former Federal law enforcement officer I just didn't give a s***.

Sadly, this is what's going on...

BTW, after you guys finish attacking rap, please move on to Mexican "Corridos" and then on to Dominican "Bachata", Lesser Antilles' "Soca", Colombian "Cumbias" and anything else is not in your taste.