When will rap music be less mainstream?


First time I heard MC Hammer’s song many years ago, I like the rhythm and thought it is quite unique. After that, all kinds of rap music pop up. I never thought rap music would be mainstream for such a long time in US. If you look at the music award ceremonies, you will find it being flooded with rap music. Sometimes I am not even sure rap can be considered as song because you don’t sing but speak. Now you start to hear rap music in some other languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean that don’t sound good in rap format. It would be interesting to hear rap music in Italian.

Time will tell if a song is good or not. A song is good if somebody want to play it for their loved ones on the radio 20 years later. I can’t imagine someone will play a rap for their beloved one 20 years later. Just curious if any A’gon member keep any rap collection?

Besides rap, I also have a feeling that the music industry in general is getting cheesy now. American Idol show gets huge attention while lots of singers perform at the bar or hotel can easily sing better than the idols. The show also asked Barbara Streisand if she watched the show and who was her favorite idol. What do you expect her to answer? People said Justin Timberlake is very talented singer/songwriter. I know him because I saw lots of headshot of him on commercials and magazines, but can you name any popular/well known song from him?
yxlei
Rap sucks! So does HipHop. They will probably be embraced by the general public forever. I spent 2 years working next door to one of those places that installs the killer car stereos and big wheels that make your crappy old Caprice look like a covered wagon. It was absolute torture. The "music", the words, the Train horns, the attitude. Part of my ceiling actually fell in from the bass.It was like living in a war zone. We all applauded the day Federal Marshalls came in with Black hoods over their heads and took all the "Hip Hop Sissies" off to jail at gunpoint.
I don't think they are embraced at all, I think they are pushed on kids. Why is retro music so popular still? Because the record companies don't have a clue as to what people like any more.

We never listened to 20 yr old music in the late 70's to early 90's, like kids do now. We wanted something new, now they are just frantically searching for something good, so they end up looking back and saying, "Wow, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, The Police, Elton John are all pretty good...."
Referring to the frequent sampling of older R&B, Soul, and rock music, someone once described the current crop of rap/hip hop "artists" as midgets standing on the shoulders of giants.
I for one have a lot of hip hop albums...none of the mainstream stuff though...I'm talking about '88 to around '98. And of course, there's much more to hip hop than what you hear on the radio, kind of like more to high end than Bose and B&W :-)
Check out "less mainstream" rap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK3Tr2uFsow
a few translation versions found on the comments to this tube video.
enjoy