I have a secret to divulge... I don't much like rap. That isn't to say that the style as a whole offends me or that I "don't consider it music", but the genre typically just fails to enthuse me in any way. Granted, my exposure to rap has been mostly through the speakers of cars in which I am not riding, or as played by my college suite mate. Most of what I have heard has been either unintelligible or quite profane. I have found most of the rap interludes in popular culture to be typically inoffensive, but rap as a pure genre has never held appeal for me.
I'd like to say that my dislike of rap was based solely on its own merits, but there's a tiny little voice that still wondered if I just didn't like it because of how black it was. Since much of the music I listen to is performed by black artists (albeit from prior decades) I would have thought not, but a hint of the question remained.
Well, this week I got my answer to that question. Ladies and gentlemen, make rap as white as you want and I will still not like it. I present for you Nerdcore. I can now unabashedly say that a bunch of nerdy white guys rapping about video games or computers is just as uninteresting to me as any gansta diatribe.
I feel oddly liberated by Nerdcore. I am now free to not like rap as much as I want, and never feel the need to, say, make token attempts to appreciate it for its cultural significance like some condescending amateur anthropologist all pepped on on NPR. It's just music and I'm not particularly fond of that type of music.
4 days ago
I figure... rap isn't any more "black" than Martha and the Vandellas or Harry Belafonte or Tricky or Miles Davis, so if I don't dislike (or even like) them, I'm not some kind of cross-burning musical bigot. Anyone who doesn't like blacks, or "black culture", better just throw out all their rock and roll records, since without black people (and Elvis) we'd all still be listening to whatever boring crap white people listened to in 1900.
ReplyDeleteRap, like any highly specialized musical subculture, is hard to appreciate if you don't already appreciate it. Try forcing yourself to like jam bands - Phish doing a 20-minute rotation jam. Zzzzzzz. Ain't gonna happen, you either like it, or you don't :)