Definition of music, courtesy of Dictionary.com
[ul]The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. [/ul]
[ul]Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm. [/ul]
[ul]An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines. [/ul]
Rap has rhythm in it, hence rhythm and poetry, therefore, it is a music genre. 
Threads like this are why older guard RPGC posters whine about the good old days and complain the main forum ain’t what it used to be.
I’d rather trudge through another batch of “What Kind Of ____ Are You?” online personality quiz threads or a page full of “WHEE I HAVE ONE THOUSAND POSTS ASK ME QUESTIONS!” threads than this.
“Is Rap Music?” The debate was settled, in Rap’s favor, in 1991 at the latest. Y’all missed the bus by over a decade. And 99% of the videos you see broadcast on Much Music/MTV will be interchangable disposable derivative pop, irrespective of genre. In other old and obvious news, the sky is blue, dog bites man, and thirteen british colonies in north america have split away from mother britain and formed their own new country.
Aesop Rock 
Yay long quotes ^^
Jurassic 5 are still Gods, however.
Ok, Pop punk has absolutely nothing to do with what you look like. Sure there’s the style that usually goes along with it but not all Pop punk groups have it. And the fact that you even say that nullifies what you have to say. Pop punk is an attitude and a music style, not a look. IT’s not giving a fuck what people think about you, an attitude that Good Charlotte has in spades, and playing faster music with an upbeat feel. And the Sex Pistols were all punk just because they may not have looked it they definitely had the attitude and music styling. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about and Greenday are Pop punk, not punk.
well, Shola ama went 2 my school so shes okay XD
I never really said it did. What I said was that Good Charlotte were merely a pop band with a ‘radical’ look that made people believe they were either punk, or occasionally pop-punk. In truth, their music has no element of punk-rock in it. At all.
I would argue that if Good Charlotte didn’t care what people thought, they wouldn’t spend the amount of time they do on appearance.
The Sex Pistols thing was that they only looked punk, not that they didn’t. They were put together by a fucking clothier! They were made to sell clothes! Punk-rock bands are NOT made to sell fucking clothes! Also, the only music styling punk-rock has is the band playing it being punk-rockers. Look at Social Distortion and Bad Religion as examples of this. Punk is usually categorized with three-chord fast paced rock because many of them, at the start, were not musically talented, and thus played what they could and started to get their message across. Also, they dressed the way they did, screamed and played loud music so that they could not be ignored. One of the early influences was that the government was ignoring the wishes of the people, especially youth. They took an old french revolutionary manifesto ‘If you speak loud enough, even the deaf cannot ignore you forever,’ and used it. More musicianly bands emerged as well, like Bad Religion or the Dead Kennedys, who brought strong, well-backed and well-researched political backing in. In other words, punk has never had a musical styling, other than it’s band must be made up of punk-rockers, something even harder to define. So, all the Sex Pistols did was make noise, while Johnny Rotten actually tried to be a punk and Sid Viscious shot up heroin, randomly beat up innocent people, and stabbed his girlfriend to death. The Sex Pistols were not a punk-rock band, as John Lyndon was the only punk-rocker among them. He soon realized this, which is why the band released barely a single album before breaking up. John Lyndon went on to do his own music, actual punk-rock, which never got as much fame, because it wasn’t marketed as ‘the next big thing’ by a man who was, to quote an actual punk-rock line ‘Turning rebellion into money’.
Actually, I believe I nkow very much what I am talking about, and you simply are not actually listening (er… reading, if you want to be literal) what I’m saying.
Finally, the only remark I made abour Green Day being a punk-rock band was when I was referring to the formula used to create green day, which was cynical and sarcastic.
Green Day=Punk+Pop-Everything that made punk good.
That isn’t saying they’re a punk-rock band, that’s saying they’re a pop-punk band without any of the things that made punk-rock great.
If what I’m saying still somehow escapes you, or you have an argument against one of my points, PM me and I’ll gladly clarify whatever is confusing and give the evidence I have found to back my point, just to show you where I got the information. Then, if for some reason, my source is horribly unreliable, you can correct me, show me the real information, and I’ll have learned something new.
Back to rap.
Look at what rap originated from - The Blues. The Blues originated from the 40’s and 50’s when black people were opressed. They created the Blues so that they could vibe out and complain in a musical way. Then it gradually escalated into rap. I mean, listen to blues, and listen to rap - the most noticeable comparison between the two is the bass line. It started in Blues as the cello, and has evolved in rap as the syntehsized beat. It’s all the same concept. I mean, when black people were opressed they complained. Now that some of them are filthy fucking rich they rejoice.
Rap is about feeling good, much like blues was. If you’ve ever been to an AA meeting, its very similar to Blues. It was people listening to other peoples problems so that they can feel better about themselves and their problems.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s stupid rap just like theres stupid rock. Most of Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz is retarded rap that has no meaning. It’s fun to listen to, but other than that it has no serious meaning. A lot of DMX has meaning, as does a lot of Big Daddy Kane, Run DMC, Doug E. Fresh, Eminem…
A lot of it has to do with music just being fun in general. I have fun listening to music, so I listen to all kinds of it. Whether it’s slipknot or lil jon, they both make me happy. If you don’t enjoy it - then don’t listen to it.
And so far Trinity has offended me in every post s/he’s made.
I agree with you completely sorcerer, and for the record, Trinity is a she, and you might want to lay off her a little bit. I think I alone have hounded her enough for one day, especially about music. She seems to be taking it personally too.
You haven’t been here long, so let me just say that hounding is what I do. And I do it well.
But thanks for agreeing.
We’ll get along, Sorcerer =D.
Anyway, for anyone who doesn’t think there can be good rap, I still strongly recocomend the film Slam and the band Public Enemy.
I’m not saying that there isn’t good rap just alot of it sucks imo. So thats why I tend to say that it sucks.
Alrighty, let’s see. SG mentioned that it wasn’t a joke. I’d like to mention that rap was in fact started in the late 70’s, not the 80’s like you said, when the Sugarhill Gang put out the single “Rapper’s Delight” during the fall of disco. In the early 80’s you had Doug E. Fresh, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run-DMC, and The Roots, among others. In the late 80’s, NWA, Beastie Boys, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, De La Soul, and Digable Planets broke into the scene. The 90’s brought forth a new wave of Gangsta Rap, and many of those artists still perform today. The nineties also brought forth more conscious minded rap, such as Wu-Tang Clan, Jurassic 5, Arrested Development, and Hieroglyphics. Tis true that there is a lot of shitty rap. But like anything else, I don’t go looking through commercial TV or radio for my music. Most mainstream music today lacks even a semblance of substance or honesty. It’s all overproduced and polished to sound good to the masses.
And on one more note, Good Charlotte sucks. seriously. For all the reasons SG, Arac, and everyone else mentioned, and more.
Saying rap sucks because it’s not good is the same as saying a hammer sucks because it’s not good.
There are things that can only be said a certain way with rap, and things that can only be done with a hammer.
For all of those saying that rap isn’t music, I strongly advise trying to write, and produce a rap song. It’s FAR more work than you would have originally thought. My friend and I did that, and while he never gained the respect I did for the art form, let’s just say it was pretty freaking hard (plus, it wasn’t that refined, the beat wasn’t all there. Everything flowed together smoothly, but the beat could have been smoothed out just a little bit more). He composed the beat and I did the song.
While it was a pretty fun experience (and we only got compliments for the song), it’s not something that was easy. So before you just decide something sucks, try your hand at it first.
Hades gross generalizations never cease to amaze me.
Personally, it makes me wish for having an excuse for justifiable homicide.
I don’t know if blues music is necesarily about making you feel good…That’s what teh blues means; you’re upset But, I’ll give you the fact that it is used to let your troubles out in a soulful, creative fashion.
Well, It’s like group therapy. You get your problems out and it’s supposed to make you feel better. That’s a pretty shitty analogy, but it’s all I’ve got these days.
I believe it was John Lee Hooker who said ‘Man, it’s about feelin’ so bad, you feel good, you know?’
If not, some other bluesman said those exact words, I know I memorized the quote properly.
It’s also one of the many things that can make a beatnik on a road trip completely freak out.