It is true. I always have.
Granted, there are some songs I have liked here and there with a contagious beat or memorable, attractive tune that clicks with the brain’s funny bone on music, like Omarion’s “Post to Be,” Red Cafe’s “Pretty Gang,” Nikki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” and 50 Cent’s and The Game's “Love It or Hate It.” Certainly guilty, but overall I am not a lover of rap and hip hop. Most of it is just brainless static, like the ones I’ve liked. I’m just a casual consumer who’s not a rap fan but fell prey to a few hits that were meant to get us going.
I am one of the drastic few blacks, especially for my age, who really doesn’t relate to our culture’s music. It doesn’t resonate with me, and it baffles my people when I tell them I’m not into it. Just like how it really makes their jaw drop when I tell them I’m not into football - in fact they almost even take offense at it. But my life and my family are different, and this has a lot to do with my taste in music.
Upbringing…
My siblings and I grew up in a ghetto community with hoods and hood-wannabes (young blacks who want so much to relate to the thug life they hear in the songs they listen to and try to be bad and thuggish but don’t really have it in them) but our mom made sure we didn’t grow up INVOLVED in it, and she has been exceedingly successful at that, to the point where we stood out and had people in our community praise her for how she raised her kids.
Along with this, she never let us listen to rap and hip hop, and I can’t say I was ever particularly bothered by that as a kid. She taught us that it’s filth with no substance and we would not be listening to it in her house. And most of it is exactly as she said. Even when I reached teenhood I myself grew more conciously disgusted of hearing it around me in our neighborhood, banging out of some idiot’s car or neighbor’s livingroom. I hated it. And I hated the way so many of my own people worshipped it like a pagan wooden idol that God was laughing at.
Rock music has always been my thing instead. U2, Stone Temple Pilots, and Led Zeppelin are some of my favorite fucking groups. And Latin music from Juanes, Belanova, Aventura, Pilar Montenegro, and Alejandro Sans. And pretty pop from white girls or half white girls like Colbie Caillat, Selena Gomez, and Sky Ferrera, that most black people would find incredibly funny to know about me. It’s what I’ve always liked and ain’t gonna stop liking it.
For this matter, our family has never even really liked a lot of the stuff that is essential black like urban lit, football, ‘chittlins,’ or very many black movies. We’ve always been pretty diverse and raised to have a much wider view and appreciation for the bigger world.
Rap and hip hop don’t really mean much…
It’s sad to me the way the black American culture holds rap and hip hop to such high value. Even that show Empire is a hit in the black community. Black America has a nostalgic, traditional view of this kind of music, dreaming back to its roots in the late 70s and 80s, feeling that “it’s ours” and how we have to hold on to it like a dying language from an indigenous tribe or race. And holding on to it is indeed what even a lot of older blacks in their 40s and 50s are doing. I’ve been to black get-togethers and birthday parties where middle-aged aunts, uncles, and grandparents are happily jamming to Jay-Z and Rihanna. We say that rhythm and dancing is in our roots, and doesn’t change no matter how old we get. But I think it can get to be kind of ridiculous.
Maybe what early rap or hip hop was back in the 70s and 80s was different, but what it is today really is just an overexplosive warehouse putting out a lot of garbage and foul trash with little or no meaning or worthwhile lyrics that I honestly cannot stand. It really is still the same old cheese from both male and female artists about “bitches and hos,” gettin’ money, getting back at somebody, gunnin’ ‘em down, pussy, alcohol, crime, the street life, proving that she fucks better than his woman does or he fucks better than her man does, yada yada. And on top of it society talks about how misogynist it all is, yet a LOT of girls and women are listening to this stuff too and liking it, and a LOT of them are not just black but white and Latina as well.
Even WatchMojo put up a pretty good video about rap’s cliches and content that my brother and I enjoyed watching and laughing about. Give this one the time when you’re done reading this.
All this music makes our youth - black and non-black - and the black community stupid. This trash poisons their brains and kills their brain cells and spirit. It makes them act like simpletons. It contributes to short-attention spans. And I’m not gonna sit here and engage in any debate with the people who want me to prove it with “peer-reviewed journals” and “statistical evidence.” We all know what we see around us, and if you don’t you’re either naive and choose not to notice it, or aren’t very perceptive and discerning. I don’t know how many times I’ve worked with or known someone who chronically listens to that excrement and they’re either constantly depressed, nasty in personality, or just simple-minded. They'll be the ones blasting that shit in their earbuds. Ripping down the street in their souped up cars and you can feel the vibration of the music when it goes by. It makes them broken and dead and simple inside.
I won’t look down on anyone who likes a rap or hip hop tune here and there, but to be a chronic fan tells me a lot about what’s going on in your head.
R&B…
I don’t even really like R&B either for that matter. Less offensive than rap and does have more substance, telling a love story or expressing romantic pain or joy, but still this doesn’t really appeal to me either. Again, I like a few songs here and there but as a black person it just is not in my daily diet. And a lot of it is depressing.
I have definitely met a LOT of black people who are just like this, lol.
The sound of it and the way the artists sing R&B nowadays is the most annoying thing about it for me. The original sound of R&B from decades ago was nicer and mellower, but now the women - and it is mostly women - sing it with extreme trebles and curly cues that are just irritating to my ears more than musically talented, and sometimes it’s so bad I can’t even understand what they’re saying. They’re doing the same thing in the gospel choirs too, with R&B artists saying they grew up in the church, and the gospel churches trying to model their praises after R&B.
And don’t get me started on the white chicks. Don't get me wrong, I like white girls, and I haven’t made that a secret here on GaG, but I really find it laughable when I meet the ones who love Beyonce and all the other female R&B artists. Some of them love black music so much that they think they can live their lives through it, as if the drama, man-slamming, and relationship experiences of the black women singing can apply to them too as white women. It’s such a joke. And it’s similar with the white girls who love rap and are black wannabes. They’re only attracted to black men who are hoods and feel like hoods are the best and strongest kind of black men, which is an even bigger joke.
Plus I really hate the way so many white female singers today are trying to sing with the black woman’s voice. And it. Sounds. Ugly. Like Allison Ivy, Megan Trainor, and Becky G. Granted, it doesn’t really bother me with Sia or Adele - and I absolutely HATE Adele - because their voices aren’t that bad and Adele has something of a natural husky voice, but the rest of them have actually trained themselves to sound black, and probably from years of listening to that music. I’ve had chicks on YouTube try to fight me about it, saying, “That’s just their style.” But WHO did they get that style from? If hip hop and R&B never existed would they still be singing that way? When I want to hear a white woman’s music, I want to hear her singing in her natural Caucasian voice. That’s what I like about Selena Gomez. She has not succumbed to the group-think method of the music industry by trying to make her voice as sultry as she possibly can.
Hugs and kisses, sugarlove =) =)
You become an outcast for being different…
Black people, especially the urban ones, think you must be an alien when you as a black person tell them you’re not into rap and hip hop. Sometimes they actually think it’s funny, and other times they will even take offense at it, particularly when they ask you why you don’t like it and you honestly tell them. And many times, when you're in a group with other black people and they know you don't like rap, hip hop, or R&B you pretty much get overlooked. They're not really interested in including you because you don't have the same interests they do. That's how seriously black people take our music. And what's even funnier is that we'll complain about how the white man stole our music, yet we have applauded and accepted white singers like Robin Thicke and Tina Marie only because they sing black. Such a joke.
So for me, I want nothing to do with it. I don't listen to it, and I literally avoid people who actually love all that mess. And I don't want my kids listening to it either. I am a very diverse black man and believe all other black people should be too, and I will teach that to my children as well.
Do white people have music I think is crazy or crap? Absolutely. I'm not a fan of country and I hate death metal and all that other deep, dark shit, but I'm not white, and don't have to be ashamed of their creations. But as a black man? I can say I really do feel like rap and hip hop make us as black people look foolish.
#GetRidOfThatcRap
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