And while I am not especially offended by “bad” language I try to respect those who might be bothered. So I do wonder how parents who might not like their children exposed to Carlin’s 7 words plus some more feel about gangster rap blasting out of vehicles in public.

So say I, who can master the “art” of rap:

“Don’t need no gun go a-rat-a-tat-tat,

Gonna kill da M-F- wit’ a base-ball bat.”

It seems that whenever SNL makes fun of stuff its doomed. Well We were both wrong.

I am however at a loss as to why each recording studio that owns the rights to this music has not taken upon themselves the notion of their own version of ITUNES or Rhapsody or Napster STores and get ALL the profits instead of just a small percent of each song.

I think you need to make the distinction between Rap and Gangsta Rap.

A great and informative response, especially your reflections on why people who have no direct contact with a culture go nuts over it.

Thank you so much.

Many forms of rap also have a similarity to jazz in that it is fundamentally improvisational. A good rapper has a set of rhymes and rhythms which he or she knows how to combine and modify to compose on the fly. It’s what James Brown pioneered in the early 70s where he set the band up on a repetitive phrase and then made up lyrics as he went. Of course, most James Brown lyrics aren’t particularly stunning. Or perhaps it’s more like old blues musicians who used the old, “set up, repeat the set up, new line” verse structure so that they could improv new lyrics while playing. Except that many rappers are creating entire verses on the fly. As always, only some can do it truly creatively, just as only some guitar soloists can. And, like in all commercial pop, often the bling can take over and the meat that made everyone pop their ears up in the first place is forgotten.

A couple other things are interesting about rap from a social or musicalogical perspective. First, rap and hip hop are both on the frontier of exploring what musical creation is with digital sampling and the like. Same debate is taking off now for video with YouTube and such. The second thing is how much of a social event the creation of much rap music and hip hop is. For people of one musical generation, the epitome of music creation is the genius singer songwriter who can sit alone in his room and create a powerful song. Of course, this is not the only way to understand musical creativity. Neither Elvis nor Aretha Franklin wrote most of their tunes and yet they are both musical beacons. Often when you look at the credits for a rap tune, there could be 5, 6, even more, names listed as the authors of the tune, when this is supposed to be a “solo” album. And this social creation can continue on the stage in performance where you’ve got 4 different people all trading lyrics, 3 people laying down tracks, 5 dancers, and 16 other hangers on all going at it at once.

In short, there’s a lot more going on in rap than saying f-you, ho, and flashing a pimp sign. There’s also a lot of that too.

As for why people who have no direct contact with the culture that created rap would have gone haywire for it? Can’t really answer, other than the fact that it’s the one music their parents hate the most and therefore works perfectly to set off your generation from the last one. But it always seemed the same to me as people of my generation (30s) singing “Satan’s gonna get you” along with AC/DC, pretending to chomp the head off a bat, and then hopping in the car so your mom can take you to the chess club meeting.