Is Rap Really Music?
Assessing the Musical Validity of Rap
According to my local dictionary, music is defined as "an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color". Now while I don't necessarily regard dictionaries as gospel truth, I do agree with that definition. So let's see if rap holds up to this standard of musicality.
Is rapping "an art of sound in time"? While some may argue that it is not very artful, there is no denying that it is a creation of sound in time. Art is very subjective (even more so than music), but basically anything created by a person can be called art. Therefore, rap is an art form. So far, so good.
Does rap express ideas and emotions? Well, of course. It is, after all, made by people. People tend to express their ideas and emotions through words, and rap probably has more words per song than any other genre (even if a lot of those words can never be used in polite conversation).
Are the musical elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color utilized in rap? Let's start with rhythm. Now, I may be your basic white-guy-who-couldn't-dance-if-his-mother's-life-de pended-on-it, but I know that rap has rhythm. It's all about the beat. At it's basic core, rap is words set to a specific beat or set of beats. That's all it was when it first sprang up in the late 1970s.
And now we come to melody, harmony, and color. This is the part that most musical purists get hung up on. After all, if you compare most modern day rappers to the Beatles, Bach, or even the Backstreet Boys, the rappers often don't have nearly as much going on melodically. Meaning, their verses and choruses tend to use fewer notes or variation of notes. However, some rappers have an excellent sense of melody and simply use a different melodic structure than rock, classical, or other forms follow. And harmony is often used to great effect in rap songs; just listen to the male/female choruses on most top 40 rap tunes.
So what have we established? Essentially, if you apply the general "rules" of music to rap, it certainly qualifies. It may be different than many styles of music, but that does not make it any less musical in nature. Does that mean you have to like it? Of course not. But at the very least, one should at least respect rap as a fellow art form next to rock, folk, gospel, classical, jazz, and yes...even country.
Published by Mr. Burgundy
I am a 26 year old student and aspiring writer. I thought I wanted to be a teacher but recently realized I love writing a whole lot more. And I decided teachers make too much money. View profile
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12 Comments
Post a CommentRap had fun and artistic lyrics and musicality in the 80's but as the 90's came and now in the present, It has become a Mono-Tone, Noisy, Lewd, and Obscene, Culture-Destroyer !_!
I agree with these last 2 posters(caitlin and niki). rap is an art form as much as any. music is poetry. and this is the purest rawest poetry possible. Straight from the heart! Ignorant people think rap isn't music because their sheltered, afraid to listen/branch out, or they can't handle the truth. Turn off the radio and head underground. Listen to Nas, 2Pac, Canibus, Rakim, Diabolic, Immortal Technique, Copywrite, etc.
I completely agree, I mean I have played an instrument for five years now and though I play very different types of music that does not mean I don't listen to it and sometimes just for fun I play some popular songs including rap by ear.
continued: some de la soul and hang out with your buddies on the porch and watch people. see if hip hop isn't music
rap is everything music should be. it is raw poetry applied to abeat. how can you claim that a genre doesn't have the same eloquence as jazz or rock and roll- guess what music shouldn't be judged by the genre as a whole rather music should be appreciated on a band by band basis. have you even done your research? people react the same way to rap now as they used to when jazz was appearing on the music scene. of course you hate rap if all you do is listen to the radio- they don't play good rap on the radio on purpose. rap and hip hop, i believe, in its purest forms are local and true, then you an work your way up to some of the good stuff. atmosphere, deltron, mf doom they all have things to say that are relevant and beautiful. and TEACHERS are going around telling their students most rap is not music? unacceptable. way to rob culture, way to ignore people, way to close your ears. dear world: do your research before you demoralize an entire art form and do yourself a favor and put on som
to finish, the big three (classical, jazz, and rock), rap can not compare. The other three are simply much more rigorous in terms of the creative, instrumental, vocal, and theoretical requirements they share.
I just finished having a similar discussion with my students. I teach an online college course called The History of Rock & Roll. One of the chapters we study is on rap music. We discussed if the chapter on rap belongs in a rock & roll textbook, or if rap is even music at all. While I do enjoy some rap, I stated that I felt that most rap was not music, by definition, according to a set of criteria that I set forth, similar to the author of the article. I fail to see where harmony comes into most rap songs. When I do hear harmony in rap choruses, it tends to be the harmonies originally created by the artists whose music is being sampled by the rap artist ("Just the Two of Us" comes to mind). I also fail to hear much melody in rap. There are certainly tonal inflections in speaking or rapping, but not melodies. A melody is a tune. Again, most melodies I hear in rap are usually from the sampled music (such as the Dido piece in Eminem's "Stan"). When I stand rap up against the big three (cl
I hate ALL rap "music". Rap is not music, it's just a bunch of losers such as drug addicts, perverts, killers, or gangstas repeating the same b.s. over and over. There is no instruments or talent whatsoever. I also hate older rap because even if the lyrics arent quite as bad, it still sounds very stupid and talentless to me. I HATE HIP HOP.
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You really need to listen to instrumental hip hop or trip hop to appreciate the musical eloquence of hip hop. It's just as advanced as jazz or classical, and it no doubt is music. There's too much crap, unfortunately, being played out these days.