Asklemmy

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I don’t like music I can’t relate to and I can’t relate to most rap songs. I’m not out here thuggin or poppin caps, doing drugs and fuckin removed. I don’t even really want to do those things. So that erases almost half the damn genre out the gate.

I promise I'm not trying to spam you with stuff!

With that specific criticism in mind, I listen to what I listen to because of the lyrics for the most part, and I'm not into those things either. Here are some examples I'd recommend.

Some folks don't like Atmosphere's style much, but I'm recommending these to you because of their lyrics, specifically. (Personally I think these are both bangers though.)

(If you have them, put on some nice headphones. Esp for Brother Ali.)

A couple from Atmosphere:

Okay

Let me know what you want

Brother Ali has a couple that really speak to me too:

Can't Take That Away

Uncle Sam Goddamn

I am not trying to make you "like" Rap, FYI. Folks like what they like.

I'm just trying to open a path to show you that how you described it in your prior comment does not describe most hip hop - even if it describes most hip hop you have heard. 🙂

I hear you on Busdriver, I tend to not listen to the words and just hear it as a sort of instrument so it doesn't matter what he's saying. But for those that do, I could see it being too much, same with Kool Keith.

I'll check out Brother Ali, I've heard of him but not his music.

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Well thank you for the response, which I admit I expected to not exist or to be rude. 🙂

I’m willing to listen and learn about it all I just don’t think it’ll change my outlook on how it’s effected everyone everywhere negatively.

I wasn't going to push this on you, but this 4-part documentary literally takes the exact opposite stance and is a documentary regarding the formation and evolution of hip-hop. You don't owe me anything, but if you are legit interested...

I believe it's available on at least a couple different streaming services, as well as on the high seas.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21872984/

Having watched it myself, please resist the temptation to skip around if you do give it a shot. There's a through-line that will be less apparent if you watch it all chopped up, or skip past certain sections.

I just think it’s been glorified to the point people who have no experience with ghetto culture outside of rap music start acting like they thugs n shit. Like “gangster” shit started happening everywhere with a shitload of people fully embracing not only the visual look but the “hustler” “gangster” lifestyle.

This very thing is discussed at one point, FWIW. 🙂

And you know maybe I’m wrong and I’m just upset things aren’t changing the way I want them to.

I'm about the whitest looking person you could imagine, and I'm in my mid-late 50s. I grew up with a good dose of privilege, but (fortunately?) was thrust into situations through early to mid adulthood that forced me to step outside my comfort zone quite a bit. I look like I should be walking around with a maga hat and intimidating voters with my open-carry firearms, not pseudo-anonymously trying to convince a stranger to give hip hop another chance.

A lot of things haven't progressed the way I expected them to, either, and I am very familiar with how easy it is to misjudge things that are not within your lived experience.

Hip-Hop is a mirror of what is, not the progenitor of the nation's problems. It sometimes looks like the progenitor to folks who haven't previously experienced some of what it reflects in their own daily lives though, I think.

Personally, the only place I'm hearing voices raised about the issues I care about in modern music (and this could be my own narrow view) is within the subgenre of "conscious hip hop."

You should watch Hip Hop Evolution on Netflix—or the first three/four seasons. Because it will tell you a lot. Like, your opinion generalizes so much that it’s really dancing on the line just this side of problematic.

I just think it’s been glorified to the point people who have no experience with ghetto culture outside of rap music start acting like they thugs n shit. Like “gangster” shit started happening everywhere with a shitload of people fully embracing not only the visual look but the “hustler” “gangster” lifestyle.

My perspective on this, is that the chicken came before the egg so to speak.

Rappers dont glorify these things anymore than metal bands singing about decipitating hundreds of people mean it; all art is fiction, we wont be calling a horror film writer a 'glorification of violence', we call it a fantasy, a reflection of reality; these people observe reality and reflect it in art.

Now, does some rap stray into reality? Sure, so does all art, unless we fully remove the human from art it will always involve a real person.

Voting for a liberal continues the cycle of underclass exploitation either way, id say the middle class cocaine user and the politican locking up millions of people into small prison cells for drug use has a much bigger hand in creating and perputating the cycle of violence that dominates liberal society in america.

To accent my point and show how the way you are thinking is a symptom of a moral panic, something that takes a few examples and inflates it into a wider group....

90% of drill artists banned from making music in the UK dont have a criminal record...85% of those banned without a criminal record are black.

Its the censoring of the mental production of black youths; the upper class do not want a culture based on anti-authoritianism to emerge.