Remember Blondie's Rapture? As a white kid growing up in the country, that was my first exposure to rap. Up until that point, I didn't even know it existed. When we first heard that song, we were thinking "What the hell is all the talking for? She's not even singing anymore." We thought she had lost her voice and was disguising it by using a delivery method that didn't require the ability to hit and hold notes.
Rap to me is street poetry. It can be artful or awful. It can combine real music done with real talent, or not.
The one thing about it that that makes it very popular is that, like video games, it can be picked up and performed by the completely talentless. It doesn't even require a real band, so it is much easier to create and sell. It's perfect for movies because you don't have to pay a real composer for a real score and then pay a producer to hire an orchestra to play it, record it, master it, etc. Think of the soundtrack overhead of the 50s and 60s. All the overhead that used to go to paying for real music can now go to promotion. Puff someone up with a cool name, cool clothes and a fake persona, shout a bad poem in time to the synthesized beat and you're in business. All you need is someone delusional enough to perform and not realize that they really suck, and there are plenty of them. They all want to believe they are special. That's what young narcissistic people do and now they have an avenue to do it that doesn't require actually singing a note.
It's really pretty brilliant. It's modern marketing through and through: Make crap, sell it for the same or higher price and pocket the difference.
Rap to me is street poetry. It can be artful or awful. It can combine real music done with real talent, or not.
The one thing about it that that makes it very popular is that, like video games, it can be picked up and performed by the completely talentless. It doesn't even require a real band, so it is much easier to create and sell. It's perfect for movies because you don't have to pay a real composer for a real score and then pay a producer to hire an orchestra to play it, record it, master it, etc. Think of the soundtrack overhead of the 50s and 60s. All the overhead that used to go to paying for real music can now go to promotion. Puff someone up with a cool name, cool clothes and a fake persona, shout a bad poem in time to the synthesized beat and you're in business. All you need is someone delusional enough to perform and not realize that they really suck, and there are plenty of them. They all want to believe they are special. That's what young narcissistic people do and now they have an avenue to do it that doesn't require actually singing a note.
It's really pretty brilliant. It's modern marketing through and through: Make crap, sell it for the same or higher price and pocket the difference.