Why do people that are Into rap and hip-hop even want a high-end audio system

@lowrider57 yup financially the surburban fan is the key.   They spend more on concert tickets fashion and media as a whole.  A lot of the rap entrepreneurs have figured that out and maximize this opportunity. Rap is in arenas now more than ever. It's more lucrative than ever because of the grandkids of the baby boomers who children moved out to suburbia to start their families. 12 to 25 year old Caucasian fan bases are the financial key to the recent success financially of the rap genre. Look on YouTube and see who is sitting at the front row of the concerts.  It's not the 13%of African American population.  About 5% of African Americans can't stand rap so it's not the 8% that's left that drives rap.   It's primarily Caucasian suburbia as well as rural America. 

jond, if someone suggests rap is not music (but rather some other performance art form) it's not necessarily a knock.  And even if someone finds it annoying or offensive it has nothing to do with their stance on race.  You're reading things into this that are not necessarily there.  In a real debate or a court of law what you're saying would fall flat.  If you simply want to inflame others who aren't paying attention to the facts then you are on the right track. 

Why don't you give it a try rather than writing multiple stupid posts about the subject?  Ill even lend you a CD…or better yet a record. 

It's a form of white privilege to assert that in a racially biased society, the USA, that something is not about race.  You are using your whiteness to deny non-whites the legitimacy of their experiences.  The issue of race has been one of the defining issues in US history since the early 16th century.  To deny this is to be the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.  Whether it was minstrel shows, blues, jazz or R&B it was generically referred to as "race music" which was only taken seriously after it was appropriated and crossed-over by white performers.  So when someone claims that rap/hip-hop is not even music, whether they intended it or not,  they are continuing a century old tradition of marginalizing black performers which can legitimately be seen as a form of racial bias.  Sometimes the phrase "it's not about race" is the real inflammatory statement.

I think that anything you listen to deserves high fidelity reproduction, whether you consider it music or not. You'll enjoy it more with a good system. That's my opinion.

That said, if the content has no melody, then it's not music. Melody is the substance of music; no melody, no music. Simple as that. If you want to get technical, harmony and rhythm are outgrowths of the melody, which is the core. You can have only chords and a repetitious drum beat, but that's like having an empty box with nice wrapping paper.  

Of course, you could call anything you want music. That's in the realm of opinion. I can call my cat a dog, but that doesn't make my feline a canine. I hope we can agree that you wouldn't call a building with no foundation, no roof, crooked walls and a few doors and windows a good house. It may be where you live, and you have every right to love it as your home, but that doesn't make it a sound structure. Strumming chords is not a song; repeating a rhythm on drums is not music. That's not racist, rigid, opinionated or narrow-minded. It's just fact. And it still allows you to enjoy someone speaking rhythmically over an ostinato rhythm in high fidelity.