Ray Charles - "Rap is not music"

@tomcy6 Nah. I prefer to keep listening and appreciating lots of different types of music, including rap and Ray Charles (on occasion).

@pedroeb Okay, desperately-trying-to-stay-relevant cultural gatekeeper.

@emrofsemanon No, Quincy doesn’t hafta know. He’s one artist who never even dabbled in the art form he criticized, unlike Quincy Jones.

Finally, @jond Good call. Rap seems to be this group’s favorite genre to trash, though doing so usually reveals a level of being out-of-touch with a zeitgeist that's passed many by

My mistake. (I refuse to say my bad.) It is music. It's just not musical. Which is probably what Ray Charles was considering,

i don't care for the anapestic beat in much rap music, it makes me feel tense. dr. john diamond wrote a book about the health dangers of the anapestic beat in a book called "your body doesn't lie." 

And anapestic beats are in everything including Shel Silverstein, Shakespeare, and KRS-1. I'll take those guys over an obscure 20th century holistic physician. 

Buy an older copy of Winter in America- preferred copy is Strata-East but the cheapie is a UK issue called The Bottle. Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson (on the Rhodes piano). It’s somewhat political (and interestingly not dated despite that) and has amazing melodic lines. Jackson’s piano is gorgeous, something I rarely use to describe that chime-y sound characteristic of the Rhodes. This was in some ways the spiritual ancestor to what we now call rap or hip-hop or Neo-soul. It is poetry, spoken word and the music is gorgeous.