Ray Charles - "Rap is not music"

Nitwit sez:"Yet another overgeneralized and stuck in the past response.
Made even more interesting by the fact that Rihanna is not even American."

When something is worth listening to, I don’t care if it is a day or a century old, I will give it my time and attention. Rap is simply, vulgar trash. Rhianna not American? I know - so what? Does that make her music any more tolerable?

The music of lowlifes and criminals. Check out the stats of murdered rappers here:

Trash. Period.

@stager Way to miss the point. You mention a bunch of Black American artists adn then lump Rihanna in with them as if she has anything in common. 

Whatever, go back to your "good ole days" shangi-la of existence when EVERYTHING was better. 

"Are You Lonesome Tonight"  Elvis

This isn't exactly the most enlightened thread out here. Let's start at the beginning:  Ray Charles was critical of rap but did he really say that "rap is not music"? Source?

I posted the quote on the first page of this thread. 

And in reading back through the responses, the predictability of the vague, uninformed, and biased cultural gatekeeping is in keeping with every other thread about the genre. Rarely do any of the critics have any knowledge of contemporary rap or of the creation and production skills needed. They couldn't tell you (nor care) how Snoop differs from Lil Durk, or how Janelle Monae and Pharoahe Monch advance afro-futurism via hip-hop. 

Usually the ones with the strongest critical opinions are those who know the least about what they criticize.