With no racial bias implied or intended, rap music at its worst is merely the semi-creative process of making up juvenile, simplistic rhymes or limericks and then recording portions of past or present hit songs (sampling) over the 'raps', which frankly anyone can do. Rap/hip-hop music has been around long enough that there is great rap music, good rap music, mediocre rap music, and terrible rap music. Most rap is neither great nor terrible, but somewhere between the two extremes.
Thankfully, not all of today's music is awful. Sometimes good or even great music is still recorded. It would seem though, that the eighties and nineties have yet to produce singer-songwriters on a par with Billy Joel, Jackson Brown, Stevie Nicks and several other talents from the recent past; although Tracy Chapman and a handful of others come close. If the trend toward awful music , like that of the New Kids On The Block, expands or gets worse, then luckily there are thousands of oldies to choose from. A lot of the time, I would rather hear such great tunes from the past like "Heat Wave" (Martha and the Vandellas), "Shot Gun"(Junior Walker and the All-Stars), "Born To Be Wild" (Steppenwolf), "Wipe Out" (The Ventures), and "White Rabbit" (Jefferson Airplane), among others, than most of the so-called music released on the radio and in record/CD stores today. Unfortunately though, when a record label folds, the music on that label is often also difficult or impossible to find except for extremely popular artists. (to be cont'd)
[Originally appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s and part of my unpublished (until now) manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays]
No comments:
Post a Comment