Rap Music Is Not Music Essay -- Art

Rap Music Is Not Music Describing the (disenchanting) chanting of â€Å"Rap Music† as singing or as music is indeed (in either case) a capital misnomer. Real Music is the careful arrangement of organized sounds in the form of notes that then result in a smooth blend of rhythm, tone, and pitch that when united, is quite pleasing to the ear. Rap is not music. The unpleasant-sounding horror is chaotic dissonance and certainly not elegant consonance. Rap is veritable noise pollution that is tastelessly amplified from a cumbersome boom box. Generally speaking, unlike black soul music and traditional black rhythm and blues, Rap is both heartless and soulless. Standard love songs show respect and consideration for a member of the opposite gender but most contemporary Rap lyrics promote a hedonistic â€Å"me first† ghetto survival theme that is cruelly perpetuated upon its afflicted listening audience. When Rap songs first appeared I believed that the clamorous nonsense would be another fad phenomenon that would gradually vanish like ‘70s disco music had slowly but surely lost its clout (along with our attendant intrigue and curiosity). But unfortunately the dunce-like Rap lyrics herald the worst elements of society and the brazen inflammatory words glamorize sex, drugs, random and deliberate violence’ and gang intimidation themes that through-and-through reek with sexism, racism and the glorification of the ghetto mentality. In most Rap song themes the dysfunctional dregs of the inner city are elevated to hero status while the â€Å"entertainers† sound like disgruntled grunting angry contemporary cavemen’ who are advocating the downfall of â€Å"white America† with vitriolic words expressing rage, rebellion and social revolution. This expansion of the â€Å"easy-money anti-establishment ghetto mentality† is fueling resentment and hostility among â€Å"disenfranchised† inner city youth as well as contaminating the gullible and vulnerable minds of suburban teens. But the entire reprehensible in-progress-brainwashing technique that â€Å"Rap Music† demonstrably utilizes is both a sham and a canard that is trafficking affected teens down a treacherous One-Way-Street that leads only to a permanent lackluster socio-economic cul-de-sac. What a pathetic and ignoble social disaster! In the ‘50s and early ‘60s black rhythm and blues imaginatively captured the hopes, the dreams, the ideals and t... ...lity has replaced compassion. To add to the ongoing dilemma other benign abstractions also have been viciously assaulted. In the â€Å"Rap Music World† defiance has replaced respect, sex has replaced courtship, using others for personal gain has replaced basic courtesy and wanton rape has replaced teen romance. â€Å"Rap Music† (in general) is definitely a harmful and dangerous factor to American civilization because the colossal scourge equates (in innocent adolescent minds) pervasive corruptive moral fallacies purporting that: adventures tragically equals thugs and drugs, that freedom is social anarchy, that love is the same thing as sex, that justice is a vigilante-oriented lifestyle, that truth can only be represented as deplorable ghetto misery, that honor is nothing more than revenge and last but not least, that Thomas Jefferson’s â€Å"Pursuit of happiness† is really only the pursuit of selfish pleasure. In conclusion, the flimflam known as â€Å"Rap Music† is not bona fide music because the blight is without grace, without beauty and without love, the fundamental truly joyous qualities that are vitally necessary in order to make life both satisfying and worthwhile in any given civilization.