What really annoys sometimes is when people ask me what sort of music do u listen to?
and i usually say 2 things:
1." i listen mainly to hiphop." and then this person will proceed to complain about how rap is garbage and stupid etc. I find this really unfair because 99% of the time, they will then use examples such as 50cent, black eyed peas etc. In this situation i usually just give up arguing.
Ok fair enough, that sort of stuff (hiphop if u want to call it that) sucks, but its not all what hiphop is about. If you want to trace hiphop culture and music to its roots, then by comparison, it definitely is not hiphop (even if the artists are black). You could say that the hiphop sound 'evolved/changed' to be crap, but personally i consider this type of stuff as pop. Obviously this sound is much more commercial, hence radio/tv will play this, and people form negative opinion on what they think is hiphop.
2. "i'm listening to that underground hiphop". this is sort of related to my first point, i find it sad that i have to label my taste as 'underground' now for people to understand. so they're like "oh, not that 50cent etc."
For the people that ignorantly criticise hiphop, i do hope that you will be open-minded enough to listen to many different artists, not just whats played on 96.1/video hits/mtv. just as i'm sure that there will be some wack artists in your genre.
For me, I love hiphop how its so versatile.
You got cats that can bust rhymes for 10+ minutes, constantly flipping similes, metaphors etc. and all sorts of rhymes. its about flowing in time with the beat and with rhythm, its about wordplay, about expressing yourself, switching styles and bringing energy to your music. This takes lots of skill, and theres some real intelligent dudes out there.
You got dudes that will sound straight up poetic in the way that they kick their verses. I never cared too much about the classical style of poetry, but to me, some hiphop is like poetry on a level that i can relate. just raw and simple.
You got producers that will use anything from grooveboxes, live instrumentation to film/tv/other music sampling. and i love how they put it all together on a track.
my opinion.