Monday, June 8, 2009

The evils of hip-hop and rap music

I see that other people have other tastes. A lot of guys like watching football, for instance. Some people are obsessed. I’m pretty sure my dad makes ritual sacrifices to Bronco Mendenhall, BYU’s head coach, under the full moon. Some people, possibly through some bizarre genetic defect, don’t like Star Wars.

But that doesn’t mean I have to share these tastes, or that I can’t, in the spirit of free comment, point out that aliens have clearly taken over the brains of individuals whose tastes differ widely from mine.

Today I will denounce a force for evil that has been more destructive than nuclear bombs, more immature than wearing your underpants on your head, and more pointless than golf.

I hope you’ll excuse me for including a small amount of healthy sarcasm for a topic I feel strongly about.

It’s rap. Hip-hop.

Sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep, I can feel the seismic vibrations of rap permeating the walls of my apartment. It doesn’t matter than the walls are thin; I suspect the thump of the hip-hop beat could penetrate thirteen-inch-thick titanium.

That’s just one of the reasons I hate hip-hop. Even though my tastes are base enough that high culture like Twilight escapes my appreciation, I simply can’t stoop far enough to settle for what could reasonably be called failed poetry.

Can’t write sonnets about love, draft verses about the moon, or even pen limericks about porcupines? Not a problem. Just write awful lyrics where the word “player” somehow manages to rhyme with “say.”

Consider yourself shallow? Just rap. Most rappers seem to be consumed by the threefold desire to get some action, make money or shoot somebody, in no particular order. Granted, those three desires have permeated literature for thousands of years, but rap has simply found a way to reduce those already basic themes to nearly animalistic urges.

I’ve always felt that rap lovers have a compelling need to compensate for a definite lack of masculinity. What other explanation is there for their preference for booming systems where a beat like some sort of Apocalyptic war drum drowns out any last vestiges of genuine music?

And I’m not racist. I don’t care what ethnic or racial groups are generally associated with hip-hop. White people made country music, and I hate that, too.

Everyone has different tastes. I recognize that others have different tastes than I do, and I won’t judge anyone with such tastes, except to say that they obviously inhabit a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder than myself. Ha. Just kidding.

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