Why Rap Matters

Why Rap Matters
(and why rap culture doesn’t care what you think)

As a middle aged white guy, it probably comes as no shock that I don’t listen to a lot of rap. To be sure, there is bad rap out there, but for you folks that insist all rap is bad I have news for you: first, you’re wrong, and second, nobody cares what you think. If that last comment didn’t run you off, let me break it down for you.

Let’s pretend you’re not simply a racist and the real reason you hate rap is because it is a predominantly black culture thing. Because, frankly, if that’s why you don’t like rap then you have no real credibility anyway. Before you say, “No man, it’s not about race, it’s just crappy music” let me also point out that rap is not only about music. Let’s back up a bit.

Remember the Beat Generation? You know, that pre-hippie period that gave us beatniks, bongos, goatees, and free sex? Before the music world got inspired by that movement you had dudes like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs, just to name a few. These guys mixed together words into what sometimes sounded like nonsensical poems. They were words that reflected society as they saw it and challenged the cultural norms of their day. They chose to speak in a language that was uniquely tuned into their generation.

They were the young voice challenging the status quo of their generation and they were reviled for it. My dad hated beatniks. I loved my dad, but he and all his friends hated everything the beat generation stood for. Meanwhile, as I grew older I became fascinated with the world the Beat Poets set into order. By the time I came of age beatniks transitioned into hippies and certain icons began to inspire my world. “Then Came Bronson” was on TV and “Easy Rider” made my mind explode. Even the Beatles took their name from the Beat Generation. They were all hated. The bands and musicians were hated, the people who followed them were hated, the very clothes they wore were hated, and they were all hated for essentially the same reasons people hate Rap Culture today.

You don’t have to like rap music, or hip hop any more than you should have to like broccoli. But whether you like it or not history will frame the Rap Generation the same way it has framed the Beat Generation. The Rap Generation not only doesn’t care if you don’t like it, they expected you not to and draw energy from that hatred in the same way Bob Dylan didn’t expect to make any friends when he wrote his lyrics. I may not listen to much rap, but I’m fascinated by it. Like every genre there is the good and the bad, but rap has made its dent in the timeline of humanity, and whether you like it or not the world is a better place for it.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night . . .

—Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

[photo: Allen Ginsberg, Royal Albert Hall, London, 1965]