Re: Rap and honest observations.

[Jill Friemark <sefirah...>]

Some interesting points were made, though not related to Jewish music 
as such:

> Generally, sampling means ' I've got no talent to write a song, so I 
> steal
> the hook from a hit record so people will think I'm cool"
This is something that's always annoyed me in the case of most rap 
music I've heard.  Why can't there be some original music in the 
background?  Sampling was fun in the good old days of early 90's 
techno, but even electronic dance music has evolved to a place where 
it's moved away from dependence on sampling to make some fantastic and 
beautiful original sounds, but in the case of rap, where the message of 
the words is so important anyway, I don't understand why the musical 
backdrop has to rely on the strength of someone else's  pre-existing 
musical effort so much of the time.  I'm not saying *all* rap does 
*nothing but* rip off samples, I haven't the authority to make such a 
statement,  but most of it that I've ever heard has.  I'm making an 
honest observation from my own limited perspective, please understand 
it as such.

> It's not a case of "Old-Fogey-Itis", as some other poster suggested, 
> either.
I agree.  I'm far from being an old fogey and remember as a kid in 
Chicago getting regular exposure to a hip-hop station in the mid 
1980's.  I liked it then, but don't care for the way it has evolved.  I 
don't think age has much to do with whether one wants to appreciate or 
understand musical trends.

> and that I don't keep up with trends.
I don't think that stating that something is trendy is necessarily a 
very strong argument in defense of the value of *anything* anyway, 
especially when considering some industry driven "trends" in popular 
music presently.

Just another opinion.
Jill

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