I count it one of the bitter ironies of life that my coworkers (at my second job) have a fondness for rap.
Fifty Cent, Tupac (yeah, I thought he was dead too), and the scores of rap artists who have affixed the Lil’ prefix to their names—they all are making me cynical about the state of the arts in the culture.
Downhill goes the public taste, happily bouncing along in its proverbial handbasket. Entropy is doing her dirty work on public taste, it seems. As the bank accounts of rappers and boy bands grow exponentially, the great pieces in the Western musical heritage are relegated to ice-cream truck jingles and the few devoted piano students.
Well, having now recovered from my lapse into nauseating nostalgia, I’ll have to acknowledge that popular music has probably always captured the lowest common denominator, and not much more. That’s what makes it popular. For every Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Rutter, I suppose there were countless popular musicians whose bland unmemorable drivel lies forever buried in musical archives, never again to be resurrected (or so we hope). Only a select few can transcend time and changing culture and actually be remembered. Future generations will be spared the popular drivel of today, and will instead enjoy the drivel of their own, as well as the select few musical creations of our generation that will manage to transcend time and changing cultures.
So it’s with a fresh hope that I declare that Fifty Cent and Britney Spears will go the way of the Swinging Blue Jeans and the Buggles. Forever plunged into obscurity (and rightly so).
I whole-heartedly agree, Jon. It disgusts me. I wonder if people flock to musicians because they think they are cool or popular, or if they listen in because something in them resonates with the message of the song.
Posted by: apple at August 20, 2004 10:02 AMprobably both. some make it on raw sex appeal, some just happen to be the flavor of the month. but there are those who have carved out their own niche in the market just by being talented.
we must sound like a bunch of cranky old men, longing for the good ol' days and tutting at youngsters and their newfangled music.
The pull of the crowd. Like anything that mass media pushes on the hordes of viewers, readers, and listeners, it stimulates conversation. Bland and easy conversation and moreover, some sort of comradery.
Back in high school, the radio-play music was followed not because of it's artistry, but because it was the main topic of conversation amongst most people my age.
Unfortunately, that time has past, and I'm a shadow of a young boy that wishes it had spent more time listening to and expounding on Bach than Vedder.
Posted by: Kammer at August 20, 2004 11:26 PMRap is not even music actually...I have heard it defined as written rhetoric accompanied by a continuo...But to bring it closer to home....I was a rap lover at one time and I was a classical music lover too. Sounds completely oxymoronic (not sure if that's a word)I know. Mozart one minute LL Cool J the next. Dunno. Weird.
Posted by: Sina at August 24, 2004 11:36 AMrap has also been defined as "a WILDS cheer, dedicated to topics like murder, cadillac escalades, and the term whose etymology is uncertain--bling-bling; with a bass loop added in"
Posted by: sligh at August 24, 2004 11:43 AMI know you wrote this a long time ago, but I'd be careful lumping Tupac in with all the "Lil'" people. Tupac had some insight. Everyone else is just a copycat.
Posted by: Lydia McEvoy at March 21, 2007 04:57 PMI'd agree with you, Lydia. I perused a book of his poetry and found it to be surprisingly well-written and introspective.
Posted by: jsligh at March 22, 2007 08:16 AM
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