In A Very Brady Sequel, the second film in the irony drenched 90s reboot of the Brady Bunch, Marcia Brady asks a guy she’s on a date with what kind of music he likes. He tells her he’s “really into hip hop.”
Like all of the Bradys, Marcia’s cultural references begin and end in the early 70s, so she has no idea what he’s talking about.
“Hip hop?” she replies, incredulous. “Sounds like something a rabbit listens to.”
Marcia Brady isn’t the only one confused by hip-hop. In a blog post yesterday, everybody’s favorite racist fantasy author, Theodore “Vox Day” Beale offers a strikingly similar, er, critique of rap music, which begins by taking issue with the name of the genre.
“The fact is that rap is not, technically speaking, music at all,” Beale announces.
To call it music is akin to describing “scatting” or “falsetto” or “rhythm” or “electric guitar” as music. It is, rather, a non-melodic vocal styling; it is an element of music, or if you prefer, a musical tool, rather than a form of music in itself.
And while that vocal styling can be utilized in a broad variety of music, from metal to ambient, it is not music in itself.
Yes, Mr. Excessively Literal Minded, rapping is, technically, a vocal technique. “Rap music” is one of the names that’s used for a particular genre of music in which rapping is the central element, not just a term used to describe a capella raps. Sometimes “rap music” is called “rap,” for short, but the people who call it that aren’t referring just to the rapping.
I mean, this is all completely fucking obvious to everyone in the world, including Beale himself, but he’s choosing to be deliberately obtuse here. Obviously, the names of music genres can’t always be taken literally. Latin music is not sung in Latin. Rock music is not music produced by rocks.
Beale continues to dig his little hole:
“[R]ap music” was never anything more than a proto-SJW seize-and-ruin operation and an exercise in branding.
Er, what? What’s a “seize-and-ruin operation?” What do SJWs have to do with anything?
That’s why it hasn’t gone anywhere. It can’t go anywhere because there is no actual vehicle to do so.
What does this even mean?
[A]s a musical form in itself, [rap] simply does not exist.
I’m not sure how exactly to rebut someone whose head is this far up his own ass. So instead let me present this Freestyle Rap-Off from Mr. Show, which also features a bald white dude who doesn’t really understand rap. Or does he???
You just know that in another era he’d be working himself up into a santorum-esque froth over “race music” [in this context, a term for jazz, blues, and other music generally made or enjoyed by black people] or that “jungle stuff” known as rock ‘n’ roll…
http://i.imgur.com/Qigp7pV.gif
Rap isn’t music?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/06/opinionated.gif
Hasn’t gone anywhere? Being the cornerstone genre of the hottest musical of 2016, with 11 Tony wins, is “nowhere”?
I don’t know a great deal about rap music, and I don’t listen to too much of it. But this is absolutely right: As we all know, there’s no difference between Tupac and Snoop Dog. Or even between works by the same artist at different times in their life or intended for different purposes.
After all, significant artistic differences between performers would imply the musical genre had a “vehicle” to commentate on society and allow the artists to explore different ways of sounding, and this difference would be obvious enough that even folks who literally know nothing about the genre would get it.
And it’s certainly not like primarily vocal mediums are artistically relevant at all! I remember my poetry class in college. It was the easiest class ever because there was just one line in the textbook! “No artistically relevant poetry”.
Ughhhhh. Racist bullshit.
My late-Dad picked this horse to die on. It’s such a crazily racist argument no mater how you slice it, as it’s really saying that you’re not going to validate that form of expression, which comes from a very real place.
It’s music. You don’t have to LIKE it, but it’s music.
Actually, seize-and-run more accurately describes the way white people have stolen black music. Vox is at least theoretically a professional writer – so why is it so hard to parse what he’s trying to say??
@Godzilla Roberts
“Picked this horse to die on” is my new favourite malapropism.
Is Pox a time traveler from a bygone era or something? The whole “rap isn’t real music” thing was old back when I was a tween in the early nineties.
My mom is an exceedingly white 65 year old and she likes Public Enemy.
Vox sounds like Abe Simpson would sound if he were a Nazi.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/304/old.jpg
I really love hip-hop though mainly stuff like Wu Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, Ice-T and Public Enemy. My mum loathes it though, with the exception of one song: “Children’s Story” by Slick Rick. Anyway, Mr. Vox is silly, of course it’s music.
Let’s not forget that Teddy-boy was a member of an absolutely awful, pretentious electronic dance music group in the 1990s. He might be just a wee bit bitter that one genre died back a bit as another was taking off.
He also might be a wee bit racist, since hip-hop/rap is dominated by black artists.
Meanwhile, I’m kind of loving this genre-blending dance style:
While rap is indeed not a genre in and of itself per se, that doesn’t extricate it from its complex history in music and eventually landing itself in a place where it’s inexorably entwined with a particular mode of music, which in common terminology lends itself to reflexively associating the style with what developed around it.
-blep-
Isn’t Vox Day into vidya games? I wonder what he thinks of this: https://youtu.be/F5Pm7BL-hyo?t=1m52s (Idk how to embed videos, sorry).
I like the beats and shouting.
Not all music has lyrics. Is instrumental music suddenly not music because no one is singing in that either?
I believe in this context “SJW” means “uppity black people.”
Thanks for sharing that, Bina! I’d never heard of hiplet before. I went and watched two other videos just now.
Honestly I’m surprised that Vox Day is okay with any music that has involved anyone who isn’t white.
Jesus Christ, my feet hurt just look at that hiplet. Not even ballerinas are on their toes that often, wow.
Well, I don’t think don’t think Beale’s writing is worth a shit, does that mean his crap isn’t science-fiction?
I loved that Hiplet video. I’d been watching them on Tumblr, but no background had been provided, and this was nice to see.
Yeah okay, Mr. This Music (that’s been around for some thirty plus years, and is engaged in on a global scale from England, to the Punjab, to Korea) that ain’t going nowhere, because it has no vehicle. (you know, except for the actual mouths that voice it.)
DJJuice
https://youtu.be/aSsMAqKGhNQ
Yeah, this musical style simply has no traction to speak of:
The Strawhatz Dance Trio from Japan.
https://youtu.be/xLY-
Obsolet MC Solaar
https://youtu.be/uZi_8Yspbp0
MOAR hiplet!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=creFTOsKD2c
Classical violin to a funky beat.
@Flora
lol, what can I say? I’m good at mixing up sayings and then just going with it. 😛
The fact that Vox Day seems to know a bit about music just makes his wrongness seem wronger.
It’s like a cook saying, “You can’t call something a ‘curry dish’, since curry is just a mix of spices. It’s an ingredient and not, technically, a meal. Therefore, anything described as a curry doesn’t exist in itself… And this is the reason I stick to civilized white-people food; it’s not because I’m racist or anything!”
Also, this made me laugh. 😀
I remember people saying electronic dance music was just noise… my how times change.
Not only is hiplet gorgeous, it’s got to require unfathomable strength. I’ve had classical ballet training (although my flat feet prevented me from ever going en pointe), and part of the reason that everything is supposed to be rigidly straight and lifted and poised is because it lets your bone structure support more of your weight, especially on your supporting leg.
Put some bendy movement in that, and WHOA. Core/calves/thighs/everything has to be that much stronger and more controlled. And to make it all bendy *and* perfectly fluid… I just…
*boggles*