Why is rap the only genre of music where the artists openly and blatantly disrespect the art form?

[Mystic]

I had this convo with someone the other day. Rap is the only genre of music I know where the artists make fun of their own genre. "I'm not with this rap shyt", "I'm not no rapping ass nikka", and similar sentiments are proudly uttered throughout rap music all the time. It's common to hear rappers in interviews say that they never wanted to be rappers and that they thought rappers were lame, corny, etc. You never hear this type of shyt from musicians in other genres. I've never heard an RNB singer say "I'm not no singing ass nikka" or something similar to that but rappers do this all the time.

Because there's only one way to sing, there's multiple ways to rap

 

[THE 101]

Is it really that different to punk bands saying they don't care if they can't play guitar well and only know two chords, and shytting on bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd for being too complex?

 

[Krs2]

The culture celebrates street hustlers who started rapping to make money and to finance they street endeavors

 

[Pop123]

It's not cool to be "Artistic". These dudes is more Autistic than Artistic anyway but that's a whole nother discussion. They're not claiming they're nothing besides gangsta/dealer/pimp/savage/killer/rich/etc... shhit like that. You tell them they're not Gangsta/Dealers/Pimps/Killers/Savages/Rich assh0les/Something else terrible and it's an insult of the highest order and yall got beef, lmao. Go tell one of them "You're a rapper! Not a demon" and you might get jumped. Great role models man...great fun for the kids.

 

[THE 101]

It's not cool to be "Artistic". These dudes is more Autistic than Artistic anyway but that's a whole nother discussion. They're not claiming they're nothing besides gangsta/dealer/pimp/savage/killer/rich/etc... shhit like that. You tell them they're not Gangsta/Dealers/Pimps/Killers/Savages/Rich assh0les/Something else terrible and it's an insult of the highest order and yall got beef, lmao. Go tell one of them "You're a rapper! Not a demon" and you might get jumped. Great role models man...great fun for the kids.

We gonna ignore a certain beloved rapper from Brooklyn started this trend in the 90s?

 

[Tetris v2.0]

It’s basically a derivative from “rappers be lying”, “I’m not a rapper, I’m a hustler”, etc…that have been echoed since the 90s.

In an artform born from street culture where historically most of artists have advertised that they are depicting the reality of street life, being someone who’s “just rapping” (basically making shyt up) has always had somewhat of a negative, gimmicky connotation.

it has become the outlet for the slow kids

cats started making it with no skills developed now they are guarding the low bar to entry & trying to lower it more

anything that is reflective of too much intelligence gets attacked

*

These posts were back to back, and are both factual lol

The first point highlights how the rapper persona separated entirely from the musical aspect - Casuals can point to a million different visual signifiers of a rapper but can't describe the music, at all

The second point is that labels learned they can speedrun to the image part and completely skip over the rest to appeal to a low-vibrational audience

The notion that "street music" and "intelligent music" are somehow not linked, highlights the problem. This was intentional IMO

 

[get these nets]

Not just the artists, though.

This seems to be the genre where fans dont know or care to know about the origins and history of it. You couldnt picture dudes who follow rock guitarists not knowing who Chuck Berry is, but I get the impression that many rap fans dont care to know who RUNDMC are, much less Grandmaster Caz.

 

[Tetris v2.0]

Is it really that different to punk bands saying they don't care if they can't play guitar well and only know two chords, and shytting on bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd for being too complex?

That's a good point but those guys were likely still dialed into a punk ethos, which might have had a bit more to it than the current rap one

Punk also morphed into a commercial thing and basically died like 20 years ago. It couldn't coexist with the commercial element for very long. That audience either grew out of it, or into something else

 

[904]

Does anybody coexist in these other cultures enough to say that this is true?

We always make statements like this but I always question how do you know it does or doesn't happen

 

[African Peasant]

Is it really that different to punk bands saying they don't care if they can't play guitar well and only know two chords, and shytting on bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd for being too complex?

Yeah, not different. The same

But Punk was a short lived gimmick mediocre 'genre'.

Hip-Hop deserved better, especially from those it made millionaire and all that.

 

[tuckgod]

…

 

[get these nets]

Does anybody coexist in these other cultures enough to say that this is true?

We always make statements like this but I always question how do you know it does or doesn't happen

What kinds of music do your older relatives listen to? If you spoke to them about this topic, doubt that any of them would speak about modern artists disrespecting those artforms in the manner described in OP.

 

[nieman]

Does anybody coexist in these other cultures enough to say that this is true?

We always make statements like this but I always question how do you know it does or doesn't happen

It exists in other genres/cultures as well. When people talk about how they never pursued it, it just fell into their lap. Or people not really being into the technicality of it, they just have the ability to make it sound good. Plenty of artists in other genres have said that they aren't "singers/drummers/guitarists" amplify their cool/rebellious factor. And plenty of other genres for a long time downplayed the drummer as a musician, which helped enhance their cool factor.

If it exists as a genres, there will always be a section that will be apart of the genre, but in an anti- movement against said genre just to say that their cliched different

 

[Ziploc]

It's a variation on the well known "That's shyt is for lames" but meanwhile getting to a below average level of skill is a herculean task. Like nikkas don't know how to actually read hate those that actually make it seem easy...coping mechanisms on full display

 

[DaveyDave]

I never understood it. At 14/5 in the early-mid 90s was constantly dubbing or buying albums from PE, Run DMC, Kane, whatever I could get a hold of.