Rap as a Form of Art

Rap as a form of Art

        Rap music is one of the world’s fastest growing types of music. In fact in today’s age one could easily call it one of the most prominent forms of music across society. However, many people struggle to find the aesthetic value in rap. Many members of society find the music to be off-putting because of its extensive use of profane language as well as its seemingly simple minded and repetitive lyrics. Nevertheless, this is a mind set only shared by the cultural elite and the general population of people that fail to understand the true value behind rap music and culture. Rap reinvents the standing social conventions for aesthetics in the field of music. It is a style of music that appears to be recited rather than sung and has little to no use of live instruments throughout its performance. Instead of using the more conventional guitars, pianos, drums or other, rap music uses the concept of samples. Samples being a collection of other sound bites (usually from other popular or well known music), being mashed up together to create a background music for which the MC, or rapper, to proceed and recite his lyrics over. Furthermore society often believes that rap music incites negative behavior such as violence, drug use, or other sort of crimes. This arms many people with several different political and societal motives to discredit and shame the brand of rap music. However, if analyzed properly behind an objective scope, there is a clear value in rap music that would classify it as a valid and integral form of art for all of society. According to several different aesthetic theories, rap music, is undoubtedly classified as art through its use of rhythm and clear message, but most importantly the effect that their message has had and continues to have on society.

        Aristotle stated that art must have “rythymn language and harmony,” ( Aristotle HIC). Rap music appears to have all of these things, but despite that, certain members of society call into question the artistic credibility of rap through several different ways. As was stated in the introduction of this paper, rap music has often been attacked on the grounds that the music is not sung but rather recited or spoken. However, this interestingly draws a parallel to another form of art that has never been criticized for the same practice. Poetry, for the most part, is rarely sung. It is a seemingly simple recital of words which employs a certain rhythm in order to adequately portray a certain message. Rap is defined as “a type of popular music of US black origin in which words are recited rapidly and rhythmically over a prerecorded, typically electronic instrumental backing” (Dictionary Web). This definition has many clear similarities with the definition of poetry which is essentially a “literary work with an emphasis on the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm”(Dictionary Web). The similarities in the definitions are clear, with the key difference being that one is recited over a prerecorded instrumental background or sample. There is little to no doubt amongst anyone in society that poetry is a valid and valued form of art. This begs the question of why this double standard occurs between poetry and rap music. Simply because rap is recited or spoken is not a valid reason for which to disqualify it as a form of art. If this was the case, then society would have no choice but to also disqualify poetry as a valid form of art which is not a likely scenario.