Me and Rap
by Micah Holmquist
March 5, 2000

Nothing makes me feel less cool than the fact that I am not really into rap or hip-hop culture. I don’t dispute that rap is a musical form that utilizes a lot of originality and which varies a lot. I don’t challenge that rap is highly popular and might very well become the dominant musical style in the United States in the next few years. I don’t dismiss hip-hop culture and do recognize that it has many positive elements and all of the negative aspects that appear in it are found in the larger culture. You can’t blame hip-hop for sexism, homophobia, materialism, violence, crime, or racism for that matter. These elements run rampant throughout society even though critics tend to target hip-hop. I am actually relatively well read in the scholarly discourses on hip-hop. I am far from an expert but I can safely say that -and, for the record, I have no idea if this means anything- I have read more this topic than most people that listen primarily to rap and are in other ways a enmeshed in hip hop culture.

I have enjoyed rap at various points in my life. In 1987, I bought the Raising Hell by RUN DMC on cassette and enjoyed it a lot for about a year. I thought that the rock and rap fusions of Faith No More, Rage Against the Machine, and Urban Dance Squad were cool when I first heard them although they have not aged perfectly. I remember liking the Fugees when they broke in 1996. Furthermore, I have enjoyed listening to rap in social settings. I enjoyed listening and dancing to Public Enemy and the Wu Tang Clan when I was in Cuba in the summer of 1998. And I grooved to the likes of Tupac Shakur, Will Smith, and countless more that I do not know the names of when I heard them at anti-Michigamua event a couple of weeks ago.

Yet it would be more than dishonest for me to suggest that I like rap. I have a hard time listening to rap for a sustained period of time when I could be listening to a country or jazz disc. I occasionally slip in a rap track, usually "Lost Ones" by Lauryn Hill, but its one-and-out. Furthermore, I do not understand a lot of the lingo and think that a lot of it that I do understand is odd. "The bomb"? I just do not like the way that the word "bomb" sounds and unpleasant words do not make the best complements IMHO. That said I do understand that it is a phrase of praise -no, I am not, consciously at least, copying "phrase of praise" from anything and yes I am rather pleased with myself for coming up with it- and have appreciated being called "the bomb" the two times that it has happened.

The reason that I write this is because I have decided that I need to further explore rap for my own understanding of the world. I have found that I get a far better understanding of the discs that I force myself to write about so I will be making a deliberate effort to write about rap discs in the upcoming weeks. We will see what happens.

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