When rap came out 30 years ago I thought it was just a fad

rja, what you said was:

There's very real cultural/racial bias in this thread.
1. Rap is not music.

Are you not saying that I am culturally/racially biased for saying rap is not music?  If not, what are you saying?

BTW, I said it was another form of art but simply didn't meet my criteria for being considered music.  That in and of itself is not a knock.  Actually, I feel partly the same about opera, which contains a lot of which is undeniably music (and a lot of it is undeniably great music), but as I said earlier:  opera is people singing when they should be talking and rap is people talking when they should be singing.  Don't take that too seriously, it's a pointed joke.

Anyway, if you weren't saying that to say rap is not music carries a cultural/racial bias, what were you saying?

I said that in my opinion there were statements made in this thread that could be construed as racist or biased.

Rap is not music is an entirely different issue.

This was set off  (by spacing) as one thought:

There's very real cultural/racial bias in this thread.
1. Rap is not music.
2. Creators of rap are somehow not as good as regular humans (whatever that means).

What else could you have meant?  If the A-gon members who said either of the two things are not culturally/racially biased, then who did you mean?

Rap reminds me of the Beatniks, I didn't like them either. Both are like some sort of word association for the uninitiated in their respected crafts. 

Then, again, I was too young to appreciate the Beatniks and am now too old to appreciate Rap. There's something to be said to be born at the right time. :-)

All the best,
Nonoise

You may be on to something, nonoise.  I watched the last 20-25 minutes of a Kendrick Lamar ACL concert last night on tv.  He seemed talented and earnest and he had a combo of apparently talented musicians behind him.  I say "apparently" because they mostly played very pedestrian music behind his rap except for about one minute of a really good keyboard solo.  The crowd of 2700 loved every minute of the show (or the part I saw).  Oh, and the crowd seemed to be 99% white people, so I'm not sure which race or culture I must be biased against.