Of course it’s crap.
I think what we mean is the presence of good music in/around the mainstream.
Anyone can always say, “well, if you dig hard enough you’ll come up with something.” Not everyone is a music nerd like me who is interested in taking on excavation projects to unearth good music. Folks with a more causal relationship with music are provided with a notable dearth of options at the top. This wasn’t true 25 years ago, and it certainly wasn’t true in the preceding decades.
I am admittedly not the biggest rap guy around, but I consider good music to be good music, period. Plenty of music described as “rap” or “hip-hop” is good, some of it great. I’m very unimpressed with willfully-narrowminded, tired, stupid, cliched, disrespectful dismissals of rap music as a whole. Reggae’s the only sound I seem to be almost unable to enjoy as a matter of course. I even thought I might “check in” with reggae a couple nights ago and listened to some. Yeah, nuthin’. Whatever, just because it does nothing for me doesn’t mean it’s inherently devoid of value or worth as a thing. If there’s been any good stuff in the mainstream the last 25 years, a lot of it was rap.
I also hope when people say, “y’all never never good music so quit complaining as well!!” immediately after listing Frank Sinatra and the “Beetles” (as though liking that music denotes ignorance or poor taste) is merely a poorly executed attempt at humor.
