Ray Charles - "Rap is not music"

"Are You Lonesome Tonight"  Elvis

This isn't exactly the most enlightened thread out here. Let's start at the beginning:  Ray Charles was critical of rap but did he really say that "rap is not music"? Source?

I posted the quote on the first page of this thread. 

And in reading back through the responses, the predictability of the vague, uninformed, and biased cultural gatekeeping is in keeping with every other thread about the genre. Rarely do any of the critics have any knowledge of contemporary rap or of the creation and production skills needed. They couldn't tell you (nor care) how Snoop differs from Lil Durk, or how Janelle Monae and Pharoahe Monch advance afro-futurism via hip-hop. 

Usually the ones with the strongest critical opinions are those who know the least about what they criticize. 

@simao: I'm in complete agreement with you on the "vague, uninformed, and biased cultural gatekeeping" here. Well said. My point was simply that, as far as I can tell, Ray Charles never said that "rap is not music." The fact that the OP can't even get the line right is indicative of the intellectual laziness of this thread.

@northman I see what you mean. Charles simply said that rap doesn't do anything for him, not that it wasn't music.