Ray Charles - "Rap is not music"

'Back in the day', soul music was probably the most popular music outside of the Beatles and such, and before the Beatles, soul music totally dominated the pop charts.

Rap/hip-hop is hugely popular among all kinds of people, largely in their teens and 20's, but certainly expanding beyond that.

Anybody who thinks 'whites' are not into soul and hip-hop this obviously knows not of what they speak. 

As envisioned by its founder, Berry Gordy, the whole point of the Motown Sound was to have black artist crossover to white record buying consumers.  He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

@coltrane1 This discussion is on rap music.  
For some reason, you brought up “Motown and Philly soul.”  
Then, for some reason, you brought race into it (again).  
You, for some reason, said, with zero data and facts to back it up, that “very few white people” bought those records.  
I can hardly see your logic in tracing all this back to Ray Charles, let alone rap music.  
If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying, 
“because white people didn’t listen to Ray Charles, Motown and Philly soul in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, they are hypocrites to cite Ray Charles’ opinion on rap as evidence that ‘rap is not music.’”  

This is an avalanche of illogic.

How do we know? Because the entire Motown Music catalog sold for a paltry $61M.

Philly Soul sold to Sony Music in 2014, no price available.

But check this out. The top selling recordings all time are music created by whites. Not one black recording among them.

Perhaps black music was “popular”, but only via the radio? The facts don’t lie. Whites did not purchase Black music in large quantities.

No matter how popular it was, it didn’t actually sell in huge numbers. Blacks bought black music, but their purchase numbers could only reflect the numbers of their small population. Facts.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271174/top-selling-artists-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=Perhaps%20unsurprisingly%2C%20British%20rock%20band,Presley%20with%20139%20million%20units.

@coltrane1 You must have incredible upper body strength from digging these deeper-and-deeper holes for yourself.  
Berry Gordy Jr. sold the Motown company for 61 million in ‘88.  
He sold 50% of the publishing rights to the catalog for 132 million in ‘97, 30% for 110 Million in ‘03, and the remaining 20% for 80 million in ‘04.  
These are extremely valuable songs.  
Even your citation of those sales stats clearly shows one very predictable name: Michael Jackson. He’s #6 on the list.
How one could cite these stats and then say, “not one black recording among them”??
Not one logical argument have you yet made as to how any of this makes a person’s opinion on rap invalid or illegitimate, or how it’s fair to tromp on in here and say, “I doubt many here still listen to ‘soul from the ‘60s and ‘70s.”