«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

I here you Big Brother @mahgister, but this may surprise you. Today, Rap and (modern) R&B music is played not only on AM, FM internet (stations) streamers but also in different languages, all over the world. Rap and the so called (modern) R&B ain't going away. I come to audiogon with an open palette and try very hard not to be negative or combative in anyway. But sometimes...You gotta...Just, stand up...As Bob Marley would say.

There is great music in rap or R&B but this genre are very difficult to do with musical mastery...

Why ?

Because they are as powerful than instinctually simple...

It takes genius not ordinary musician and singer...Sorry...

Who can rival Muddy Waters singing blues ?

Not many singers...

I am not a blues afficionado at all  but i like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and very very few others...

I like them because they are great artist not because they sang  blues...

For me they are the blues in a way no other one can be...

Then there is geniuses in all genres...

But i dont  like most genres only few geniuses...

@immatthewj 

'While some interpretations of the song would like to see it primarily as a celebration of a drug counterculture, any pretence the phrase “Brown Sugar” is other than a reference to a black woman falls away in the final lyric of the studio album.'

Just like a black girl should.

'This combination of sexual imagery and illicit drug references in the song’s lyrics contributes to the culturally transgressive place the Rolling Stones occupy in popular music history.'

There is great music in rap or R&B but this genre are (is) very difficult to do with(out) musical mastery...

@mahgister, you are making my point for me. James Brown, himself used rap in his music, and in fact he was called ’Brother Rap’ in my community.

Issac Hayes, used rap in his music, and also in fact he was called ’Ike The Rapper’ in, my community.

The Jazz artist Gil Scott heron introduced to the world to the rap group The Last Poets who appeared on Gil Scott-Heron’s 1972 album .Black Spirits - Festival Of New Black Poets In America and in that album The Last Poets recorded "And See Her Image In The River" and "Song of Ditla, part II" live at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York for the album.

Rap music, just like some parts of Jazz, comes from a community in the early ’50’s or even earlier maybe, as the correct date is not known. But it came about because young people wanted a place to just ’Hangout’ as it were. All you had to have was a nickel (5¢) to get a cup of coffee and some cigarettes to sit in little ’Hip’ cafe and socialize. That’s it. Folks would recite poetry with or without a band. As they (we) still do to this day.

@mahgister I’m trying not to be rude. This rap stuff is a long part of my history, culture and community and I think I may know more about it than you do.

And it gets a little frustrating, at times when someone who’s not of my culture, speaks as if they know more about Rap than I do, and doesn’t even listen to the music genre, and writes and speaks about Rap, as if they do!

No offense here, I’m just trying to exchange knowledge of a music idiom that I have a familiarity with, in a positive way of course, that’s all.

The reason why rap music can be so raunchy at times is because it has always been apart of the ’culture’. For gosh sakes! Has anyone ever listened to Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith! And they had a backing band too!

I get it .  NOT a statement about my feelings on Rap one way or the other, but there is a big difference (in my book, anyway) between lyrics with “raunchy” sexuality, usually by way of innuendo or double entendre and lyrics that demean and debase by way of raunchiness, misogyny and/or suggestions of violence. The latter is the Rap that I can do without.