Man I wrote the bit below and I really felt sorry for you.
I can only be honest with you to explain to you what I don't like.
But if you read the bit below, you may get the impression I'm trying to bring you down.
I really don't. I try to be reasonable, but I really can't think of anything other to say but...
A tribe called quest; I prefer this to most hip-hop, but in the end to it's just a beat with rhythmic talking. And I want melody in my music...
I can definitely see the quality difference with most modern day hip-hop and if they wouldn't rap I'd say it's a pretty nice groove. But only for 20 seconds. It's the same throughout the whole song...
Lyrics born and lateef; I thought the digital 'blips' were rather annoying. Not much music in this one apart from some random guitar samples. Dislike.
EL-P ft. Fast: Annoying 'messy' vocals. Nice bass guitar, but obviously sampled. The same all the time, not even a different key. Can't take this too seriously. Dislike even more.
Thurz. Ft. Black Thought: Yeah, yeah, uhuh, yaw. I can't stand it when they do that. Same story, same key, same sample for the entire song.
Remember: I don't like rap, I don't care about lyrics If I am to survive the rap, the music 'behind' the rap has to be rather interesting.
Dislike even more...
The Black Opera: Better than the last two, I guess. But still... Where's the music? I think I just listen to music in another way than hip-hop listeners do. I just can't find music in this kind of... well... music.
Was at the record store and they gave me a record to listen to. They knew I wouldn't buy it, but they wondered what I thought about it.
I did see what they liked about it, but I couldn't stand the rap, as usual.
It was the album "Earthology", by the Whitefield Bros. It's mainly afrobeat with hip hop vocals. Most of the songs are instrumental, though.
Eitherway, in the end it's safe to say that I don't like hip-hop because I didn't try, I just don't understand the musical bit of it. It's absent, for me. In one way it's a good thing I still don't like hip-hop because well... It would be awful if I missed out on something I happened to like, in the end. On the other side, I really like to broaden my horizon when it comes to music. And with Hip-hop, I don't think I can.