Yes.

You're more on target here. But remember my reason: Since I focus on something with notes more than something that's just words, in a "mixed-mode genre" with both background notes and foreground speaking, my mind is automatically going to pay attention to the background notes and (try to) tune out the foreground speaking. That's not always easy, so the foreground speaking "gets in the way" of me trying to listen to the background notes. If the singer decided to sing notes instead of just speaking, I wouldn't tune him/her out because he/she is actually singing notes, which I automatically focus on anyway.

What do you think about this?

That was definitely better than Denny's Drums, and I can see the art to it and its appeal, but to be honest I found myself paying more attention to the "athletic prowess" aspect of the performance than to the musical qualities of the song they were playing. :laughing:

Well, honestly, the physicality is definitely part of the performance. It's almost like a kind of dance. I own several of their albums, and while I enjoy them, they're not even close to as good as seeing them live.

Well obviously I'm not going to listen to the whole 45 minutes, but my impression from glancing over it was ... it's like listening to an audio book with the narrator's voice going through some special effects.

Meh.

I have nothing against poetry, or an audio book, but at least neither of those have the pretension of trying to be music. They're just ... poetry and fiction. If they put music in the background I'd probably be distracted.

Here's my favorite poem. Nothing wrong with this. Here I can pay attention to the words themselves.



However, once you place some music in the background - especially a piece of music I like (here, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata), I find myself distracted and pay as much, if not more, attention to the background music as I do the poem. This is the same experience I got when listening to the rap songs someone asked me to review a few pages ago.

^
Here. Listening to that 2nd version of The Raven, was to me just about the exact same experience as listening to this song here. I found myself focusing on the background music and tuning out the words in the verses (and when the refrain kicks in when they actually sing notes I perk up and pay attention to the foreground).

Well it's a natural effect that changes the voice in the Lucier piece. I consider most things music and I would say the same for I Am Sitting In A Room.

listing what you like man, you can't change the people opinions.

Since I really dislike both genres I'll at least objectively say why I don't like both. The majority of the rap I have heard, including odlschool rap, always sounds really negative. Not just the lyrics, but Asian rap I can't understand feels negative. Its in their tone, their beats, and the melody of the song. I do like positive rap, and really need to find more to listen to. I know alot of people who say they hate rap, but I can list these same rappers I like, and they almost always like them. Most Gorillaz stuff, The Roots, and the Jazzier Diggy-Mo' songs are the only rap artists I really like.

For mainstream pop theres too much studio tricks. Alot of them just come up with one cool sounding thing, and repeat it do death. Or really pile on the voice enhancers to the point that they sound like Vocaloid. I'm not saying every single one of them are bad, but it feels like the producers are making the music, and the artists are just singing what they are told to sing. Theres a reason the only 'mainstream' pop I listen to is Asian stuff, like Flow, and Yui. It would actually be cool if someone could find mainstream pop that I liked, just so I could say theres a good one out there.

I want to laugh at the fact that people are dissing music by saying the artists look stupid though. Seriously, anyone that believes that go look up Visual Kei, and look at their outfits and tell me their looks influence their music. They all play a similar style, but thats the culture of Visual Kei, and has little to do with their outfits.

I think people are particularly critical about the "downfall" of hip hop because its a relatively young genre and frankly the disintegration is its quality and meaning is easier to trace than with other musical forms. I don't think that's because rappers are less talented from other musicians, but due to another factor, which makes producing quality rap harder than producing passable material in other genres. Allow me to explain:

Rap in its traditional form is dependent on quality lyrics which tell a story about the realities of life in the neighbourhoods that first spawned the hip hop movement. Or it requires rappers to have a unique talent for writing incisive lyrics about broader social and political realities. The problem is that creating great rap requires a connection with reality that other genres, such as rocknroll or pop, don't necessarily demand. In fact, many rock artists have produced great music by positively de-connecting with the world or discussing this very subject (e.g. think about the hundreds of rock songs that are about taking hallucinatory drugs...). In contrast, rappers need to retain a connection with the realities of life where they came from and, well, rap about them with some rawness and flair. Rap producers/song writers need that same connection with the streets and plain simple real life. The issue is they don't. That's the difference between the era of artists like Tupac and the present day, dominated by artists like Kanye West. Tupac's music retained its brilliance because he retained his connection with the tough life of his past. It ultimately cost him his life, of course. Kanye is an artist who may have had equal natural ability to Tupac in the rap stakes in theory but quickly lost touch with the real world. That is reflected in the quality of his lyrics, which have been pretty poor since the release of his first, moderately good, album.