I have a shameful confession to make. I love rap. Seriously. I often go weeks without listening to any music other than rap. Once upon a time, I dreamt of becoming a rapper, but that career path hit a wall in year 12 when I battled some Russian kid during class, and my teacher subsequently called me a bitch for upsetting him.
Also, I couldn’t rap for shit. Nowadays, such a small detail seems completely irrelevant.
In this era of “Apple Bottom jeans and the boots with the fur,” liking rap has become, by definition, a shameful confession. And it’s no wonder, when some 17-year-old kid posts a YouTube video of himself doing a silly repetitive dance, gets over 38 million views, and thus becomes a successful rapper off the back of what is essentially just an internet meme: Soulja Boy’s Crank That rested at number one on the American Billboard charts for two consecutive weeks.
Unsettlingly, Aussies weren’t immune to the stupidity. The song peaked at number two on our ARIA charts, and has now spent 45 weeks in the Top 40. With lyrics as powerfully emotive and insightful as “Soulja Boy up in this ho / Watch me crank it, watch me roll / Watch me crank that Soulja Boy then / SUPERMAN THAT HOOOO,” or alternatively, “SUPERSOAK THAT HOOOO,” Soulja Boy is a perfect example of what is wrong with rap.
To be great, rap needn’t be good. Neither does it have to be profound nor intellectually-driven to be entertaining or intellectually impressive. While there’s a lot to be said about intelligent rap (Nas, Blackalicious, De La Soul, The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, and Talib Kweli are amongst the most popularly named), some of the most engaging and enjoyable rap is about nothing more than — as Biggie put it in his first single —“party and bullshit.”
Take, for example, Spank Rock’s 2006 album YoYoYoYoYo: like Soulja Boy, it’s basically just about sex, partying and other frivolous stuff, yet its composition manages to be inarguably clever. Or even Wu-Tang Clan’s 2001 song Gravel Pit: it addresses no topic other than how awesome Wu-Tang Clan is, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a classic. Because the lyrics? They’re not nonsensical. (The video clip might be, but I’m letting it slide because Method Man has a lisp, yet still manages to sound harder than a furry watching Sesame Street. Also, it has ninjas and dinosaurs, together at last!)
The difference between decent pointless rap and straight-up pointless rap is in the poetics of wordplay; the skill and finesse it takes to rhythmically twist sentences so that the average listener can simultaneously be disgusted, amused, impressed and heck, maybe even a little turned on.
Eminem, the infamous enigma everybody loves to hate, capitalised off this most cleverly: he doesn’t owe his success to his novelty as a white rapper, or even to his propensity for causing controversy, although those factors probably helped. He’s successful because even when he makes songs about whack shit like sticking a gerbil up your butt, he does it skilfully.
By leaving out the skill, all Flo Rida, Chingy, T-Pain, et. al., are doing is getting rich off of insulting our intelligence. Shit, what does Lil John even do other than get mad crunk and intermittently yell “YEAH” and “H’OKAY”? How has he made a career out of that? And why the fuck did we let him?
At least we can all take comfort in the fact that it’s socially acceptable to yell unintelligibly in public about the sweat that drips down your balls while you shoot your load in a chick’s face. By those standards, the crazy homeless dude on your local street corner could be some record company’s next cash cow. Or, you know, I could finally start living my dreams. Y’ALL SKEET SKEET, GODDAMN.
