Ryan’s Old Now, and Ready to Rant!

I am of an age that I actually remember when rap arrived on the music scene. I did not much care for it then, and I do not much care for it now. Rarely do I feel a song benefits from interludes of rhythmic talking in between choruses, as opposed to the verses being set to a well-crafted melody.

You see, I was alive in this world without rap just long enough to get accustomed to the classic song structure of: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. So, to me, it just seemed like a new era of songwriters were lazily choosing not to write any melody for the verses and deciding to (angrily) shout them instead. Even with the occasional, mildly pleasant, rap songs, I always assumed that everyone else was—like me—really just waiting for the angry rhythmic talking to hurry up and be done so we could get to the melodic and enjoyable chorus.

When you look at it in that way, you can probably see why a singer/songwriter that continued taking the time to compose a melody for their verses, and also had the talent and voice to sing them, would be infinitely preferable to a “song” composed in the rap style.

Honestly, I feel about 99% of rap songs would benefit from simply removing the talking portions from the track and condensing it down to just the pleasant singing portions. Many times, however, the chorus will be either a sample of an old song or a re-singing of one, and I can’t tell you how many times I have turned off a rap song so that I could instead play the original (much better and fully realized) song that they were butchering/borrowing.

Let me be clear, I have no problem with the content of rap music; vulgarity seldom bothers me, nor does violent or off-color imagery. Also, I absolutely love dance music and remixes of all kinds. So, it really is just It the digression into talking/scolding that I can’t abide. A few years after rap music arrived, my generation also started holding slam, beat, and spoken-word poetry nights at local coffee houses, and I did not care for that either.

I will admit, though, the poetry I found embarrassing and cringe-worthy, whereas the rap I simply found to be an unappealing mix of lazy and angry.

Rap is lazy since they write no melody for their verses (and oftentimes even the choruses they do include are borrowed), and angry because the tone of most rap songs (or the rap portions of songs) always made me feel like I was in trouble and being scolded. The rappers seemed angry, almost belligerent, and who would want to invite that into their lives? I’d much rather just listen to Stevie Wonder sing his songs the way he originally wrote and intended them.

I feel the same way about medical dramas, and their popularity likewise astounds me. Hospitals are the most dreadful and dreaded of places. No one wants to go there for any reason, be it to receive care for themselves or even to visit a sick friend. So why on earth would I deliberately choose to visit a hospital vicariously with characters on my television?

No thank you, I don’t want to go to the hospital in my spare time, nor do I want to be rhythmically scolded in between some ever-dwindling portions of singing.