The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder for June 15, 2010

I know that young blacks are not all violent and stupid, that’s a terrible stereotype. So why do so many of them listen to and idolize rap stars that advocate violence and stupidity, reinforcing that stereotype.

If that’s the way they think of themselves, perhaps that’s the way we should regard them. They don’t deserve it, but they ask for it.

Also, while the subject is up, there is NO SUCH THING as a “rap artist” because rap is not art.

Yup, I said the same thing about Warhol. In the fine arts museum down town, he hangs next to Monet. Time will tell.

well the problem with rap is that it all sounds the same with a few exceptions.

Potrzebie, my dad used to say the same thing about rock and roll. I personally don’t like rap because they are just talking real fast and not actually singing. Singing is an art, not talking.

I personally do not care for most rap songs but some of them are actually very good. As with any music form, you cannot like everything in it, you just pick what appeals to you. Rap music is an art as it is a form of expression that appeals to certain parts of the population. If talking in rhymm is not an art form then what is poetry.

so you guys are saying that poetry is not an art since they are talking and not singing. wow.

kgreen_, the others are just making the standard couter-intellectual error of assuming that their tastes constitute laws of nature.

I don’t care for most rap myself, but I’m smart enough that I don’t delude myself into thinking that it’s not art just because I don’t like it. Just like the work of David Mamet and David Hockney.

When I was a kid my dad told me that the Beatles weren’t music because they just banged and yelled Yeah Yeah Yeah like Africans. He eventually realized he was just plain wrong, though it might have taken years living with three teenagers before he got used to it. He ended up liking African music.

I never could get him to appreciate the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Minor Threat, though.

Aaron McG obviously agrees with He-Man about rap stars making it be all about the stupid violence when that isn’t what’s real. But, He-Man, I’d say that white people have just the same problem. Even after rock’s truly stellar favorites like Jimi, Janis, Moon, Morrison, Blackmore, Elvis, etc killed themselves with substances, we still smile with a kind of admiration for the stubborn lifestyle rebels like Ozzy or Richards.

Every culture seems to find its own ways to dumb itself down, to its own detriment. There’s nothing all that new under the sun about rap. The violent images of James Dean, Marlon Brando and West Side Story were probably considered by adults in the 1950s to be similarly horrifying.

another act of stupidity by an internet gangster… do you realize that even in rock, country, R&B, and even gospel the lyrics are just the artist talking to an audience?

and on a side note art is 1 : skill acquired by experience, study, or observation

2 : an occupation requiring knowledge or skill

3 : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination

its some serious idiots on here posting comments …