comment, opinion,

FLASHBACK: Rap the biggest con in history of music HARD to believe it's been almost 18 months since the great rap con opinion piece upset the nervous chatter class. You know, the rap crap, hip-hop ho down clowns. I won't recreate the song, except to say I still think rap is a great con and sometimes the clowns ain't funny. Rap is an American incursion into Reggae and even hip hop music and culture but what I was blissfully ignorant of in May last year was its predisposition towards violence and misogyny. "Lock you in a casket/now you can't escape/Homie you a b...ch/smother you in dirt with the worms/now you don't exist..." Or "when I first met you, you were a ho ...your father said you were a ho and when you leave me b...ch you're gonna be a ho". Or "Girl I'm sipping on this drink trying to see what you got/ not trying to hear what you think". I won't assault your senses with any more. As I found out last year, rap has a huge audience of, dare I suggest, young men - some of whom believe women are a means to a good time, servitude and procreation. I won't bag out rap fans if that's their preferred music, sorry, preferred conversation, but, it is up to rap fans to demand more commonsense and sensitivity from their monological maestros. Yes, each generation monotonously has its heroes and each generation believes the heroes of the next generation will do the same to their young followers, what the fading fads did to them. Sure, but on the here and now is a rap culture that poached the technique of audience-contempt from the Sex Pistols and blended it with a sadomasochistic assault on its fans, especially female fans, who can more easily be persuaded by peer pressure and bullying, more often from males. Back in the liberating '60s, the Beatles were caned for releasing a song called Norwegian Wood and the Rolling Stones fell foul with Let's Spend the Night Together. "I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me. She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood." At the end of the night, John Lennon "crawled off to sleep in the bath" but that still didn't stop Norwegian Wood from being banned by some radio stations when it was released. Through history, much of contemporary music has been laced with seductive themes of romance and foreplay but rarely ever, in any era, has it been used as the vehicle for sexism, violence, control and general misogyny. Sadly, this is the lot of rap. A crude bastardisation of music, where the emphasis, or pressure, is on outrageous suggestion. Petulant primeval pratter, like the endless tantrum and rant of a psychopath who can't get his way. After the flogging I received over rap last year, I listened to a fair number of rap songs. My step-daughter even got me to compose one. God, it was awful. I'm happy to share the world with rappers but stop the lyrics making women the target. Stop sounding like you're about to join ISIL. Think of love, peace, rhythm and poetry. Even try a note or two.

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