Diary, Tommy T

Why I don’t like rap

Athenae said this was a “post what you will” day, so here goes:

I think rap stinks on ice, but for a different reason (probably) than most, and it’s not racial or cultural.

I hate poetry read aloud.
I can’t stand it.
I thought beatniks doing it at coffee houses in the 50s sucked.
I think their later incarnation of “slam poetry” sucked.
Dressing it up with drum machines and other people’s sampled music doesn’t make it suck any less.
I have nothing against poetry per se, but it should be read by the consumer, so that it’s a private experience, in the voice that the reader gives it internally. To me, it’s a personal communication from the writer to the reader, not some kind of “listen to ME” declaration to an audience.
I guess I could read poetry out loud in a public transit situation, at the top of my lungs (and I have some powerful lungs), but that would probably be annoying.

8 thoughts on “Why I don’t like rap”

  1. I’m not here to make you magically like rap or spoken word poetry, but in that “should be read by the consumer” bit you’ve got your history all wrong. Oral poetic traditions are longer-standing than written traditions (the Beats sure as hell didn’t invent this), and the idea of the individual reader as the proper audience for a poetic work is downright newfangled – really took off with rising literacy rates and increased availability of printed paper in 18th/19th centuries. Before that, most poetry would have been spoken aloud, usually from memory, and in a wide variety of public settings. Many oral poetic traditions have a range of communal, entertainment, political, ritual, or religious uses that have nothing to do with internal, private experience. So the fact that poetry is an internal, private experience for you doesn’t really have any bearing on what poetry “should” be.

    1. “Poetry was made to be consumed in a specific way that aligns with what I think and like” is not a statement of personal preference, it’s an inaccurate claim about how/why the art form exists and in what settings. “I personally prefer to read poetry silently and alone” is a statement of personal preference, which is why that’s not what I commented on.

      1. ““Poetry was made to be consumed in a specific way that aligns with what I think and like”

        It’s also not a statement that I made.

      2. Dear Lord, do I really have to cut and paste from your post?

        “I have nothing against poetry per se, but it should be read by the consumer, so that it’s a private experience, in the voice that the reader gives it internally.”

        This was always the statement I was referring to. I took you at your word when you said you believe reading poetry *should be* a private, internal experience, but I guess I shouldn’t have bothered.

  3. Agreed. With the regard to the beatniks in the 50’s. I always thought it was comedy. The weed was very good & plentiful. Sometimes it didn’t even rhyme. People dug it tho. Didn’t get it.

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