Just like any other medium there's a continuum from good to bad. Of course we all argue over who belong in the good side but, it's just like arguing ACDC as better than The Rolling Stones or Patsy Cline as better than Ella Fitzgerald. The difference is that were arguing on different factors.

See, I think Pasty Cline is good because she has a beautiful, haunting quality to her voice, but the Carter family makes you feel safe and peaceful like you are sitting in the sunshine- which is amazing as well. Other female singers I like include Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey, Ella Fizgerald and Elizabeth Cotten. I guess I did come back before the cartoons did after all.

Generally, whenever someone asks if I like their taste in music, my default reaction is usually "eh, it's good, but it isn't my thing." Now, for most genres of music, this statement always has at least a little bit of truth. But not for rap.

Now, I can lie in public to avoid confrontation (because attacking rap in any context is nothing short of blasphemy in Georgia), but I can't find anything nice to say when faced with the prospect of defending it. It isn't the content of the lyrics that bothers me, but rather the bastardization of language. In it's early days, rap was at least cohesive and used words that naturally rhyme. Now, words are augmented and given fake suffixes. And for what?

There's no deeper message. What little music there is isn't strong enough to carry the song, so there has to be something there, right?

Even if all you want is to listen to arbitrary, monotonous ranting to the same 3 looped notes, that's fine. Just don't call it music.

"Oh please, don't have the guall to pull that crap on this blog. That is insulting to all races who comment here."

All cultures have their own musical traditions. But since everyone was putting down rap I thought someone should stick up for it. I mean you guys actually know very little about it and your pulling up the worst examples.

I apologize for the racial slur. What I meant to say was light-skinned-people-who-claim-ancestry-from-Europe.

I guess I'm in a really small minority that appreciates both classic 20th music and late 20th century music?

I must have rebelled from my parents over other things than music. I spent a lot of years looking through my Dad's old (though small) record collection and then trying to find those songs online because we didn't have a working record player. So I always had an appreciation for the older generations' music (and so did he for music older than him, actually).

I also had no sense of discretion at first. As new music went, I listened to whatever my peers listened to. Unfortunately nu-metal plagued the radio stations so thats all I got out of it and that's what I convinced myself I liked (I guess this was mid to late 90's). Which usually meant I listened to nu-metal with my friends and reveled in how it made our parents uncomfortable and put on Boston on loop as soon as I got home.

It wasn't until the summer of 2004 when I finally realized that there was a whole world of new music that wasn't being played on any local radio stations. "Float On" by Modest Mouse broke through the mainstream barrier and was getting radio play and I knew I had to find more music like it. Nu-metal was really starting to sound all the same and boring to me for a while now and I was listening to hardly any new music anymore.

I ended up finding this hipster music magazine called Tracks (its dead now) and recognized names of not only indie bands I'd just discovered but also Dylan and Cash and Sinatra. I'd never read any magazine that treated old music just as seriously as new music. Even better, it came with a sampler CD featuring some of the music they wrote about. The variety was overwhelming and felt really good after years of listening to the same muddy guitar riffs and same droning vocals that was all of the radio rock I knew of.

On that sampler was a rapper called Buck 65. This was the song that was featured: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wyyVh3uc5Y

It was rap, but it was a different kind. He sounded gruff like Tom Waits, and used rambling banjo instrumentation over the bass and drums, he rapped about weird things in clever ways. My friends HATED it. That made me realize that rap music (which I'd always just ignored) had an interesting underground just like indie rock and alt-country.

From that point, I tried to find interesting sounds in all genres of music. I don't want to shut myself out to something that might sound good me before I even give it a chance. There is such a thing as good music and bad music, but its not defined by generation or by genre.

To quote Peter Schickele who ended every one of his radio shows with a quote by Duke Ellington: "If it sounds good, it IS good."

...my God, I can't think at all when listening to this woman sing...I'm in a hypnotic rapture at her singing. What emotion!*plays youtube clip of Crazy for the third time*I don't like rap anyway, I'm too sensitive. If there's music in it I can't hear it...My ears interpret it as noise,it sounds like violent sounding rythmic yelling & aggressive filthy verbal assaults to me. So I therefore pass no judgement on whatever artistry is involved in rap music. I've never been able to listen. Not even to the local 'rap' music (dancehall.) And when there's a huge party event at the golf course near enough to my home it's heard blaring all night until 5 a.m sometimes...so although I've been bombarded with it at times I can't be a proper judge. I've heard one or two old school rap songs that sound somewhat musical though AND tuneful rapping was involved...I can't remember what the songs were though. What do you make of this? (Local dancehall song.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6sITRsvM That (link above) I can't take at all. Ten minutes of it at a resonable volume & I'd start crying. Hard to explain to anyone else who feels it's my patriotic duty to like the stuff, much less to not be traumatized by it.This on the other hand... I can handle, and somewhat enjoy -if its on the radio & I'm in the right mood I'll listen...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-av7F1JBmj4 (Hugely popular song.) It holds my interest for a bit, musically, although I tire of it easily, as it's not really my kind of music to begin with...

By the way, have you seen Gran Torino yet? Saw it last night and its pretty much George Liquor - the live action version. Lots of similarities between George and "Walt" played by Clint Eastwood. Its basically about a super racist lonely old white man living in a small town. He's a Korean war vet so he loves his guns, his dog and his Pabst Blue Ribbon. Problem is hes the only white dude that lives on the street. How funny would that be if a family that wasnt white moved in next door to George? Anyways, check it out if u have time, its worth a watch :)

As long as we're not moving on and explaining how to fix cultural degradation and entropy, and instead of presenting real solutions we're continuing this banal "discussion", wholly content to hurl rocks at each other and say that the other doesn't get it.

What about this?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfYdlAPI8S4

It's all subjective, I can appreciate that Patsy can do what she does, but it's not near as heart-wrenching to me as good shoegaze. :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0nPSy1-UXE&feature=related

The problem today isn't that no one makes good things, it's that none of it makes it to any sort of mass acceptance because we refuse to be intellectually challenged anymore, and this makes it easier for the record companies to shovel more crap into the trough. Which I think Bill Hicks put it best:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mo6hlEgINg Someone in there has an Eddie laugh.

On the otherhand, all of that power is falling out of their reach with the advent of the internet and technology, but that brings up the fact that these are the same people who do make it big in television anyways and you're still wading through excrement to find your gems.

What was the key to the older days that kept the crap out, or was there still as much crap but only the greats were left to be remembered? Devo was around in the 80's and are still held in high regard, but I know about all the other trash that came out of that decade, we haven't forgotten quite yet. Acknowledging this still doesn't change anything though, and you'd probably be locked up going around the streets tearing headphones out of people's ears and singing something decent to them.

Even in the great days of Sylvester Weaver, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Skip James, there was still (racist)crap like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC7HBSlptJY which was popular enough for Lenny Bruce to make fun of it in his act.

It's impossible not to agree that skill and innovation has vanished from entertainment.

But also, it's dangerous to shut out from Planet Earth, 2009.

Whether we like it or not, hip hop and electronica and CGI movies is what's going on today. And it's easier to dismiss everything new than try to understand the changing times.

Yes, I'm a Beatles fan, and tracing their influences I'm learning to appreciate great music like Hoagy Carmichael or Fats Domino, and the classic jazz standards.

But I'm well aware that it's the past and it's not coming back. Of course principles must be rescued and restored, but it would too be healthy to try to understand 21st century human beings, how they think and what gets to them and why. Even if they are jerks, or seem to be. Dismissing them is denying reality.

I was born in 82, but I got stuck listening to "south-er-en Gow-spell," so at least I was spared the appalling popular "music" of my time, but the instant i discovered classic music and jazz, I gravitated to it. having actually taken music lessons probably helped, because you start to appeciate the talent involved in making actual music.

my idea of good music is the likes of Bach, Rachmaninoff, Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, etc- that's the type of music I can appreciate. I tolerate less and less starting in the late 60's into the 70's, ignore the 80's and most 90's. I can appreciate some of the talent in a very few of the modern pop music world, but prefer artists outside the mainstream.

I do find it interesting when artists try to blend modern with old-school styles, but not sure how well this works:

Just to clarify: I dislike/can't relate to rap, and I like music from the 40s. But I couldn't help but notice that to support your argument that "most of the music in the 30s-40s is good" while "only 2% of it now is good" you only have one singer posted!

I mean, even if you don't agree that whoever blahblahblah was posted as an example of good rap was good - I mean, you can't really expect kids to buy that the muisc in the 40s was actually good if you can only post one singer as an example. I also have to take issue with the idea that music back then was "diverse" while now "everything's the same."

People pay close attention to things that they like, so they notice subtle differences between those things. It took me many viewings of all the old WB cartoons to be able to identify director's drawing styles. The drawing styles look totally different to me now, but when I first started watching years ago, they sure did look all the same!

Also, only the most diverse, famous/interesting stuff has readily survived - of course the best of the best of the genres will sound different from each other. Though, actually, I think I can usually identify a "song from the 30s/40s" fairly easily - they must sound somewhat alike since I haven't heard them all ...

I imagine there will be many kids today making this exact same argument about *today's* music in relations to the music of *the future*. :D