RAP HAS NO MELODY

Recently an acquaintance of mine told me that Rap and Hip Hop does have melody it’s just not melody in the traditional form.  He went on to explain that melody in Rap and Hip Hop is actually in the inflection of the vocal.  The melody is all in the way the rapper says what he is saying.  So this morning as I was having breakfast I pondered this.  I am, if anything, open to the idea that perhaps I have formed the wrong opinion of the genre, which is that it should not be considered a musical genre at all and is actually a spoken word genre.  As I tried to look at it from his point of view I literally laughed out loud and almost spit out my coffee.  When I pull up at the Taco Bell drive through window and order my usual three crunchy Taco Bell Grandes with extra hot sauce I am not using melody to convey my message.  I am talking.  Equally, when I yell at the guy who has just cut me off in traffic because he was so consumed with his cell phone that he didn’t see me I am not using melody to convey my message.  I am yelling.  Talking and yelling does not constitute melody and it is certainly not singing.  And therein lies the rub because that is what rappers do.  They talk and yell.  The fact that they do it over a rhythm and a beat does not make it a melody.  It is still just talking and yelling that happens to be happening over top of a rhythm track. They rhyme much of their ranting but it’s all greeting card bad so I really can’t even give them credit for writing or being lyricists.  It’s just absolutely horrible, third grade writing.  So needless to say I completely disagree with the concept that there is melody in Rap and Hip Hop and feel that my acquaintances attempt to justify it as a legitimate form of music is completely wrong.  My aquaintence also went on to say that the reason I have such disdain for the genre is because I am prejudiced, something that sounded quite strange coming from a 60 year old white guy and an accusation I didn’t even dignify with a response.  Hell, I don’t like Kung Fu movies either but it doesn’t mean I dislike Chinese people.  I simply do not like or respect the genre of Rap and Hip Hop or the people who are involved in the business of it.  I don’t feel that it is in the same league as the music I perform and/or listen to which involves people actually playing musical instruments and really singing.  I understand and accept the fact that it is a form of entertainment but I do not consider it to be music.  I think it’s a shame that our culture has not only accepted this form of entertainment as music but also rewarded the no-talent people who perform it and made many of them multi millionaires.  Children now grow up idolizing these guys and aspiring to emulate them.  Something that isn’t hard to do because they don’t actually have to learn to play a musical instrument or nurture a natural singing gift so the cycle continues.  And as this cycle feeds upon itself the whole entertainment industry gets dumbed down and in the process our whole culture gets dumbed down.  And so it goes . . .