Rap As a Music Genre

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Table of Contents

Emergence and nature of rap music
Components of music
Qualities of music seen in rap music
Rap compared to other types of music
Conclusion
Works Cited

Music has had different ways in which it has been defined and understood depending on factors like culture. All the same, music has universally acceptable characteristics. The most important characteristic is the fact that music involves the arrangement of sounds. This is true regardless of whether the sounds are vocal or instrumental sound. The art of arranging these sounds to come up with a nice harmonic, continuous, and unified rhythm is basically what music is all about. The differences heard in music depend on the genre of the piece of art that has been adapted. This research seeks to identify rap as a type of music and to justify why it should be categorized as so.

Emergence and nature of rap music

Rap music was born out of anger and disappointments in the early 70s when African-Americans were struggling for civic and economic inclusion (Tropeano, p. 3).

. While the other entire music genres by then held on to the old moral teachings in lyrical contents, rap was vocal in opposition and addressing the political oppression of the black community. Rappers lacked the traditional band backup and only used turntables in making their music (Kubrin, p. 7). However, the art of arranging sounds remained upheld in this genre just as in other genres of the time. Rap music though has retained the characteristic angry attitude of singers from the 70s to date. That is the nature of rap music as we know it.

Components of music

Music is a composition of pitch, rhythm, timbre, harmonics, and volumes, sustains, and speeds. All these are components that a change in one of them changes the entire flow of the song. Rap music has been criticized as a style in music because it lacks rhythmic flow. On the contrary, rap music responds in obedience to all of the musical rules above (Tropeano, p. 3). All rap songs are sung in pitch which means either high or low tone. Rap music is characterized by the catchy rhythmic flow that makes the music so attractive to listeners and that is why it has gained so much popularity over the years. The human ear can not listen and approve of unorganized sound as it is registered in the mind as noise. This, therefore, proves that rap music is an organized collection of sounds from vocal sounds to instrumentals and that’s the main definition of music.

Qualities of music seen in rap music

There are universally acceptable qualities that make art to be classified as a piece of music. Every piece of music has expressive qualities that make it stand out among the rest and makes it attractive to listen to. Expressive qualities include factors that do not relate to rhythm and tone rather to the performer’s expression (Kubrin, p. 5)

. Music dynamics are the softness and loudness of a song. How a song is played whether soft or loud has particular effects on it. However, the dynamics of music vary according to genre and culture. Rap music for example is played loudly while country music is soft and slow. This simply means that a song can not be classified as to whether it is musical or not by the virtual of its softness or loudness (Tropeano, p. 3).

Rap compared to other types of music

Rap like any other genre of music falls in line with the definition of music hence should be classified as part and parcel of the term. Similar to all other forms of singing, rap lyrics are arranged in a particular beat timing hence obeying the musical beat timing theory. In addition, rhyming in rap music lyrics is of a notable high level. In music, rhyme is a quality of writing good music (Kubrin, p. 10). In all other genres, coming up with a catchy and an easy to remember chorus is of paramount importance. Rap singers and composers have been shown to have this technique at their fingertips. When listening to rap music, even without paying keen attention to the song one gets the chorus in a matter of seconds.

Conclusion

Today rap music has evolved to a whole new face compared to what it was in the past years especially when it was started (Kubrin, p. 1). Rap music, then, was just a few lines of a chorus and poetic verses in between the song with just a beat. Today’s rap music is characterized by the sounds of various musical instruments and highly rehearsed vocals including a professionally written chorus. The genre has drifted from simply organized beats to full-range musical production (Kubrin, p. 1). In the past, while listening to rap music, one could hardly trace a sound coming from the common musical instruments like the guitar or the keyboard. Rap music was all about a noisy beat without a rhythm but only words to fill in as a poem. That however has changed and today rap has all the rights to be classified as music in regards to the transformation it has undergone.

In my opinion rap music is justified to be classified as music as it has left up to the expectations and requirements for a piece of art to be recognized as music. The argument that rap music is more of poetry rather than music is misguided. Poets do not consider pitch and the musical beat while reciting a poem. The only similarity between poems and rap music is probably the rhyming way of composing the contents of the two pieces of art. In other aspects of rap music, it greatly agrees with the definition of music.

Works Cited

Tropeano, Eliana. “Does Rap or Rock Music Provoke Violent Behavior?” Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Research. (2010): 1-3. 2012.
Kubrin, Charis. “I See Death Around The Corner: Nihilism In Rap Music”. Sociological Perspectives. (2010): 1-14. 2012.

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Rap As a Music Genre

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