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I listen to quite a bit of rap music. It started as a hobby for my car, now that I'm older, for my house. All made possible by JL Audio and Polk.
Time to bust or confirm an audiophile stereotype: David Chesky is wondering if you ever listen to rap or hip-hop music?
There are 'audiophile' friendly Rap Albums, that are just good to boot. - Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass; The Roots (most of their albums); Buck 65's Talkin' Honky Blues, Secret House Against the World, and Situation are all well-produced and fairly well recorded. There are many others as well, but those are discs and artists that are more on the intellectual side of rap, providing a feast for the ears and the mind.
Calling Rap Music "Music" is like calling piss in a bottle art. The "Musicphile" knows better ! The denigration of the quality of music over the past 30 yrs is staggering. I blame the schools for dropping music appreciation classes, and the radio stations for promoting this crap. Yes, Music really was better back in the day when you had to know how to sing and not use pitch correction to fix everything. And the overly use of compression to sound louder then everyone else makes you want to junk your hi end rig. And the really sad part about it is that the younger generation does not care about sound quality. The dumbing down of top 40 music along with the "looks matter more then sound" attitude as brought the fine art of making music almost extinct.
It steps on my nerves. I usually listen to all kinds of styles but these two I could not accept them. They are just simple crap. The lack of new styles in the last couple of years extended the life of these two styles. I regret that I have to say it: no major progress in music since 1990.