Ben Shapiro thinks rap isn’t real music. Here’s why he’s wrong. A link to Part 2 – https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7m30g1 Patreon (for support!)
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Is Rap Music Real Music? A Response to @BenShapiro
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Shapiro is obviously wrong saying that music is only defined by those 3 parameters, but you have to admit that hip hop have largely relied on sampling other's people creations.
From funk to jazz, rock to R&B, the musical part of hip hop was "just" mostly musically uneducated people cutting and looping stuff together.
The process it's fascinating, and have lead to interesting results, but only in the last 20 years hip hop have been really massively made from scratch like every other music (and it's somehow related to the accessibility of DAWs that makes it way easier for everyone who doesn't know how to play an instrument and/or doesn't know anything about music theory, or collaborating with musicians that comes from other genres to provides the actual music). That's to me is something that puts hip hop apart from everything else.
Every time I hear an hip hop song with some orchestration or "played music" behind, I can't help myself to consider it a crossover thing, the joining of two different things rather than the evolution of hip hop itself.
Maybe the correct question is: if the process of creation is so different, why trying to fit the parameters of music at all? Why not being its own thing?
That could be a real act of emancipation!
I also find the pt2 of the video not really convincing, you just list a lot of stuff, not making an argument on why we should consider it on par with other genres (from a musical point of view), but just showing the variety of hip hop itself (plus putting D'Angelo and the whole "soul" movement there is misleading at best)
I'm not talking about lyrics here, or the vocal part, just about the music.
Coming from the "symmetrical scales" video, good work non that!
(sorry for the bad english, I'm from Italy)
Like part 2 a lot. Unfortunately, the response is missing a response, but apart from that it is a great video.
Hey Mike, do you have a new twitter account??
Ben Shapiro always represents himself as someone that's always right and that knows everything. Finally someone that says what I was thinking all the time: He just talks pseudo-facts and really isn't that smart as he claims to be.
As a person who rather enjoys hip-hop, I must push back. I don't think hip-hop IS music. Hip-hop is its own thing. It isn't simply rhythmic speaking as Ben says and while it incorporates some aspects of music, it is no more music than data aggregation and analysis is science. They are two different art forms that, while related, are not the same thing.
Hey Mikey were you in Byron Bay this morning by any chance?
I agree with the white guy and I love rap
But if it’s one hundred percent subjective, doesn’t that mean Shapiro is right? At least as right as anyone else?
I've never heard of those three criteria being presented as necessary for music, but as sufficient for music. Looks like the little guy done fucked up necessary and sufficient conditions again.
Anyway, if you really wanna fuck with him just hand him the soundtrack for silent hill 3 and ask him which ones are music and which ones aren't.
He always comes up with these made up "3 criteria."
Brilliant video! I, too, have long grown out of the "Rap isn't REEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL MUSIC" snobbery. Though my preference is always with metal, I still greatly appreciate rap musicians for using their cultural roots to express their oppression. Are you familiar with Body Count? Ice T and his band perfectly fuse Rap and Metal, both to express slayer-style horror themes and also real-world oppression. I highly recommend "All Love is Lost (feat. Max Cavalera)" and "No Lives Matter" as prime examples of Body Count's work.
Fantano's been having fun with this idiotic take, so have I.
If you just played a G minor chord and let it fade into silence and said "this is a minimalist piece I composed called G Minor Fade", would it be music? There's no melody or rhythm, just harmony. Yet I absolutely think it is music.
Therefore rap is music, as is a drum solo for that matter. One criteria for music is enough for something to be music.
When I can think of so many examples off the top of my head that goes against his moronic claim and I'm struggling to think of any that don't, it's embrassessing how confident he is in his total ignorance.
This is not freedom of speech. People like Ben Shapiro gives FOS a bad name. Music is ambiguous. Different genre has different elements; nothing is fixed in music. He should do a ted-talk in Hereticon. Seems like a good avenue for the ignorant and racists.
So good! This video (esp. Part 2) exposed me to a lot of music I hadn't heard before, and a lot I hadn't heard in years. Also, in addition to BS being ignorant and factually in error, what kind of smug assbutt invites an artist on their show to cheerfully tell them their art isn't valid? And another thing: even if BS's made-up music theorist dad's definition of music were correct, the social, cultural, and aesthetic values of hip hop wouldn't be the least bit diminished, just because it didn't fit in the category called "music" (which, just to be clear, it does, because BS and his made-up dad are wrong).
hey there!
Wasn't there a piece of music that got people so angry that the audience basically broke down the theater when it was performed for the first time? I can't remember at the moment. Anyway, that same piece is now on everybody's classical playlist.
Ben Shapiro wrong about something? Shocking, truly shocking.
Why would any one take anything Shapiro has to say about music? Or anything for that matter?
No such thing as bad music only bad people.
Ben Shapiro has half the height and half the genius of Tupac and Biggie. He couldn't make anything as inventive as either.