No, Really, It Shouldn’t

Rap should be on a par with Shakespeare.

Rap should be put on a par with Shakespeare and Wordsworth. When will the education system wake up to black creativity?

Shakespeare and Wordsworth produced literature. Rap is simply garbage – a dismal repetitive beat accompanied by tortured lyrics. Utter, utter crap. So no, it is not remotely in the same arena.

can’t help thinking that the Pulitzer prize committee missed a trick in their award to the rapper Kendrick Lamar this week. If they had given him the Pulitzer for literature rather than for music it would have elevated his artform and sent a message that would have resonated around the world: that rap is a legitimate form of poetry and should be put on a par with, and treated with the same deference as, Shakespeare and Wordsworth.

Pseud’s corner here we come. Again, typical of Guardianista victimhood mongering. I refuse absolutely to give (c)rap any deference whatsoever – it is vile; a discordant noise that assaults the ears and has nothing of value to offer art, literature or music. Poetry, it ain’t.

Let’s be honest, Kendrick Lamar, Stormzy, BBK and Giggs have a greater impact and more relevance today than all the literary “greats” wandering lonely as a cloud on some dusty bookshelf in some crusty corner, waiting to be forced down the school curriculum gullets of young people.

Ah, yes, that old bullshit. That was being peddled when I was at school – usually by recalcitrant teenagers who didn’t want to study. I even favoured it myself at one point (until I read Henry IV part 1 and was captivated), but I would never have presumed that Status Quo were Shakespeare’s equals. I’d also mention here that these twats are people I’d never heard of before they hit the headlines recently – and would like to return to my erstwhile ignorance of their existence. Nor do I wish to have my eardrums assaulted by the noise they call music – for it is not music.

If we’re asking our children to read filth such as Shakespeare in school, and turning a blind eye to the content because it has been deemed by the gatekeepers of literary imperialism, known as “the canon”, as beyond moral reproach and contemporary social responsibility, then we cannot blame Eminem for corrupting the minds of our youths.

27 Comments

  1. rap just shows up the abysmal standard of spelling these days. The leading “C” is always left out…

  2. The point about classic literature is that it has stood the test of time. How many of today’s pop artists, not just rappers, will still be heard of in a hundred years time? Not that many I suspect.

    • Indeed. Hard to imagine a professor of “Stormzy studies” (whoever the fuck that is!) in 2118

    • How many of today’s artists will be remembered in a hundred years time? Pop or not, most art is just brain cum that someone has wanked onto media in the hope that someone will give them recognition. I’m amazed that The Beatles are still regarded so highly considering they were a ‘boy band’ by today’s standards. As for rap, it’s like any other art; simply a perspective of the person that views the world.

      • “…simply a perspective of the person that views the world.”

        Exactly. And having pulled down their perspective pants and shown us their warty, diseased moral privates, we are at least well informed.

        I shall add “Do you like rap?” to my question list for prospective employees.

  3. Wouldn’t surprise me that the don’t next time. Then these awards will go the same way as the Nobel prize for peace.

  4. If rap represents the peak of black creativity, then black creativity is utter shite. Rap does not deserve to be called music let alone literature. It is ridiculous to suggest that it has more relevance today than than the works of the literary greats. To young people who treasure literature, the greats are still the greats. To those who don’t value education, crap like rap means something, not that they could explain why.

  5. It is no surprise that the Chair of the Bernie Grant Arts Centre is a useless waste of space given that Bernie Grant was an evil bastard whose only useful contribution was as worm food.

  6. Why was this talentless twat awarded an MBE, really shows that the honours system is completely broken?

  7. Henry IV Part 1 is my favourite Shakespeare play. Falstaff and Hotspur are great heroes.

    “I am joined with no foot-land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of these mad mustachio purple-hued malt-worms,”

    “Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come, when you do call for them?”

    “I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots as a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”

    “I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh,—”

    “The better part of valour, is discretion.”

    • Indeed. I loved them both.

      By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
      To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
      Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

  8. I’m no fan of (c)rap, although a couple of the ‘songs’ have been amusing …and on one occasion ‘Slim Shady’ (my kids informed that was his moniker which surprised me because the last song of his I had heard was ‘pub with no beer’) actually managed to shock me with his obscenities which is not an easy task.
    However I am partial to a bit of ‘gangstagrass’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyFccnd_Tzc&index=3&list=PL-Yz5VzR-Ais9XEw_h1F5QOsmQ_1jMcNO

  9. “If we’re asking our children to read filth such as Shakespeare in school, and turning a blind eye to the content”

    It would be phenomenally bad teaching if any teacher was turning a blind eye to the content (and I doubt any are)… putting it into the context of the time and understanding that a society’s norms change over centuries is a rather different matter.
    Teaching a little humility in that the judgemental, po-faced puritans of future generations will look back in horror at us as well wouldn’t go amiss either.

  10. Article in The Groan, no need to read beyond headline to know it is wrong.

    Shakespeare and Wordsworth produced literature. Rap is simply garbage – a dismal repetitive beat accompanied by tortured lyrics. Utter, utter crap. So no, it is not remotely in the same arena.

    Yes, like techno and other modern “music” – utter crap which is only “enjoyable” after taking mind altering drugs.

    I have witnessed idiots say “I need an E to enjoy this” in a nightclub I was working (logistics) in

  11. Rap? It barely qualifies as music, let alone worthy of any literary praise. To raise it to the value of art… oh, hang on. This is from ‘comment is free’ isn’t it?

  12. I’ll join the choir by adding my absolute contempt for rap, with one exception: “Television: the Drug of the Nation” by Michael Franti and The Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy.

  13. They already have a Rap Hall of Fame. Currently HQ’d in Harlem NYC. Great plans for the future. Private finance. Sinks or swims on visitors.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_Hop_Hall_of_Fame

    Not fond of the genre, however not fond of classical stuff either.

    Oh and they have some form of calypso h of f. And bluegrass and C & W.

    There you go, anorak of bog useless information!

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