Behind Rap

Rap is a relatively new genre of music in comparison to classical, rock, blues, etc.  On top of that rap is unlike any other genre of music already existing.  Artists, if you can even call them artists, have made millions of dollars and some of them don't even sing while others use sound modifiers to change their voice to sound more like something that came from a robot.  However a major part of rap music is the stereotypes along with it.

When the general public thinks of rap in the US, they immediately associate it with violence, drug use, and poor black neighborhoods which are better known in the music as the ghetto.  Now it is true to an extent that a large portion of rap is about violence and poverty but there is an even larger portion that speaks about issues elsewhere, or love, or overcoming adversity.

When people think of rock and roll, they think of good times, crazy people, but to be completely honest there is huge portion of rock that is associated with drug abuse.  People do acknowledge this fact, however it is not the first they they are going to think of when somebody puts on a classic rock and roll album.

But back to rap...there is such a large portion of it that deals with promoting peace and overcoming adversity, but the genre stereotype places too big of a burden on the violent side of rap manipulating rap's reputation.

When reading the two different Channels of Rage websites, I saw that rap was being performed to promote peace and began to question myself: What is rap?...and the honest answer that I came up with was that rap is poetry.

Yes, that is right.  Rap, the genre of music that is associated with such negativity really just is poetry-something associated with deep feeling and sometimes even romanticism.  So I thought to myself, can rap really have a positive effect in Jerusalem or it will basically become a "rap battle" between the Palestinians and Jews.  The answer I concluded was yes.  Yes it can.  Rap can help bring Jews and Palestinians together.  

Look at the artists Macklemore and Ryan Lewis who recently wrote a song titled Same Love which is about gay marriage.  For years rap artists have been referring to things as "gay" and have been using phrases such as "faggot" and "no homo" in their music.  Now Macklemore and Ryan Lewis in the same form of muisic write a deep and meaningful rap about how nothing is wrong with gay marriage and have been praised for doing so.

Although rap can sometimes be associated with violence and hate (exactly what Jerusalem has right now), rap can also have a deep meaning and rich purpose (just like the rich history of Jerusalem is to Palestinians and Jews alike).