10 Things Rap Haters Say-And How to Respond

Rebutting the lames.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

It’s the year 2013, and there are still people out there who hate hip-hop. People who still think it isn’t real music, that it’s just a fad that's just going disappear, people who think it's bad for society and want to actively stop it. (Surely, they will fail. Tell 'em, Jeru!) Of course, you don’t need to suffer these retrograde relics in silence: Most arguments against hip-hop can be dismantled with good old-fashioned logic. That's why we put together this friendly guide wherein we run down 10 of the most common things that hip-hop haters say—and how to shut them down with a bulletproof response.

Written by Alex Gale (@apexdujeous)

Sampling is cheap, easy, and essentially just stealing someone else's music.

This has been a complaint for decades: They don't use instruments! Sampling is stealing! But sampling doesn't define hip-hop, and vice versa. Sampling started with experimental electronic acts in the '60s, well before hip-hop began in earnest. And hip-hop is far from the only genre to use the technique. Justin Timberlake samples, Cher samples, innumerable EDM acts use samples. Even the Beatles went jacking for beats on their experimental 1968 cut "Revolution No. 9."

Furthermore, rap songs are often made without any sampling at all. The first hip-hop hit, "Rapper's Delight" isn't a sample of Chic's "Good Times," it's a band replaying it. Or check the recent commercials for Jay-Z's Magna Carter Holy Grail, prominantly featuring the three hip-hop production Hall of Famers who worked on the album. (And, for some reason, Rick Rubin.) Swizz Beatz, Timbaland, Pharrell Williams all blew up in the late '90s on the strength of beats that largely eschewed samples.

Then again, this whole counterargument needlessly cedes the point that sampling is a bad thing. Which is stupid. Producers like Marley Marl, DJ Premier and Pete Rock chopped, flipped, and manipulated samples, often to the point where the original song became unrecognizable. Their mastery of this new, distinctly post-modern form (making a new piece of art from a previously existing piece of art) proves beyond a doubt that sample-based music can just be just as creative, and often more so, than strumming four hackneyed chords on a guitar.

"Perhaps it's a little easier to take a piece of music than it is to learn to play a guitar or something," said Digital Undergound mastermind (and multi-instrumentalist) Shock G, in Benjamin Franzen's documentary about sampling, Copyright Criminals. "True. Just like it's probably easier to snap a picture with that camera than it is to actually paint a picture. But what the photographer is to the painter is what the modern producer, DJ, computer musician is to the instrumentalist."

Rap promotes violence.

The world is violent, and rap, perhaps more than other music, is about what's going in the world around us. But talking about violence and promoting it are very different things. Hip-hop, despite the popularity of the gangsta-rap, has at times promoted pacifism more explicitly than any other genre since the Vietnam War-era.

Rock, blamed for riots and youth crime back in the '50s and '60s, doesn't have anti-street-violence anthems like "Self-Destruction" and "We're All in the Same Gang," or a multitude of songs that decry the easy availability of guns, like Gang Starr's "Tonz 'O' Gunz" or Nas' "I Gave You Power."

Admittedly, there are plenty of songs where rappers boast of murder and videos where they flash guns. But does it even matter? Inner-city violence was rising in the '60s and '70s, before rap. But for the past two decades, as rap has slowly become ubiquitously mainstream, inner-city violence has plummeted, in some places to levels not seen since Elvis' hips were supposedly inciting your grandparents to immorality.

I can't understand what they're saying.

If legibility was a requirement for good music, Bob Dylan, your favorite lo-fi indie rockers, and any music in a different language, from opera to salsa, would be in trouble. But really, if you actually take the time to listen, rap isn't that hard to understand for all but the oldest and most out-of-touch.

And luckily, as hip-hop continues to splinter into a million different microgenres and nanomovements, it's easier than ever to window-shop for a rapper who you can understand—one that speaks to you and your lifestyle. There's Macklemore for earnest Irish kids. PSY, for portly K-Pop fans. Yung Berg, for victims of bullying. Even Jay Z, for middle-aged millionaires. And worse comes to worse, you can always go to Rap Genius, genius.

Rappers are all criminals.

We're going to (for the moment) ignore the obvious racist overtones of this statement. We're also going to ignore the blatant profiling of rappers by law enforcement (remember the NYPD's tax-dollar-wasting hip-hop task force?) which no doubt helps land a disproportionate number of rappers in hot water. (Most often for drug possession, like any other musician.)

Instead let's ask the ghost of Nancy Spungen, stabbed to death (presumably) by her boyfriend Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, about the criminal tendencies of rock-n-rollers. Or we can go pay a prison visit to Charles Manson, who moonlighted as a hippie singer-songwriter and lived and recorded with members of the Beach Boys when he wasn't out, you know, murdering people and painting the walls in their blood.

But didn't Nas say hip-hop was dead, like, YEARS ago?

First of all, Nas prognostic abilities are not exactly legendary, as anyone who heard Nastradamus knows. Secondly, he's already retracted the troll-bait title of his 2006 album. "It died several times, but I do believe in the heartbeat of it right now," Nas said of hip-hop in a 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal. "There are a lot of new artists, and artists that have been around, who are kicking ass right now."

As if to drive home the point, he released Life Is Good in 2012, his best album in almost a decade. But really, in the end, this argument is usually used by those who want hip-hop to same stay the same, to stagnate, to remain frozen in amber like a museum piece. To us, that would be a true sign of death. Right, jazz, classical, and rock-n-roll fans?

It's a bad influence. Think of the children!

This argument actually predates hip-hop by a whole lot. People said the exact same thing when jazz blew up, when R&B blew up, when rock-n-roll blew up. All these years later, those once-endangered kids have grown up just fine—and now they're levying the exact same arguments against their own kids and their crazy hip-hop music. This is the way of the world. Forever has been, forever will be.

But today's kids are more than all right: As mentioned earlier, crime continues to trend downward, inversely proportional to the popularity of rap, and the generation weaned on hip-hop can be said to be, at least by certain measurements, less racist (hi, Obama) and less homophobic (bye, DOMA) than their forebears. This despite (or maybe even because of?) all that devilish rap music being pumped into their ears.

For the sake of brevity, we won't list all the hip-hop songs filled with positive messages for the youth, from Nas telling black children to be proud of their heritage in "I Can" to Slick Rick imploring kids to "get ahead and accomplish things" in "Hey Young World." We'll just let the late, great O.D.B. tell it: "Wu-Tang is for the children."

I think my dad used to listen to rap. It's so passé and mainstream now.

Yes, youngblood, your dad likely listened to rap. And rock. And pop. And maybe even house, techno, and most other forms of EDM, except for the dub-step you're already sick of. And every other kind of music you listen to. The fact is, until the kids hurry up and invent a new, parent-alienating form of music of their own, like every generation before them, dad's music is going to continue to drive the conversation, and the innovation, in popular music.

Last year, Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d. city was perhaps the most thoughtful, beautiful major label album of 2012. This year, Yeezus is probably the most innovative and unorthodox. Meanwhile, popular indie-rock bands are sounding like something from 1980s New York, and your favorite EDM act is making like it's 1990s Ibiza.

Rap is just talking.

No, it really isn't. Everyone can talk. Rap is a skill: Only a few can do it, and even fewer do it well. On the technical side, the best rappers use internal rhyme patterns, complicated inflections, and double-time and triple-time rhythms that take years to master—to delivery words as vivid, lever, thoughtful and poignant as what you'll find in the Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Rap takes practice. You could literally hear MCs like Lil Wayne, Kanye or even Fat Joe get more skilled over the years, with each successive album and tour. But talent is important too, and not everyone can grasp the physicality of rapping: Guys like Diddy and Dr. Dre are decades deep on the mic, yet with the best ghostwriters at their disposal, they often still sound stiff and sloppy.

Oh yeah, Diddy. Fuck that guy.

If you're going to hate rap 'cause of Diddy, then you've also gotta hate vodka, fashion, restaurants and all the other things he's milking for millions. (Oh yeah, water) Plus, no one hates Diddy more than struggle rappers and purist rap fans, so welcome to the club.

But live rap shows are the worst.

Like any genre since the advent of recorded music, rap has suffered its share of onstage bombs, performers who shout sloppily over pre-recorded tracks while aimlessly sauntering back and forth. (This was no doubt exacerbated by the fact that bigoted venue owners and promoters wouldn't book rap shows and tours until the late '90s, meaning that MCs had little incentive to step up their live game.)

But in 2013, saying that live rap shows can't be good is just lazy. Even for the "rappers don't play instruments" crowd: The Roots are widely recognized as one of the best live shows on the planet, and many rap acts have taken their lead by incorporating the explosive, loose energy of live bands into their show.

Not that they necessarily need it. As anyone who saw Run-D.M.C. in their heyday, or even, believe it or not, Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff in the pre-Fresh Prince era (check "Live at Union Square November 1986"), can attest, a well-coordinated DJ and MC team can be just as powerful. And nowadays, with rock and pop stagnating commercially, rappers are the ones pushing the envelope onstage. Here's Kanye describing his Glow in the Dark tour on his much-missed blog:

ROBOT DESIGNED BY ACCLAIMED ARTIST CHRISTIAN COLON ... CREATURES BY THE LEGENDARY JIM HENSON'S CREATURE SHOP ... LIGHTING BY MARTIN PHILLIPS AND JOHN McGUIRE, RESPONSIBLE FOR LAST YEARS FESTIVAL ANNIHILATOR, DAFT PUNK'S PYRAMID, POSSIBLY THE GREATEST LIGHT SHOW OF ALL TIME!! ... WE'VE GOT HOLOGRAMS SHOT BY HYPE WILLIAMS!!!

For once, he wasn't exaggerating.