Article: Thoughts on Rap Music

I've never particularly like rap music, but over the past few months my opinion has changed based on a few factors. The first is that I began listening to Grammatik a lot. One could classify the majority of their music as Hip Hop, so I learned to appreciate the musical style of Hip Hop without listening to Rap. However, one song of theirs in particular, Year of the Rat (which contains a bit of unkind language, fyi) is a rap and has a rhythm and timing that struck me as incredibly balanced and was very fun to listen to. That's when I realized that for me, its not rap itself that I don't like as much, its the fact that the rhythm in much of the rap music I listen to is so unbalanced; its simply speaking over music, which is a poor excuse for rap. Good rap, in my opinion, should be well thought out and present a unique, balanced, and organized rhythm that takes advantage of measure and time signatures and seamlessly blends the words and music. On a side note, my "favorite" rap artist is Chali 2NA because his songs tend to have balanced rhythm, and his use of creative lyrics and his excellent voice are a bonus.