1 "... Get the hell outta here! Really? "

LOL!  :->>

Have a good weekend Lt.

2 Hip-Hop is the New Disco. Overexposed, negative drug and sex imagery, sent over to the UK and sent back to us repackaged. The more things change....
 
 

3 Hip hop is the music world's version of the Special Olympics.

4 "Hip-Hop" has been in decline ever since Eazy-E shed his mortal coil.

5 Good Lt.
For someone who so often finds fault with MSM perhaps before citing them as a source you double check to make sure that the facts are correct. When ichecked this is what I found.Top 50 Billboard Album Sales of 2006 seems to list Eminem at number 6


http://bumpshack.com/2006/12/04/top-album-sales-of-2006/

6 Dear god, I hope so.

7 JOHN RYAN: The list you cited proves the article's premise (in fact, there are far more countryish acts than you would be comfortable with):

1 SOME HEARTS CARRIE UNDERWOOD 3,721,7622

2 HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL SOUNDTRACK 3,252,743

3 ALL THE RIGHT REASONS NICKELBACK 3,043,246

4 ME & MY GANG RASCAL FLATTS 2,761,915

5 THE BREAKTHROUGH MARY J BLIGE 2,636,062

6 CURTAIN CALL: THE HITS EMINEM 2,576,365

7 BACK TO BEDLAM JAMES BLUNT 2,231,085

8 THE ROAD AND THE RADIO KENNY CHESNEY 2,100,744

9 THE LEGEND OF JOHNNY CASH JOHNNY CASH 2,004,003

10 BREAKAWAY KELLY CLARKSON 1,980,966

Hmm...1 Hip-hop album in the top ten last year. Rap sales dropped by 21% since 2005. I guess that means that Hip-hop is becoming more popular or is at the very least "stable." Right? That's your "logic"

As someone who finds fault with everything we here write, I would challenge you to come up with some stronger evidence to support your apparent assertion that the facts reported by ABC News are false.

And just for hilatiry's sake, the all-important Dixie Chicks album (#16 - low for such an 'important' album) was beaten to a pulp by the soundtrack to a movie that nobody saw.

8 Remember....you can't spell crap without rap

9 I recall once trying to explain the phrase "contradiction in terms" to a Chinese foreign student by using "rap music" as an example.

10 Wow. People are finally realizing that rap 1) requires no talent, thats why they sample everyone else's music and use it as theirs and why they always "feature" other "artists" and 2) it has created a sub-culture of violence, stupidity, and ignorance that thinks its wrong to be educated and employed and finally 3) it all sounds EXACTLY the same. Cars, slightly overweight women in bikinis, money, jewelry, and cars that aren't theirs. Yawn. This underbelly of "cool" african-american culture that has swept the country and corrupted it is finally dying a much deserved death. Good riddance.

11 Whatever happened to real African-American musical talent like
 B.B. King, Lois Armstrong, Dizzie Gillespie? [Sorry if I spelt some of the names incorrectly.]

12 GM, they became popular among white audiences and accepted such recognition.  This automatically disqualified them of 'cool' status.

Either that, or Eminem shot them, raped them, stuffed them into a car trunk and drove it off a bridge.

13 In the words of Stan Marsh: "Dude! This is pretty f**ked up right here!"   :-)

14 As someone who has purchased and listened to a great deal of rap music in his life, I can tell you that one major factor in the decline of hip-hop sales is the infiltration of Southern influences in the genre.
 
While much of the hip-hop of the late 90's, generated from the east and west coast, had intelligent lyrics, high production values and required the artists to have some sort of flow in his style, when New Orleans and Huston began mass producing records from guys who were just released from lock up, everything went down the toilet.
 
 

15

I still remember Diana Ross and the Supremes. Lots of other great artists. Ahh the old days.

I still do enjoy some 'Rap' musical stylings. I liked the "Walk This Way" Areosmith did with (Umm ok I forget exactly who ...Run DMC?) anyway it was fun. And I liked the 'Rap' elements in C&C Music Factory's singular hit.  And I also like the 'Rap' elements in Stuck Mojo's "Open Season".

So basically, if you want to use 'Rap' with actual music, I think thats OK. It's the glorification of the 'gangsta culture' that is really offensive. The word 'ho' (if it even counts as a word) and all the other trappings of in your face, disrespect of others. The way that an American sunbculture is told to embrace 'second class' as a moral emblem.  Anyway.

I hope the entertaining part of 'Rap' survives the rejection of the poetic hate speech that 'hip-hop' is so caught up with. My opinion.

US, all the way!

16 Falling Panda, Much merit in the distinction, thanks for making it.
       
    USA, all the way!

17 So rap is being replaced by American Idol? Gee.. I feel so much better now.

On the flip side, I think wannabes have stolen and killed hip hop. Justin Timberlake and Linkin Park and all those other trash acts are still popular, still selling records, so it's still around. Fading, yes, but still not totally gone.

18 Good Lord I hope so. As a musician myself, I can assure you that the "real" musicians out here - whether they be rockers, jazzers, or classical folks - mostly detest rap and have for years. I remember the first time I heard a rap tune: 1983 when I was attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. I thought to my self that it would play out within five years. Boy, did I underestimate the cultural stupidity of a large segment of America: I was off by twenty years.

19  Hucbald
 
As a musician, myself I completely agree with you. Never in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined that rap would take off or survive as it has. Moreover, like all the true musicians (those who actually play a real instrument at a professional level of accomplishment) I know I believe that rap cannot die soon enough or be forgotten and consigned to the waste heap of history soon enough.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
http://www.mp3.com.au/artist.asp?id=16834

20 Ever wonder why the establishment has been pushing this trash on
society for years? Well, if you have wondered such, then you're not
quite asleep but not fully awake yet, but if you know why, then you're
awake... and dangerous. The sytematic and deliberate debasement and
degredation of society has been taking place for a very long time, with
the media, the entertainment history, and the government, (primarily
education and the legal system), working hand-in-glove with very few
exceptions and virtually no resistance to the program to turn us into
livestock and breed with whatever mongrels come along so as to make us
less intelligent and more easily domesticable. Wake up sheeple, and
smell the manipulation; it's time for revolution.

21 Boy do you guys sound as Lily-White as Lily-White can be. All genres have an ebb and flow. There is some fantastic Hip-Hop out there. Some of the supreme musicians of our time are DJ's (see Madlib). Ever heard of MF Doom? If not, then you have no business speaking of "Rap". Yeah, main-stream Hip-Hop has been in a downward spiral recently (see Dirty-South) but so has mainstream anything. Mainstream is dead, my friends, as we are not in the 90s any more. By the same logic, Miles Davis, Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler and Led Zeppelin didn't crack the top 10 this year either so they must be dying on the vine....Oh yeah, I'm Lily-White too...and Dave Mathews sucks Granny-balls.

22 They called it BREAK DANCING becuase you ended up breaking something when you danced

23 Sean Nebbish:


Rock albums account for more than 80% of total album sales. "The Eagles Greatest Hits" is still the best selling album of all time--and it's thirty years old. The Eagles have released several more greatest hits albums that are far more comprehensive since then, competing with their own record.


The most poular radio stations in the country are all classic rock stations.


A hundred years from now, people will still be listening to Bach, Mozart, The Beatles and The Stones.


They wont be listening to rap or "hip hop."


You're full of shit. Hype doesn't trump reality, and rap is not even music, much less "fantastic." Music consists of threee elements: Rythym, beat and harmony. Rap has none of these elements.


Crotch groping baboons with gold teeth driving Escalades are not artists--they are an embarassment and impediment to civilization.

24 Whoa. What a hilarious thread. I have to say I don't care for rap. Hip-hop? I've seen it evolve and flourish into some interesting forms. For those of you who don't know the difference between rap and hip-hop, I think you should educate yourself. Calling them the same is like calling country music heavy metal.

Hucbald: As a professional composer and sound designer, I haven't heard a single musician ever say anything bad about rap....though maybe they just didn't see the point to express it?

I think the whole "bling-bling" crotch grabbing and ghetto glorification is pretty stupid, but then I've always thought if you don't like it, don't listen to it. Btw, I'm a Berklee alumni too. What do you do now? What did you study?

I wouldn't say all hip-hop is driven my people who don't play instruments. There are groups that are 100% live. Even if it's not live...it's sort of like collage. You can take a snippet of sound and make it totally different and do something new, or be some poser like p. diddy and just rip off a whole song, which is lame.

doriangrey: I've seen some dj's that have better rhythm than some drummers. Then again, those were the ones that could scratch melodies or bass lines with turntables in a band and could improvise really well. Unfortunately, those djs are rare. Most are just a bunch of sloppy real-time analog jukeboxes masquerading as musicians.

25 Osamatroll:


The difference between rap and hip-hop is like the difference between an Olive Baboon and an Anubis Baboon. They're different in name only. 


Combine rhythym, melody and harmony, you get music. Combine arhythmyic drum beats, doggerel, and a baboon, you get rap-hop.

26 Jeff, nigga PLEASE! Hahaha. Your 8-tracks are getting worn out. I love how you're telling me what music is. I compose music for TV and film for a living. I guess you better school me...

27 I was given the definition of hip-hop by someone who said they were a fan, and they said hip-hop was a kind of rap, so Nyah Nyah. And I like heavy metal music! SO THERE!  USA, all the way!

28 osamaisawigger. More truth that osamaisawigger.

29 Michael, I'll set the record straight for you...and if you check into it, you'll see it's 100% accurate:

Hip-hop is actually a culture, not just music. If you are a true hip-hop artist or b-boy, you are supposed to embrace the "four pillars of hip-hop":

-Free-styling (improvised vocally)
-Graffiti
-Break dancing
-Djing/Sampling

Rap, on the other hand, does not embrace these. Rap sounds different, looks different and IS different. Real hip-hop is not common. Commercialized and thuggish rap has dominated the airwaves for a very long time, unfortunately. Your source needs to learn up on the history of both styles. Related? Yes. Kind of rap? Not at all.

Btw, I like heavy metal too. Hahaha.

Rooster: I suppose you'd think I'm a "wigger" for liking jazz, rock and blues as well? I mean, seeing they were all invented by black people. You're getting your Oreo cookies all soggy in that milk!