Longtime rap hater and political commentator Ben Shapiro offered his insight, once again, on why rap is not a form of music. This time, he even used his father as a reference.
On the latest episode of his show, ‘The Ben Shapiro Show,’ the host sat down with indie rapper, author and podcast host Zuby and doubled down on his disdain for the genre, saying it is not real music. “In my view, and in the view of my music theorist father who went to music school, there are three elements to music. There is harmony, there is melody, and there is rhythm,” Shapiro said.
“Rap only fulfills one of these, the rhythm section. There’s not a lot of melody, and there’s not a lot of harmony. And thus, effectively, it is basically spoken rhythm. It’s not actually a form of music. It’s a form of rhythmic speaking. Thus, beyond the objectivity of me just not enjoying rap all that much, what I’ve said before is that rap is not music.”
Admitting that he didn’t have much knowledge of the difficulty of mastering the craft of rapping, he continued on offering his opinion on the genre culturally. “From the outside, when I listen to hip-hop, I don’t hear a bunch of family-oriented messages. In fact, I hear a lot of messages that are degrading to women, I hear messages that push violence, that are disparaging to the police,” he said.
“I hear messages that treat relationships between men and women as something disposable and glorify mistreatment of women…The art form overall, which not only has an impact on not just Black young people, but is disproportionately listened to by White young people. I don’t particularly like a lot of the messages I hear.”
Shapiro’s sentiments regarding rap music haven’t changed much at all since his controversial 2012 tweet, “Fact: rap isn’t music. And if you think it is, you’re stupid.”
Boy bye!
