There's a lot of rap out there that is great.
Some of it is great for everyone.
Some of it is great for its core audience.
Rap, especially hard-core rap, was always meant to be a counterculture, made for its own core fans, and was never meant for the mainstream.
It was meant to please its own core cult fans, and that's fine.
But there is a small, often-heard section of rap and hip hop that seems obsessed with persuing sounds that, unbeknownst to them feel like an intense nervous, tense Autistic experience.
And this makes Autistics like me feel unspeakably awful.
Especially the edgy electronica stuff pushing an edgy, rap-like beat in a hypercompressed electronica way with a metal edginess. You know what I mean if you're autistic. That's the stuff that gives you panic fear within .3 seconds of the beat accellerating (usually maybe 15-20 seconds into the commercial, for we usually hear this stuff on TV commercials).
This is more like an instinctive panic fear triggered by an instinctive triggger. The music itself can be sweet and pleasant. But if the beat moves in this way, and is artificial and hypercompressed enough, it triggers something in the brain.
Metal doesn't do this to me, doesn't do either one (the rap feeling or the electronica trigger), much less full-blown Classic Rock, for metal (let alone Classic Rock) moves in a much more natural way that does not hyperreinforce itself in the same artificial way and feels far more wonderful.
Metal edginess, let alone Classic Rock, is something else altogether! And mainly because it moves in a much more natural way! (There are many more reasons in Classic Rock!)
I can't listen to metal on Youtube, because if I do, the Youtube algorithm will bring up advertisements with this kind of electronica backing music on it. If you listen to Billy Ocean and Peabo Bryson it won't do that, no matter how much Bruce Springsteen and Iron Butterfly you listen to on Youtube.
So, 'Here I Go Again' is fine, but I better not touch the whole Whitesnake album. For the advertisements that it brings up on the algorhithm will give me nightmares.
(Better buy the album on CD instead.)
But even the far less awful, rap and hip hop version makes Autistics like me feel pretty bad.
I can handle it, in ways that I can't handle the hypercompressed electronica stuff on the TV advertisements. But it will make me feel pretty bad.
And, I'm guessing, probably makes normal people feel Autistic- perhaps partly in a good way, but also in a nervous-wreck kind of way.
I wish they would stop.
They are not ready to feel Autistic.
I've been Autistic for 46 years.
They have been Autistic for, what, the 30 seconds that the song has been played.
They don't have my years of experience dealing with it.
And as for me?
I just wish they would stop.
But, as I said, this was meant to please a small cult following of core fans, and not most of us.
Which means that they should probably stop using it on, like, almost every other television advertisement that comes on TV.
With that awful hypercompressed electronica stuff on those few TV advertisements that the Youtube algorithm will bring up if you listen to metal on Youtube.
But, oh, well.
I'm sorry for grumping.
There are probably a lot of Autistics out there that absolutely love Rap, because autism loves obsessive repetition, and so does rap- in exactly the same way.
So if you are Autistic and in Rap's core audience, and so you identify with what it repeats, it is probably like manna from Heaven to you!
And the better stuff is probably therapy in ways that I can scarcely even imagine! (Outside of my experiences with God, that is!)
The problem is that if you are in a group that is unhip in rap, the rap music isn't being comforting and supportive, it is criticizing your side.
And whether your side is unhip depends entirely on your race, what neighborhood you grew up in, and if you were ever abused as a child.
If you are of the wrong race, and did not grow up abused or in the ghetto, than rap music is criticizing your side.
And only physical abuse counts in rap. If you are of the wrong race. Going through hell because you are autistic, hypersensitive, and living in a country going through a massive mental crisis (which causes all kinds of crazies to come into your and everyone else's life at some point between 2004 and 2007 (remember those awful years?)) does not count.
In rap, mental abuse does not count worth shit if you are of the wrong race.
And they might not be telling people to be mean to your side.
But if you are autistic, your autism is being supercharged not with supportive messages, but with messages of I don't like your side.
And that experience is pretty much the worst nightmare I have ever experienced.
Hard-core rap was never meant for everyone.
It was meant only for its own cult fans.
Sorry for grumping. My mental relationship with rap has not been healthy.
God loves you, no matter what music you make!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. this core audience is made up of two parts- hard-core rap fans, and hard-core fans of poverty porn, who actually are naive enough to think that poverty porn is realistic, that everyone is a criminal, and that puppies and rainbows and bright sunny days don't exist.
Let's just say that rap is probably better for the hard-core rap fans than for the hard-core poverty porn fans, but then, I don't know what can save them!
An awful lot of American mainstream media entertainment right now is devoted to crime and poverty porn, and right now only a tiny part if it is Rap.
Let's have some sunny days and joy!