e-Confessional

I used to say I liked most music, except for rap and country. But over the past 10 years or so, some aspects of rap have grown on me.

I can appreciate creative rhyme schemes and intricate meter patterns. There are only so many ways you can sing about having sex with fat-bottomed girls (and they were basically all covered by Queen before rap even got around to trying), and since that is the point of most rap songs, most rap songs are crap. But there are other, admittedly rarer, rap songs that deal with some other topic. Unfortunately, most of those are about killing disrespectful people (a topic for which I have much sympathy).

The rap songs that gain my deepest admiration are those which are not just rhythmic braggadocio. For instance: Lose Yourself by Eminem. Yes, I admit that I like that song. What other rapper meticulously details the struggles of his former life not to set off the brilliance of his success, but to show the emptiness of that success? I know there's much to hate about Eminem, but I have to respect any rapper who sings the line, "These [expletive deleted] food stamps won't buy diapers."