Thunderdog,
With all due respect, and knowing full well that this will be an unpopular pov on ET, you sound a bit like the Mom's and Pop's of the late 50's and early 60's, claiming that Rock 'n Roll was a passing fad and that the likes of Tommy Dorsey and the Big Band music of their era would again rule the day when everybody came to their senses and saw the musical light. Rap & Hip-hop have been around for 25 yrs now, the very-white Blondie first paid tribute to the new emerging style of the time with "Rapture" in 1980. I'm definitely no authority on music, in fact I'm not at all musical, but 25 yrs is hardly a flash-in-the-pan, most assuredly. Rap has evolved just as has rock-n-roll, country, pop, whatever. There is great, great rap and one of the things that makes it so great is that it's soooo different. I like all kinds of music, including Tommy Dorsey, country, and rock and roll, when done well, and I think rap is very real, very valid, and quite amazing. Obviously if it's not to your taste and you're unwilling to listen w/an unjaundiced ear, it's pointless to try to point out what makes it great or the greats that make it. But if you can open your mind (and your ear) listen to some of Eminem's early stuff. Ironically, this white guy is one of the best rappers ever. His lyrics are sheer poetry, witty and eloquent and as sharp as a knife, and his music can be quite beautiful and his songs are deeply moving.
When I was a teenager in the early 70's I had a good friend who was a wonderful musician. I once asked him where music, specifically rock and roll at the time, could go from here, and he said it had gone about as far as it could, and that other genres would evolve from it. (Just as rock and roll, if I understand music history correctly, had evolved from the blues.) He died a few years later and never witnessed punk or rap or hip-hop or whatever else. But he was stone on the mark. Just as rock and roll was completely radical but still part of what preceded it, so is rap.
H
