When I was young, variety shows on TV would showcase a juggler (low culture/carnival act) then break for a commercial and come back with someone singing an Aria from Verdi.
Once upon a time, we really had both low culture and high culture, and each might recieve some influence from the other.
Today, the remains of high culture seem to exist only in small niches and do not influence the world very much. Today, low culture is just about all the culture we have.
I remember that! Ed Sullivan was my favorite. Robert Merrill would sing right after the spinning plates act.
And DURING the spinning plates act, they usually played “Sabre Dance” by Khachaturian or “The Comedians” by Kabalevsky.
And of Course, it is where I first saw the Beatles!
Those were the days.
LOW culture would be a stripper, not a juggler, a carnival geek putting a pin through his cheeks, a bawdy comic.
There was “adult only” entertainment in the teens and twenties and thirties and forties and fifties of the previous century. NONE of it went on tv in the 1940s and 50s.
Listen to the x-rated Friar’s Club roasts to understand the difference.
Rap is thuggish music about pimpin’ hoes, slagging your competition, and boasting of your penis size while blazin’ a joint and braggin’ how many times you got shot. Bad grammer and stereotypes and phony bios.