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Today's black youth consider rap music made a week ago, to be OLD SCHOOL. I think many kids, black and white, wouldn't know serious black music if it hit them in the face. Now the hippest thing to do is to do a "cover" of old songs or to "sample" old music and put them to rapping and rhyming. What they really are saying is gee we have no talent so we'll steal other people's music. These same people turn around and accuse Elvis of stealing black music and imitating black rockers.

I care nothing for rap most of the time. Maybe I will listen to the most popular stuff, but I am not a big fan of the genre. They wear that silly pants (that was invented in jail by the way) and stupid clothing. And now the girls... the girls are trash. Black music used to have such class.

Anyway, I have a theory as to why people abandoned disco music. It's too happy and positive, too non-racialized. Also, why people hate it when I play house, and new wave at my job. If you listen to rap too long, you get either angry or depressed.

I confess that I found Kid Rock's "Cowboy" amusing all the while understanding that it is rap hybrid.

I heard Eminem a few weeks ago driving home from work....I listened for a few minutes....he has a knack for rhyme and that doomsday sounding downbeat riff he uses that sounds a bit maniacal probably appeals to frustrated testosterone laden teen boys all strutting around trying to maske their insecurities.....but the thuggishness and complete lack of respect for anything but money and getting laid it implies leaves me cold and depressed.

Girls in rap seem often utter rhyme overlaid with the moans of getting laid. Ugh....I'm glad my own girls prefer punkier prep/thrash music. They know I loathe rap, I'm sure they'll hide it from me if they decide to indulge.

Today's youth culture is a sure sign of the Decline and Fall days. It was bad enough when I was young at times and folks warned us then but wow....we just keep on spiraling downward...for how long?

I was in my SUV tonight with my kids sitting in a parking lot while my wife did the tanning booth thing and I had on Hendrix's Rainbow Bridge of which the Pali Gap instrumental is one of my favorites and I wondered listening as to how would today's black culture would view him now. He was an enigma then and while not listened to much by blacks unless they were the rare black hippie, he was not scorned for his psychdelic blues. Maybe he'd be like Lenny Kravitz....semi viewed as black though nearly all his record buyers are probably young white girls. (I know Kravitz is half white)....like Prince but now Prince has gone black more or less with more R&B and less rock.

Just wondering. Hendrix was indeed phenomenal

My multi disc CD player had Billy Joe Shaver (with Waylon and Emmy Lou Harris), Lou Reed Rock and Roll Animal, Hendrix, Grateful Dead American Beauty, Led Zepplin BBC sessions, and The North Mississippi All-Stars.........middle aged eclectic taste...lol