I am quite sure as many as all the crooners did and the rock guys do, etc. Most of them know primarily what people have done in their own field. A lot of people get down on rock, pop, rap, hip hop etc. makers for not being 'real' artists. Rap and hip hop people tend to get scrutinized even more. People who do not like the music demand that certain criteria be met or they are not really making music, despite the fact that they invest creativity in something that many people like, including intellectuals who also like literature, classical music, visual arts etc. If you don't like it, you don't like it. I really find all this 'they are not really musicians or artists kind of whiney.
As with many other things.... a good phrase.' Ever read the poetry being written by people with MFAs out there. Most of it is crap. Nevertheless these people have read a great deal of literature in their undergraduate and graduate degrees. And certainly a solid base of the classics. I'll bet a bunch of them could scan a poem. And all of them have written at least a few reasonably intelligent lit crit essays. Still they write the same first person free verse with smattering of epiphanies that has been boring the crap out of people for decades. And don't me started on the language poets. How many of these 'well read' poets managed to give anyone as much pleasure as even some of the least creative rap or hip hop numbers where at least you could dance. Rather than wanting to cry from boredom reading about 'the fireflies nudging dance of forgetfulness in my father's eyes' etc.
No I don't agree. But that is a different issue. I think there is nothing wrong with cultures mixing. They always have and they always will. Diversity is the friend of life; not it's enemy.
How can you say slavery is a different issue when many so many black rappers and liberal commentators suggest that it's the very reason for the existence of rap in the first place? Sniffy, what's wrong? Is monkey's forums so boring you have to come and pollute this place? They not feeding you enough edam? Your reasoning is specious. If the world is all about change, as you suggest, then you are invoking a Heraclitean world view, one which I am happy to embrace temporarily, however, if only to demonstrate that all notions of racism and prejudice are an illusion.