Political Commentator Ben Shapiro Catches Heat for Saying Rap Isn’t Music
Written by SOURCE on September 16, 2019
Not that it matters, but Ben Shapiro thinks that the biggest genre in the world isn’t music.
On his latest episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, the political commentator had a conversation with Zuby. During their discussion, Shapiro tried to convince the rapper that hip-hop isn’t music.
“In my view, and in the view of my music theorist father who went to music school, there are three elements to music. There is harmony, there is melody and there is rhythm,” Shapiro said about 30 minutes into their conversation. “Rap only fulfills one of these, the rhythm section. There’s not a lot of melody and there’s not a lot of harmony. And thus, effectively, it is basically spoken rhythm. It’s not actually a form of music. It’s a form of rhythmic speaking. Thus, beyond the objectivity of me just not enjoying rap all that much, what I’ve said before is that rap is not music.”
Despite openly admitting that he knows little about the genre, Shapiro continued to speak about things he doesn’t understand. This led him to rehash the same, age-old falsehoods about hip-hop resulting in comments that sound like a horrible Tipper Gore impersonation.
“From the outside, when I listen to hip-hop, I don’t hear a bunch of family-oriented messages,” Shapiro added. “In fact, I hear a lot of messages that are degrading to women, I hear messages that push violence, that are disparaging to the police. I hear messages that treat relationships between men and women as something disposable and glorify mistreatment of women.”
Shapiro’s biggest problem with hip-hop seems to be that white people are listening to and respecting a genre that is dominated by talented black people.
“The art form overall, which not only has an impact on not just black young people but is disproportionately listened to by white young people,” Shapiro said. “I don’t particularly like a lot of the messages I hear.”
Because the internet has nothing but time, Shapiro was thoroughly ridiculed for his half-baked assessment.
