Is Rap music Poetry?

Question

I think No.....Rap music is better than poetry. Commericalized b/s u hear on the radio aside real hip hop conveys the essence of reality better than poetry. Poetry is often an endless expression of feelings whereas rap music can incooperate ones feelings with the realities of life. Poetry is often confined within feelings Rap artist paint stories with illustrious words in a poetic format.

Better than poetry.

Yo, Yo, what you know bout heart?
Can't be the weak link in the squad
Gotta look way deep in your heart
Anything in the way gotta go straight through
Take charge
Can't hide from your flaws when you ride for the cause
Cuz a ***** will pull your card
Keep your guard up 24/7 on the street like you're doin hard time on the yard
What you know about heart?
Can you assemble your heat in the dark
Take it apart, and clean all the parts?
Life is a journey, a course, like learning a martial art
You can't have partial heart
Gotta get your own, if you drop the bone, dog, we all fall
It ain't over til the problem solved
Get your back up off the wall

Answer 1

It is just one of the sub-genres of poetry. Hence, you cannot judge it by pitting it against itself unless you have a rather unique idea of what poetry is.
The Rap music has become a predominant force in today’s music industry. Although the music is probably the first thing that catches your attention, the message contained within is significant.
Today’s generation speaks of love, death, self-expression, personal, political, and social issues, poverty and riches, and life experiences. They intertwine these thoughts creatively and innovatively within strong rhythms and entrancing melodies that capture the heart and mind of the listener.
The mind set of today’s youth can be found within the lyrics of the music the they listen to.
Many times this music is viewed negatively because of the strong language and ideas. However, there is a message embedded within that gives voice to the glories and ills of the surrounding society and community in which we live. The rap artists reflect and echo the works of famous literary poets past and present commenting on some of the same political and social issues that are still relevant today. Once these poetic pieces are researched and explored, one can determine whether the message is relevant and effects change, good or bad, for the listener. Using poetic devices and literary elements, one could create meaningful and insightful poetry that reflects their personal thoughts and the thoughts and beliefs of their generation.
Accomplished Rappers such as Public Enemy, Lauren Hill, Queen Latifah and Tupac Shakur have all employed the
following literary and poetic elements in their musical and poetic work: alliteration, allusion, assonance, characterization, denotation, connotation, metaphor, personification, repetition, rhythm, dialect, figurative language, free verse, hyperbole, imagery, irony, point of view, refrain, simile, setting, speaker.
Hence one cannot argue that Rap music is not poetry nor allege that it is better! It is simply one of the many strategies of poetic expression.

Good luck

Source: personal reflection and web-sources.

Answer 2

Is Rap Music Poetry

Answer 3

You can't make any poetry without having some within you, nor recognize anybody else's, for that matter. Poetry changes forms and ways of getting to people's hearts. If rap is doing it for you, then OK. It's poetry to you. But it's not OK saying that's better than poetry, because by stating that, you admit it's not part of it.

Answer 4

I'm not sure what poetry you're reading, but to answer your question, no rap music is not poetry, but rap lyrics are. Rap music--scratching, sampling, etc. add something to the lyrics, but the best lyrics are quite profound.

You might like the book "An Exaltation of Forms" which has essays about rap and its contributions to poetry by Tracie Morris and DJ Renegade.

Answer 5

Hmmmmm. I'm not really a rap fan but I can see where you are going with this. I am a song writer and something of a pseudo-poet myself and I believe it is indeed poetry. Not much of what I write would beconsidered poetry by you average Shakepearean hack, so yeah why not, of course it's poetry. I write poetry and so did Grand Master Flash.

Answer 6

uhh. hmmm painting stories with illustrious words,...ones feelings with the realities of life. what the hell do you think poetry is? rap is a poetry expressed over a beat. basically. some poetry does go nowhere, but there is all sorts of poetry out there, rap is just one of them.

Answer 7

What planet are you from? No offense, but poetry can and does tell stories....all the time. There's all different kinds of poetry. What about the One horse shay, what about Edgar Allen Poe's...well there's a whole bunch of them. The only thing I don't like about rap, is it often times sounds like the person is angry, not always, though.

Answer 8

What poetry are you reading? There's tons of short and simple poems out there that convey so much. I'm a poetry fan myself, theres endless possibilities to "incooperate ones feelings with the realities of life." Plus I just hate rap.

Answer 9

I believe that true poetry is much better because it sounds more serene and flowing. In rap, I tend to hear "yo yo what up homie g?" (hyperbole!) in every other line, plus there are way too many grammatical errors. Not to mention the vulgar!

Rap is a form of poetry, but true poetry isn't rap.

Answer 10

I don't really know much about rap, but what I heard was very poorly written, especially because of the rhyme that always falls on a stressed syllable. If you read it out, it's really monotonous. There might be better raps than the one you wrote out (not very good, I'm afraid). There might be even raps that are better than most of the poetry which is posted here and which is, indeed, usually extremely boring.

Edit: I have been reading the texts below, and I know what I don't like about them: they are too moralizing. But it's true that some of them do put the stress on the words, on language.