#obvs Béla Fleck and Rose from Concrete

[nimblermortal]

The ongoing rap discourse is really funny to me because like. Music is not a universal language. That's a stupid cliché. People like stuff that sounds kinda like stuff they've heard before because their brains already know how to process it. British people were super racist about it during the whole empire gambit. Now things spread more easily and people listen to a lot more variety of stuff than they used to, but there are still variables by language, region, platform, and, yes, class and race.

So you want to earn discourse points by listening to rap. Cool! Good, even! Expand your horizons! Start with some simple things. But also, you're making the assumption that all black or even non-white music is Black American music, maybe you'd like music from Saharan cell phones, or kalimba, or goto, or...

Maybe you want to earn discourse points by telling other people to listen to rap, and that they're bad people for not doing so. O-kay... but you're also losing discourse points by not considering neurodivergence, because the mental barrier to trying a new music can be significantly higher or even physically painful depending on your divergence.

You can't win the discourse war, guys. And you usually have more luck getting people to try things by being enthusiastic and providing links.