Maybe the teens don't consider weed hip anymore since it's now legal.
jessica
it's probably actually a consequence of the death of rock culture and it's replacement by various types of urban culture. it's been replaced by mdma. and the ultimate culprit is actually probably the smell, along with the delivery mechanism. i've recently seen 20-somethings popping marijuana pills, which i hadn't seen previously.
Jacob Valentin
'Death of rock culture'?
jessica
about ten years ago, actually.
Jacob Valentin
What, Linkin Park?
jessica
you know, the truth is that i've never even heard any linkin park, so i don't have a witty comeback.
there will always be kids that listen to rock music. for quite some time now, they've been called losers.
go look up the lolapalooza line-up this year.
Mini Squidward
Idk with the loss of rock culture came rap culture which is probably even more weed friendly
jessica
but, white suburban kids don't listen to rap music.
the kids that would have been listening to (mainstream) rock music in my era are currently listening to techno. hip-hop is still deeply counter-culture to most white people.
Mini Squidward
as a suburban white kid, hip hop is pretty fucking huge and rock is basically dead. I don't know whatchu talking bout
jessica
so, tell me about how you identify with a form of black protest music that not only is not written for you but tends to vilify you.
you're the one that doesn't know what you're talking about.
Mini Squidward
Just because it's not my movement doesn't mean I can't respect it or find something meaningful from it.
And most mainstream rap is just party music not protesting anything and that's what's topping charts right now. White kids listen to rap more than any other genre right now from my recent high school/college experience.
Never once have I felt vilified from rap and I will listen to some of the more protest-y stuff like Run The Jewels or Kendrick. Just because they will talk about racial injustice doesn't mean they are attacking all white people.
Please don't tell me what I listen to or what my peers listen to or how we shouldn't
jessica
what i'm telling you is that you represent a small minority of people that are solely concerned about fashion and don't actually understand music.
i'd like to be sarcastic. do tell me about how you relate to kendrick lamar's treatises on blackness. tell me about how it speaks to you...
but, you don't even deny it. you admit that it's just the shallowness of marketing and the speciousness of fashion.
the reality is that most white kids your age and socio-economic status that actually understand music are listening to indie rock or folk music because that's what speaks to them and their experiences. they don't understand black culture. they don't relate to the misogyny, and the violence and the hyper-capitalist excess. that's just a demographic fact. maybe you might want to go hang out with them, instead of sitting around and pretending you're black in order to fulfill some fantasy that a bunch of corporate marketing executives stuck into your head to turn a profit.
and, don't fucking tell me what to say. i'll say what i want, and you can fuck off if you don't like it.
do you know what the right word for you is? poseur. you're a fucking poseur.
Mini Squidward
How is rap killing indie rock in the Billboard 100 yet be the minority of what people are listening to? Why are you telling ME what I am concerned about?
Here's the deal. White people read books like to Kill a Mocking Bird and it's lauded as a classic despite it being mostly about racism. People read A Child Called It and feel that kid's pain without being ever being abused themselves. People base their lives around religious texts written by people who lived long ago and drastically differently than we do today (I'm not religious personally).When N.W.A. invented gangsta rap part of the reason was to get suburban people to see how the black community felt at the time. I am not pretending to be anything I'm not; I'm just listening to what I enjoy listening to. I feel what I feel. Your hypothesis aren't necessarily truth.
jessica
rap hit a peak of popularity about ten years ago with a less than 20% market share, saturated very heavily in the black community. your logic would hold if there were only two types of music. but, a 15% market share implies that 85% of people are listening to something else. and, the heavy concentration in the black community implies that it's more like 90-95% over every other demographic; rap controls around 5% of the market share for non-black demographics.
rap's ability to climb up the charts is likewise a consequence of it's ability to dominate the black market, in a music economy that is dominated by choice. it's probably the last form of musical groupthink. whereas other forms of music are dominated by what is perhaps too much competition and too much choice, rap remains dominated by a smaller set of artists.
but, again, let's not be delusional. rap artists cannot compete with pop artists or techno artists. they are not and never have been and never will be the mainstream. further, your attempts to compare music to literature are just further demonstrating that you don't understand what music is. music is not something that you read and analyze, it's something that you feel and react to.
Mini Squidward
You can feel and react to books and you can read and analyze music, speak for yourself. People will cry after reading books and people will meticulously inspect every line of their favorite artist sings. It's art, there isn't a right or wrong way to create or admire.
And yeah pop is obviously still much more popular but I'd argue it is becoming more and more influenced by rap, you see a lot more rap features in pop songs and a lot of themes from party rap carrying over imo.
And for the market share argument I would say that yeah if you factor in people of all ages rock is more popular, you see higher streaming numbers (on internet, so typically younger crowd) being dominated by R&B/rap. And those numbers were 2 years old and I do think rap presence in young people's media has increased a good deal even in the short amount of time, even if that isn't their favorite genre when they are just listening to music by themselves. The stuff people listen to with friends and in parties is often different, and the former would dominate album sales and the latter would dominate media and what would be considered the popular music for our age. And I don't see how you use that website (assuming we're both looking at the very first result from google here since the data is the same) and then say techno is more popular when that was only at 3 percent, and we both lead off this comment thread saying rock culture is all but dead which this source would contradict. I'm just saying how I see it, and I'm the one living in the young suburban culture we're talking about. All these white girls saying rain drop, drop top, Every party I've been to is playing a good deal of rap. I see mainstream rap's influence on young culture than anything else around me right now.
jessica
i'm just going to point out that you can bring a horse to water, and leave it at that.